Alison Trope’s new book, “Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood,” explores how Hollywood portrays its history and the tension between preservation and capitalization
Hollywood’s deep-seated desire to honor the past was most recently made evident by the Academy’s 2012 nominations of history-heavy movies. Hugo, The Artist, The Help, Midnight in Paris and War Horse signal the industry tipping its hat to the culture and glamour of the past – including its own, according to USC Annenberg communication professor Alison Trope.
But the legacy of Hollywood – and American film culture – is far from settled.
In a new book, “Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood” (Dartmouth College Press), Trope examines the role of Hollywood as an icon, its influence on global culture, and asks: How will the history of Hollywood be told? And who will tell it?
The book investigates for the first time how the entertainment industry has portrayed itself. Hollywood’s success in the commercial arena via movies, DVDs and tourist attractions like the Hollywood Walk of Fame has outstripped its success in establishing a lasting cultural and historical memorial or artifact, Trope found.
The tension between those wanting a museum for the sake of preservation and those pushing to profit from a more tourist-centered attraction is ever-present, writes Trope.
“When it comes to Hollywood memorializing itself,” she said, “We see a constant tension – a desire to preserve Hollywood as a historical artifact of cultural import and at the same time a need to profit from that history.”
The book chronicles the industry’s many failed attempts – since the 1930s – to open a museum in Hollywood, while similar efforts in New York and further afield in France, Italy and Germany have been successful. Outside Los Angeles, Trope says, the stakes aren’t as high to produce a memorial that meets the approval of heavy-handed studios and stakeholders that live next door.
And yet, Hollywood’s global appeal and profitability is still paramount. All of us are steeped in Hollywood culture and history – whether we realize it or not, argues Trope. And it comes to us in myriad ways. Trope believes the book is the first in-depth account of Hollywood’s influence outside the theater: through museums, restaurants, retail stores, theme parks, DVDs, classic cable movie channels and the Internet. Hollywood infiltrates our lives, and its value – both symbolic and financial – is shaped by the industry itself and its offshoots in for-profit and non-profit arenas.
Therein lies the meaning behind the title (a nod to Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories”). It’s a signal of the nostalgia for the different ways we understand – and get sold – an idea of Hollywood, and how Hollywood’s past informs how we appreciate it now, Trope said.
