Americanization @ Thirty Two Visual Frames per Second

The Hollywood Dream Factory -or- America in Film, Art, Music, Literature and Dreams

An epochal technological and Western cultural turning point for human consciousness on the planet came in 1895, when the Lumière brothers' produced the first film "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory". 

In "America On Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies", Sam B. Girgus uses the idea of ‘America On Film', as a double entendre, "meaning representations and renderings of America in various films but also how America has helped to transform film itself, including the documentary form." We can also use American film to trace the psychological impact of the visual cultural frame and narrative threads of the "Americanization" of dream vision by the Hollywood dream factory. Larry King reported that as a young boy he had a nightmare where "King Kong" was in his room (the Faye Wray 1933 version, read "Media Influence on Children's Dreams").  

For Marshall McLuhan media influences our consciousness, and in-turn "participation in depth"(read dreams). With the medium of film came a radical culture industry and political shift in the psychological ability of mass media to influence the consciousness of the masses, their cultural thoughts, imagination, and dreams. Everyday artistic production of visual culture by the culture industries have shaped the sensibilities of "dream vision", which in-turn has become controlled by the dominant needs of the marketplace. 

The philosophy of post-modern capitalism has "Americanized" the marketplace of dream vision on the planet. Today the Hollywood dream factory dominates world media markets and all those living in the "global village". The American culture industry's influence on all forms of art can be seen in many of the dream interpretations posted at the International Institute for Dream Research website. 

The philosophical aesthetic idea of a "mass art", was identified by Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Benjamin foresaw the psychological and political uses and hypnotic impact of the "phantasmagoria" of mass art. 

In this Americanized "postmodern" global village we live in today, the mass media, the culture industry, corporate advertisement of the "tableaux vivant" (or living pictures), dominate the marketplace of thought and the world of dreams. The postmodern marketplace of "artistic cultures", includes; 

We can envision a postmodern bricolage of the whole spectrum of "cultural art" forms flowing into the "surreal" collective dreams of those living in the global village. Here is a sample of some of the postmodern "Americanized" dreams; 

Further Reading: 

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