Citizen Spielberg

Introduction: The Elephant in the Center of the Room

introduction The Elephant in the Center of the Room “How very Steven Spielberg.” —Angels in America Beyond the Page This project did not begin as a labor of love.I was not one of those awestruck viewers mesmerized as the mothership harmonized with humankind, sobbing when E.T. finally left for home, or cheering as Indiana Jones rode off into the sunset. It began when students requested a course on Spielberg and, much to my surprise,I could not find a single comprehensive scholarly study of his films. While many of those currently on the market contain pockets of intelligent analysis, most are primarily concerned with other matters: biography (McBride,Mott and Saunders,Taylor,Yule,Baxter,Sanello),interviews (Friedman and Notbohm),behind-the-scenes revelations (Perry,Freer, Gottlieb, Brode, Rubin), and general commentaries for fans (Clarke, Slade and Watson). Closest to what I had in mind was Charles Silet’s collection of previously published essays, though these wildly disparate pieces offer no coherent vision of Spielberg’s works over time,andYosefa Loshitzky’s collection of provocative essays on Schindler’s List, an in-depth study of Spielberg’s Holocaust film. Considering that my academic field traditionally welcomes a panoply of media and cultural topics and each year greets an impressive array of books that range from rare silent films, to arcane theoretical subjects , to popular social phenomena, I could not understand why scholars had ignored Steven Spielberg, arguably the most important figure in screen culture over the last three decades. The answer came after reading academic articles in a range of journals and periodicals. For most scholars, Spielberg is the New York Yankees of the film world: he is the man they love to hate because he fields the best play-  . introduction ers, controls the biggest budgets, draws the largest crowds, reaps the most profits,and wins far too often.When his movies garner awards,the applause barely dies down before the whispered accusations of unfair advantages arise. Equally important, academics often prefer to wield their analytical skills in the service of undervalued creative artists whom they can “discover” and present to the world, not directors who sit atop immense financial empires and command princely budgets for their projects. As Frank Manchel wryly observes,“Film is a medium where the more successful you are commercially, the less acceptable you are to the critical community—at least until you are dead” (85). Like Alfred Hitchcock, who was not recognized as a great visual artist until relatively late in his career, Spielberg’s cinema seems too filled with earthly pleasures, too stuffed with things that go bump in the night, and too reliant on emotional manipulation to command favorable attention from those who see themselves as guardians of culture maintaining the barricades against hordes of encroaching barbarians. The standard scholarly view resolutely positions Spielberg as little more than a modern P. T. Barnum, a technically gifted and intellectually shallow showman who substitutes spectacle for substance and emotion for depth. Read any extended account of his work, and you will quickly recognize the party line echoed by most academic writers: Spielberg (along with his pal George Lucas) is responsible for two of the greatest sins in modern cinema history—the Blockbuster mentality that permeates the commercial film industry, and the infantalization of contemporary movies. The former, they claim, leaves little room for intellectually challenging cinematic works that may lack widespread audience appeal, and the latter encourages wham-bam action flicks accentuating multiple explosions rather than significant subjects. For most cinema-studies scholars, Spielberg embodies the excesses and the ideology of mainstream American filmmaking; he has “become a synonym for Hollywood itself . . . an incarnation of Hollywood’s large-scale, worldconquering ambitions” (Scott 60, 63). My subsequent experiences confirmed my initial observations—and fears. When I told my colleagues at a Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference that I intended to write a book examining Spielberg’s entire film output, one friend laughingly suggested that doing so was the academic equivalent of appearing in a porn movie: how would I ever regain scholarly legitimacy? Suddenly, I did feel quite naked. Another greeted my news by describing himself as an “anti-Spielbergian,” a curious phrase, since I have never heard anyone label themselves an “anti-Wellesian” or “anti-Tarantinoist .” Most just raised an eyebrow, uttered an elongated “hmmmmm,” introduction · 3 and moved elsewhere in the room—presumably to find more enlightened company. The...