Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series)
Cambridge University Press, 10/16/2008
EAN 9780521898546, ISBN10: 0521898544
Hardcover, 472 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Entertainment Industrialised was the first study to compare the emergence and economic development of the film industry in Britain, France and the United States between 1890 and 1940. Gerben Bakker investigates the commercialisation and industrialisation of live entertainment in the nineteenth century and analyses the subsequent arrival of motion pictures, revealing that their emergence triggered a process of incessant creative destruction, development and productivity growth that continues in the entertainment industry today. He argues that cinema industrialised live entertainment by automating it, standardising it and making it tradeable, a process that was largely demand led, and that a quality race between firms changed the structure of the international entertainment market. While a hundred years ago, European enterprises were supplying half of all films shown in the US, the quality race resulted in today's industry, in which a handful of American companies dominate the global entertainment business.
1. Introduction
Part I. The Rise of Entertainment
2. The emergence of national entertainment markets
3. The increase in demand for entertainment
4. The structure of household entertainment expenditure
Part II. The Rise of the International Film Industry
5. The emergence of cinema
6. The quality race
7. The failure to catch up
8. How films became branded products
Part III. Entertainment Industrialised
9. International market integration
firms versus trade
10. Industrialising the discovery process
11. At the origins of increased productivity growth in services
12. Epilogue
after television.
'Open Entertainment Industrialised on any page, and the sense of real discovery is instant. This is history with new eyes ... It is a book that demands to be read.' The Bioscope '... the book presents a compelling and detailed explanation for the dominance of Hollywood, an explanation that is firmly rooted in economic theory ... an admirable attempt at presenting a detailed, coherent and rigorous explanation of the economic forces that shaped the evolution of the film industry, an industry that is perhaps too often prone to wrap itself in myth and hyperbole.' EH.Net '... a commanding scholarly synthesis, drawing upon an extraordinarily extensive set of sources, which will prove indispensable to researchers in this field, and, more widely, the economic history of the second industrial revolution. ... Bakker provides a coherent and convincing groundbreaking account of the economic history of the international film industry.' Economic History Review '... a recommended read ...' World Economics