Page 211 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

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matters: the distinction between independent and mainstream cinema has of-
fered so much food for thought and discussion that its place in the discourse of
cinema history and theory is undeniable.

see also Alternative Media in the United States; Bollywood and the Indian Di-
aspora; Cultural Appropriation; The DVD; Innovation and Imitation in Com-
mercial Media; Online Digital Film and Television; World Cinema.
Further reading: Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film History; An Introduction,
2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004; Bowser, Eileen, ed. “The Transformation of
Cinema, 1907–1915,” vol. 2. In History of the American Cinema, 10 vols. New York:
Scribners, 1990; Carroll, Noel. Interpreting the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998; Doherty, Thomas. Pre-Code Hollywood. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1999; Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its
Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” In Early Film, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker.
London: British Film Institute, 1989; King, Geoff. American Independent Cinema. Lon-
don: I. B. Tauris, 2005; Levy, Emmanuel. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American
Independent Film. New York: New York University Press, 1999; Mathijs, Ernest, and
Xavier Mendik, eds. The Cult Film Reader. London: Open University Press, 2007;
Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. Cult Cinema, an Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell,
2008; Mendik, Xavier, and Steve Jay Schneider, eds. Underground USA: Filmmaking
Beyond the Hollywood Canon. New York: Wallflower, 2000; Pribham, E. Deirdre. Cin-
ema and Culture; Independent Film in the United States, 1980–2000. New York: Peter
Lang, 2002; Sadoul, Georges. Histoire du cinéma mondial. Paris: Flammarion, 1949;
Scott, Allen J. “Hollywood and the World: The Geography of Motion-Picture Distribu-
tion and Marketing.” Review of International Political Economy 11, no. 1 (2004): 33–61;
Staiger, Janet. Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. New York: New York
University Press, 2000; Staiger, Janet. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Recep-
tion of American Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Ernest Mathijs

innoVation and iMitation in CoMMerCial Media
Popular media are often condemned for being repetitive, formulaic, and lack-
ing originality. How accurate are such accusations, or might popular culture be a
bit more complex than this generalization? How do innovations emerge from a
system of formulas and imitation? And why would so many people find pleasure
in media that seem to only offer “more of the same”?
One of the most frequent ways that critics decry a lack of quality and value in
popular culture is by accusing mass media of being overly formulaic and repeti-
tive. Such critiques are based on some underlying assumptions: originality is the
most valued element of culture, imitation is a sign of creative poverty driven by
the industrial nature of popular culture, and true enjoyment can only stem from
innovative cultural expressions. While this hierarchy privileging creative origi-
nality over formulaic repetition is so widespread to be almost common sense,
the actual history of cultural forms suggests that there is a more complex inter-
play between the processes of innovation and imitation that complicates these
basic assumptions.