Abstract
U.S. state film tax incentives have made significant headlines in the past year, with estimates of states’ efforts to lure Hollywood production in the tens of billions of dollars. Film tax incentives act as extensions of state film commissions in a competitive race to the bottom to woo Hollywood production. Of the 38 states that offer film tax incentives, 18 are right-to-work, including the runaway production hubs Georgia, Louisiana, and Nevada and the emerging runaway hubs of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Thus, precarious creative labor in the U.S. accounts for an increasingly substantial portion of Hollywood’s output. Building on “New Hollywood” discourses of 1970s Hollywood, this paper connects state film tax incentives to Hollywood’s below-the-line labor crisis by focusing on the rise of U.S. state film commissions in the 1970s, a key phenomenon in the resuscitation of an industry on the brink of collapse. Using the succession of Arizona Film Commissioners as a case study, this paper traces the circulation of precarious creative labor in the U.S. alongside the phenomenal expansion of state film commissions. As former president of the Association of Film Commissioners, Nancy Littlefield, declared in 1982, “The film commission, wherever it is located, is the point where the art, the industry, and the politics of filmmaking converge.” This paper shows how the convergence of art, industry, and politics, emblematic of state film commissions, is increasingly made possible by the circulation of precarious creative labor.
Presenters
Cale EppsStudent, Ph.D. - Cinema and Media Studies, University of Southern California, California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Hollywood, Precarity, Labor, Media Industries, Finance
