Professor Jerome Christensen Corporate Art sku-16658577

America's Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures is a hardcover Performing Arts Books title by Professor Jerome Christensen, sku-16658577, in the Post*45 series. The book argues that Hollywood's corporate studios, rather than single individuals, authored motion pictures during the classical studio era and after studios became part of global entertainment conglomerates.

It describes pre-digital Hollywood films as self-advertising commodities that market a studio's brand as they are watched. Christensen traces corporate authorship through the competing visions of MGM and Warner Bros., including MGM's Singin' in the Rain and Warner's The Fountainhead.

He follows MGM's decline into a portable, valuable logo and examines how Warner Bros. used Batman, JFK and You've Got Mail in deals that made it the world's largest entertainment corporation. The book closes with the Disney-Pixar merger and the first two Toy Story films, considered in light of a recent judicial extension of constitutional rights to corporate persons.