Movies and Their Audiences

Saturday, January 3, 2009

We talk of Hollywood as the “dream factory” of makers of “movie magic”. We want our lives and loves to be ”just like in the movies” The movies are “larger than life”, and movie stars are much more glamorous than television stars. The movies, in other words, hold a very special place in our culture. Movies like the books are a culturally special medium, an important medium. In this sense the movie-audience relationship has more in common with that of books than with on television. Just as people buy books, they buy movie tickets. Because the audience is in fact the true consumer, power rest with it in film more than it does in television.
For better or worse, today’s movie audience is increasingly a young one.