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"Nobody Knows Anything": Professionalism and Publics in The Great Waldo Pepper

2019; Volume: 58; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cj.2019.0004

2578-4919

Ben Rogerson,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

This article argues that genre provided filmmakers with a self-reflexive vehicle for reformulating the social legitimacy of filmmaking as a profession in response to the crises of recessionary New Hollywood. Faced with the apparent unpredictability of mass audiences, George Roy Hill's aviation film The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) presumes to fashion professional standards of competence and expertise that do not require social legitimation. But what encompasses these considerations are the industry's ongoing efforts to reconstitute film as a medium that serves a heterogeneous mass audience comprised of the well and the less educated, the young and the old.