Below the Stars : : How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production / / Kate Fortmueller.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE Arts 2021
• VerfasserIn: Fortmueller, Kate,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2022]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (216 p.) :; 3 b&w photos

Despite their considerable presence in Hollywood, extras and working actors have received scant attention within film and media studies as significant contributors to the history of the industry. Looking not to the stars but to these supporting players in film, television, and, recently, streaming programming, Below the Stars highlights such actors as precarious laborers whose work as freelancers has critically shaped the entertainment industry throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By addressing ordinary actors as a labor force, Kate Fortmueller proposes a media industry history that positions underrepresented and "idian experiences as the structural elements of the culture and business of Hollywood. Resisting a top-down assessment, Fortmueller explores the wrangling of labor unions and guilds that advocated for collective action for everyday actors and helped shape professional norms. She pulls from archival research, in-person interviews, and firsthand observation to examine a history that cuts across industry boundaries and situates actors as a labor group at the center of industrial and technological upheavals, with lasting implications for race, gender, and labor relations in Hollywood.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 . Hollywood freelance. How Actors and Extras Shaped the Film Industry -- 2. Actors and the making of television’s first golden age -- 3. Reuse and replace? Actors, Reruns, and the Cable Era -- 4. New media, old labor conflicts. Voice Actors and Digital Professionalism -- Conclusion -- Postscript: actors and Covid- 19. What the Pandemic Teaches Us about Film and Television Labor -- Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index