Honors Collegium 119
Hollywood and Cultural Diversity in America
Enrollment: Instructor Consent. Please contact Professor Alex Franklin (alexfranklin@g.ucla.edu) for enrollment information.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for College Honors students. Hollywood filmmakers often produce movies where characters confront societal issues such as sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination. So it is surprising to see recent media coverage that turns magnifying glass around and exposes Hollywood’s own severe problems when it comes to racial and cultural diversity. Exploration of differing media representations–how they occur, why they persist, and what they can teach about current racial divides in America. Examination of how Hollywood represents different races, cultures, and groups.
Professor Alex Franklin
Alex Franklin is a lecturer in the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media where he teaches graduate-level courses about the development and production of feature films and television projects. He also teaches several courses for the UCLA Summer Institute, for the Undergraduate Honors Collegium and the Department of Global Studies at the UCLA International Institute. His courses include “Hollywood and Cultural Diversity in America,” “Hollywood and Global Responsibility” and “Hollywood and America’s Global Image.” In these classes, students explore Hollywood’s portrayals and representations of different countries, races and groups, and their impact on our culture.
He began his entertainment industry career in Hollywood at New Line Cinema where he assisted senior VP of production Richard Saperstein on the feature film Frequency and on the Denzel Washington film John Q. He then moved with Saperstein to Artisan Entertainment where he became a creative executive. At Artisan, he worked with Kevin Feige and the Marvel team developing numerous titles including The Punisher. He subsequently moved to Lionsgate Films where he worked with noted genre producer Peter Block on numerous horror and genre titles including the Saw franchise. After Lionsgate, Franklin worked at Dimension Films on the reboot of the Halloween franchise with director Rob Zombie, and on the Scary Movie franchise, which fulfilled a lifelong dream of working with director David Zucker (Airplane,The Naked Gun). His last film as a development executive was Youth in Revolt, directed by Miguel Arteta. Currently, Franklin works at at Zero Gravity Management overseeing their production department.
Q & A
What is your UCLA home department? Film, Television and Digital Media
How long have you been teaching your HC seminar? I’ve been teaching this seminar since Fall 2017, my seventh year teaching for Honors Collegium
What is your favorite part about teaching this HC seminar? I enjoy group discussions about the course topics the most, hearing student opinions on these issues and listening to interesting student debates on various political and cultural topics.
What do you find to be the most compelling about the subject matter of this seminar? In our modern era, Hollywood movies and series are seen around the world by more people in history, and by so many children and people unfamiliar with America and its diverse population. Movies and television series have great power to teach us about lives and cultures different than our own (Roger Ebert once called them empathy machines).
They can also very easily spread misinformation and negative stereotypes about different cultures and marginalized groups. To me it’s very worthwhile to analyze Hollywood content and to debate its potential impact.
What are the learning objectives for this course? Students will learn about how the entertainment industry, an industry full of intelligent, progressive and well intentioned people can still play a major role in systemic cultural problems in America. In the process, students will hopefully improve their ability to think critically about and speak publicly about the nature of media images and stories on political and cultural issues in our nation. A final goal is for everyone to come out of the course with an improved ability to express and debate their political and cultural opinions with those who may oppose them in a collaborative and productive manner.