Honors Collegium 154
Hollywood and Divided America
Enrollment: Instructor Consent. Please contact Professor Alex Franklin (alexfranklin@g.ucla.edu) for enrollment information.
Course Description: Seminar, three hours. Exploration of role that media images and storylines play in current political and cultural debates in U.S. Examination of recent movies and television shows and other case studies to explore entertainment industry’s impact on current discord in U.S. Discussion of motives of artists who speak out and arguments of their detractors. Consideration of whether Hollywood can still be positive force in divided America. P/NP or letter grading.
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. In 2018, Franklin was awarded the Eugen Weber Honors Program Distinguished Teaching Award for his work with the Honors Program at UCLA. 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. Franklin is a graduate of Harvard University and has an M.F.A. from the USC Peter Stark Producing Program.
Q & A
What is your home department at UCLA? Film, Television and Digital Media
How long have you been teaching your HC seminar? Honors 154 is new, but I’ve been teaching for the Honors Collegium for four years.
What is your favorite part about teaching this HC seminar? Coming from TFT, it’s always exciting for me to hear the perspectives of a diverse group of students in a variety of majors. For Honors 154 I am looking forward to discussing important political and cultural topics with a new group.
What do you find to be the most compelling about the subject matter of this seminar? American is a very divided country right now. The media and entertainment industry is full of intelligent, well intentioned and progressive people who strive to tell stories that can unify our country but the entertainment industry has numerous problems and ways in which it contributes to divisions in our society. I look forward to examining that
What are the learning objectives for this course?
- Students will learn about how public policy and current national debates on systemic issues such as economic inequality, racial discrimination, gender inequality and sexual harassment influence not just the work of artists and filmmakers but also the business strategies of gigantic media corporations.
- Students will learn about how the entertainment industry’s artistic processes meant to shine a light on injustice and inspire social change can often fail and alienate the marginalized communities that artists are trying to support.
- Students will learn about how the entertainment indutry, an industry full of intelligent, progressive and well intentioned people can still play a major role in systemic racial and gender discrimination 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.