Contemporary Hollywood And The Attention Economy

This thesis had two goals: to explore the transformation of Hollywood from the 1930s to present, and to investigate how Contemporary Hollywood functions in a growing attention economy. Evident in the types of films that it produces as well as its evolving industrial structure, Contemporary Hollywood significantly differs from the Classical Hollywood of the 1930s. New digital technologies like surround sound and computer-generated imagery (CGI) have allowed studios to create a different type of film like the blockbuster and to have more extensive control over their films. Additionally, growing exhibition and distribution platforms have also fundamentally altered the industrial landscape of Hollywood. In order to combat this more egalitarian distribution system, Contemporary Hollywood has turned to conglomeratization. But, what has caused such a radical shift in the form and function of Contemporary Hollywood and its films? This thesis argues that Hollywood is failing to thrive in this new media landscape¿not because of changing technologies¿but because of a changing consumer. Richard Lanham theorizes that we are living in a growing attention economy, where human attention is the most valuable commodity in such an information-saturated society. For the current consumer, there is near-constant media over-stimulation: he or she is exposed to any number of screens (mobile phones, laptops, tablets, televisions, etc.) at any given time. Because we can access anything from anywhere at anytime, we¿ve become somewhat schizophrenic and impatient in terms of the media that we consume in our lives.

Detrital Zircon Evidence for Mixing of Mazatzal Province Age Detritus With Yavapai Age (ca. 1700-1740 Ma) and Older Detritus in the ca. 1650 Ma Mazatzal Province of Central New Mexico, USA

Preliminary detrital zircon age distributions from Mazatzal crustal province quartzite and schist exposed in the Manzano Mountains and Pedernal Hills of central New Mexico are consistent with a mixture of detritus from Mazatzal age (ca. 1650 Ma), Yavapai age (ca. 1720 Ma.), and older sources. A quartzite sample from the Blue Springs Formation in the Manzano Mountains yielding 67 concordant grain analyses shows two dominant age peaks of 1737 Ma and 1791 Ma with a minimum peak age of 1652 Ma. Quartzite and micaceous quartzite samples from near Pedernal Peak give unimodal peak ages of ca. 1695 Ma and 1738 Ma with minimum detrital zircon ages of ca. 1625 Ma and 1680 Ma, respectively. A schist sample from the southern exposures of the Pedernal Hills area gives a unimodal peak age of 1680 Ma with a minimum age of ca. 1635 Ma. Minor amounts of older detritus (>1800 Ma) possibly reflect Trans-Hudson, Wyoming, Mojave Province, and older Archean sources and aid in locating potential source terrains for these detrital zircon. The Blue Springs Formation metarhyolite from near the top of the Proterozoic section in the Manzano Mountains yields 71 concordant grains that show a preliminary U-Pb zircon crystallization age of 1621 ¿ 5 Ma, which provides a minimum age constraint for deposition in the Manzano Mountains. Normalized probability plots from this study are similar to previously reported age distributions in the Burro and San Andres Mountains in southern New Mexico and suggest that Yavapai Province age detritus was deposited and intermingled with Mazatzal Province age detritus across much of the Mazatzal crustal province in New Mexico. This data shows that the tectonic evolution of southwestern Laurentia is associated with multiple orogenic events. Regional metamorphism and deformation in the area must postdate the Mazatzal Orogeny and ca. 1610 Ma ¿ 1620 Ma rhyolite crystallization and is attributed to the Mesoproterozoic ca. 1400 ¿ 1480 Ma Picuris Orogeny.