3Organizational Analysis
The 2016 musical La La Land, which tells the story of a struggling jazz pianist (played by Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (played by Emma Stone) who meet following a road rage incident and ultimately fall in love, was by nearly any standard a huge success. Not only was La La Land a box office hit, earning more than $151 million in the United States and Canada and another $295 million worldwide, but it also garnered 14 Academy Award nominations, winning top honors in the categories of Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Production Design. One way to understand the film’s commercial and critical success is, as we saw in the previous chapter, through the lens of Marxism. As a big‐budget motion picture released by Summit Entertainment (a subsidiary of Lionsgate Entertainment, the largest and most successful US film studio outside of the majors), the film followed a clear logic of safety. The basic story was, after all, typical of classic musical romantic comedies: boy meets girls, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl confront obstacle to their love, boy and girl overcome obstacle and find happiness. Indeed, as director and screenwriter Damien ...
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