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Dissertation
Cinephiles, inc.: branding, performance, and the commodification of contemporary American film culture
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2026
DOI: 10.25820/etd.008395
Abstract
This dissertation considers how cinephilia, the love of film as a cultural practice, has evolved alongside American media industries’ attempts to commodify it. Recent theories and scholarship surrounding cinephiles have tended to highlight how products, brands, and platforms simply reflect cinephilia’s established conventions and values (highbrow taste, media collection, a discursive emphasis on canons and gatekeeping, nostalgia) or make them more progressive. Taken at face value, this “new cinephilia” has been positively impacted by advancements in technology and broader access to film culture.
However, my research challenges these readings and proposes a framework that better accounts for how commodification has warped cinephilia’s conventions, rendering it more ahistorical, self-conscious, and commercially legible. Combining methodologies from film studies, cultural studies, fan studies, and platform studies, I argue that active cinephilia has become so thoroughly commodified that its apparent performance of individual taste conceals a deeper passivity. The burden of meaning-making has been quietly redistributed from the cinephile to the platforms, studios, and products that define the terms of participation.
Over four chapters, I perform analyses of paratexts (physical merchandise, promotional material, and social media platforms) aimed at cinephiles and conduct interviews with individual cinephiles to uncover their evolving relationship with these media industries. Chapter One investigates how boutique labels such as the Criterion Collection, Arrow Video, and Vinegar Syndrome construct elaborate physical media commodities that transform cinephilic discourses of taste, authenticity, and canon into purchasable objects. Chapter Two analyzes A24’s corporate authorship, arguing that its brand ideation strategies have supplanted the independent film sector’s capacity to promote genuinely distinct voices. As a result, the company renders “indie” aesthetics into a replicable lifestyle brand. Chapter Three turns to Letterboxd, contending that the platform blends established cinephile traditions with social media’s economic incentives, transforming users’ public selves into commodities and their participatory behavior into digital labor. Chapter Four centers the voices of cinephiles themselves, whose interviews reveal a pervasive ambivalence: an awareness that their tastes feel anticipated and their identities pre-structured, alongside continued investment in the pleasures of watching and sharing film.
Taken together, these case studies reveal that commodification has allowed the cinephile to persist as a recognizable figure, but one whose habits of taste, collection, and discourse are industrially anticipated. The change makes the distinction between passion and consumption more difficult to locate and signals a broader erosion of cultural practices through which viewers no longer make meaning (or find enjoyment) on their own.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Cinephiles, inc.: branding, performance, and the commodification of contemporary American film culture
- Creators
- Dana Alston
- Contributors
- Corey Creekmur (Advisor)Loren Glass (Committee Member)Christopher Goetz (Committee Member)Tim Havens (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Film Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2026
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.008395
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xi, 225 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2026 Dana Alston
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/22/2026
- Description illustrations
- illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 218-236).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Hobbies are rarely just hobbies. For many, a passion for music, sports, or film also means purchasing merchandise, subscribing to services, and participating in online communities. This dissertation asks what happens when the companies behind those experiences are not merely profiting from that passion but actively defining it.
This project examines cinephilia — a deep, devoted love of movies — and how it operates in the United States today. Being a cinephile used to mean something personal: watching widely, forming your own opinions, arguing about films with friends. Today, it increasingly means purchasing elaborately packaged Blu-rays, buying merchandise from a prestige film studio, or logging every movie you watch on a social media platform. I argue that the companies behind those experiences have carefully designed them to turn cinephiles’ passion into profit and, in doing so, quietly redefined what it means to love film.
Through close analysis of boutique home video labels, the independent studio A24, and the film-tracking app Letterboxd — and through interviews with 23 cinephiles — this project shows how each institution commodifies cinephilic identity in distinct ways. Together, they reveal a broader pattern: the more actively someone performs their love of film today, the more their taste, behavior, and self-expression are shaped by commercial interests rather than their own. The stakes extend beyond film. As passions and their subcultures get broadly absorbed into brand ecosystems and digital platforms, the question of who gets to define our cultural passions (and who profits from them) becomes increasingly urgent.
- Academic Unit
- Cinematic Arts
- Record Identifier
- 9985176975102771
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