LEGITIMIZING ILLEGITIMACY - The University of Chicago Booth

LEGITIMIZING ILLEGITIMACY:
IDENTITY SPACES AND
MARKETS FOR ILLEGITIMATE PRODUCTS
Michael Jensen
University of Michigan
701 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234
Phone: (734) 764 2313
Fax: (734) 764 2555
E-mail: michjen@umich.edu
Word Count: 16,977 (Including references)
November 2006
I thank seminar participants at Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Chicago,
University of Michigan, and the American Sociological Association’s annual conference in
Montreal for useful comments and suggestions. I particularly thank Ezra Zuckerman for his
extensive and very constructive comments on two earlier versions of the paper.
LEGITIMIZING ILLEGITIMACY:
IDENTITY SPACES AND
MARKETS FOR ILLEGITIMATE PRODUCTS
ABSTRACT
This study focuses on the creation of markets for legal but normatively illegitimate
products. I argue that markets are identity spaces dimensioned by product and status categories
and examine how the use of identity makes it possible for institutional entrepreneurs to
legitimize illegitimate products. Products are assigned particular horizontal positions within the
market space based on the identity created by producers to categorize the product and a vertical
position within their product category based on their social status. I use the market-as-identityspaces framework to analyze the creation of a market for a new type of feature films combining
comedy and pornography following the legalization of pornography in Denmark in 1969.
Network analyses of the cultural content of film posters documents the use of genre elements to
create a new identity for these films, and regression analyses test the use of actors and actresses
to legitimize the new identity.
Keywords: identity, status, legitimacy, markets, movie pictures
1
“When a film achieves a certain success, it becomes a sociological event,
and the question of its quality becomes secondary”
François Truffaut (1977: 100)
Following the legalization of picture pornography in 1969, the Danish film industry
witnessed the emergence and collapse of a new genre of feature films combining comedy and
pornography. The new film genre was reviled by film critics but it was nevertheless immensely
popular among regular audiences, on average drawing more people to movie theaters than either
comedy or pornography (or any other genre). The immense popularity is surprising because
consumption of pornography in public was still viewed as an illegitimate activity even though it
was not illegal. Perhaps equally surprising, the initial popularity of the new film genre did not
prevent it from collapsing in 1978, after which it has never been revived. What accounted for the
initial popularity of this new genre of films and its subsequent irreversible collapse? How was
illegitimate pornography turned into acceptable entertainment that appealed to wide audiences
and why was it impossible to sustain its popularity over time? Answering these questions not
only provides insights into specific aspects of Danish film history, it more importantly provides
insights into core sociological questions about the role of identity in the formation of markets.
The emergence and collapse of the Danish market for films combining comedy and pornography
provide the specific empirical context in which to develop and test general theoretical arguments
about identity entrepreneurship and how it ensures the legitimacy of new markets, thereby
facilitating initial market formation but also constraining later market development.
For the purpose of this article, identity refers to the social codes that specify the features
and characteristics that a given entity can legitimately possess (Pòlos, Hannan, and Carroll,
2
2002). The identity of a product both constrains what features and characteristics are acceptable
and facilitates the creation of markets by allowing market participants to categorize, evaluate,
and compare products. For example, the identity of microbreweries constrains microbreweries to
small-scale, hand-crafted beer production but also shields them from direct competition with
major breweries by establishing a unique product category for microbreweries (Carroll and
Swaminathan, 2000). The social codes that define an identity are enforced by external market
participants and the consequences of violating individual social codes or the composition of
social codes can be severe (Pòlos et al., 2002). For example, capital markets devalue diversified
firms because their complex industry identities do not match with the monolithic industry
categories security analysts use when they decide on what firms to focus their attention
(Zuckerman, 1999). Despite the importance of identity, little research examines how market
identities are created. Most research focuses instead on how the founding rates of organizations
with particular identities are affected by the density of organizations with identical or related
identities (Ruef, 2000; Carroll and Swaminathan, 2000). I define identity entrepreneurship as the
process through which identities themselves are created, examining specifically how social codes
are combined to create new market identities.
The social codes that define the identities of individual economic entities are more
closely related to the positions they occupy along two key dimensions in market space than to the
individual entities themselves. The first dimension divides markets horizontally into different
product categories that each entails a set of social codes that circumscribe product characteristics
and producer behavior. Product categories encompass abstract compositions of particular sets of
product features and institutional logics or practical guidelines that govern the actual production
process behind the physical products themselves. For example, Rao, Monin, and Durand (2003)
3
analyze the detailed social codes, such as the archetypical ingredients and the role of the chef,
that define and distinguish two different product categories in French gastronomy, classical and
nouvelle cuisine. The second dimension divides markets vertically or hierarchically into different
status categories that each entails a different set of social codes that also circumscribe product
characteristics and producers behavior.1 Because observable status differences function as
signals of unobservable quality differences, status categories allow audiences to make quality
distinctions within a particular product category but they also circumscribe producer behavior.
For example, Podolny (1994) reports that investment banks are prevented from underwriting
securities below a certain quality threshold dictated by their status category and forming
affiliations with other banks outside their status category because it could threaten their own
category membership. As noted by Rao, Monin, and Burand (2005: 970): “[c]ategories establish
social and symbolic boundaries, and thereby constitute the identity of actors.”
Product and status categories constitute an important interface or shared interpretive
framework between economic entities, exposing unclassifiable entities or entities that fail to
meet categorical imperatives to sanctions (Zuckerman, 1999). By viewing markets as identity
spaces dimensioned by product and status categories, identity entrepreneurship can be
decomposed into the two distinct processes of horizontal and vertical product positioning by
drawing selectively on existing product and status categories. The market-as-identity-spaces
framework helps to understand how film producers constructed a new legitimate identity for
1
Although both product and status categories contribute to market identity, they are different
from each other. For example, an academic labor-market identity positions a person horizontally
in a particular academic discipline (economics versus sociology) and vertically in a particular
status position within the academic discipline (high-status versus low-status sociologist). In other
words, my use of product and status categories to define identity is similar to Abbott’s (1981)
use of profession and status to describe professional labor-market identity.
4
films that combine comedy and pornography, thereby ensuring the mass appeal of these films. I
use two different approaches to analyze horizontal and vertical positioning. Because horizontal
positioning focuses on the creation of a new identity, it is not suitable for statistical analysis. I
therefore present an analytical description of how film producers recombined genre elements
from comedy and pornography to create a new identity for their films and use identity topologies
to illustrate empirically the emergence of the new horizontal identity within the market space.
The analysis of vertical positioning follows a more traditional approach relying on statistical
analysis to test the argument that actors and actresses (henceforth actors) belonging to middlestatus categories were most likely to participate in these new films and therefore played a
particularly important role in legitimizing the new identity.
I develop the market-as-identity-spaces framework in the context of the emergence and
collapse of a normatively illegitimate product market. A product is normatively illegitimate if
broad groups of people believe that it violates important social norms and values and therefore
view the product as socially inappropriate (Scott, 1995). Many products associated with vice,
such as abortion, alcohol, birth control, gambling, guns, and pornography, are considered
normatively illegitimate regardless of their legal status. Identity entrepreneurship is particularly
important when new products risk being considered normatively illegitimate because most
people avoid these products to avoid negative judgments and stigmatization. The argument that
normative illegitimacy prevents market growth is not new. Zelizer (1978) notes that the growth
of the market for life insurance, a normatively illegitimate market in nineteenth-century America,
was stymied by widespread cultural resistance to view sacred death as a business opportunity.
She argues that religious resistance to life insurance introduced “structural sources of strain and
ambivalence” into marketing life insurance because core business concerns such as profit failed
5
to provide sufficient justification for life insurance (1978: 593). Whereas Zelizer (1978) reports
that sacralization provided an important mechanism to legitimize life insurance, this study shows
that identity entrepreneurship represents another powerful legitimating mechanism, shifting
focus from reinterpreting existing categories to creating new categories.
By emphasizing the creation of new categories, this study is also different from recent
research on the deinstitutionalization of existing categories. Rao et al. (2005) in a similar study
of categorical boundaries in French gastronomy argue that mutual borrowing weakens the
sharpness and resonance of opposed category pairs such as classical and nouvelle cuisine.
Whereas Rao et al. (2005) focus on the blending processes that led to the existing boundaries of
culinary categories being deinstitutionalized and eventually redrawn, this study focuses instead
on the creation of a new identity that is perceived as qualitatively different from either of the
identities on which it is built. Specifically, borrowing social codes is not only an important
blending mechanism that erodes categorical boundaries when borrowed social codes are used
within the initial categories, it is also an important segregating mechanism that makes the initial
categories more distinct when borrowed social codes are used outside the initial categories (see
Hannan and Freeman, 1986, on blending and segregating processes). For example, the
emergence of a new film identity between comedy and pornography did not make comedy more
like pornography or pornography more like comedy but actually made them more different by
providing a new classification for films that would have been difficult to classify without the
new identity.
This article develops a theoretical framework for studying markets as identity spaces and
uses it to understand how markets for illegitimate products are created. I first discuss the
theoretical background for viewing markets as identity spaces and apply the theoretical
6
framework for film markets by developing a simplified model of film production to illustrate the
framework. The Danish film industry 1960-1978 is described next to provide the empirical
background for studying illegitimate film markets. Based on the description of the empirical
context and theories from sociology, economics, and film studies, I develop specific arguments
and present empirical evidence documenting the role of identity in creating markets for
illegitimate films. Like McKendrick and Carroll (2001), my emphasis is on tracing the
emergence of a new identity by rationally reconstructing identity creation within the markets-asidentity-spaces framework and to provide empirical evidence to support key aspects of the
theoretical framework rather than explicitly testing the theoretical framework itself. Having
documented the creation and legitimization of a new shared and different film identity or genre, I
provide evidence of its collapse and the reasons it collapsed. Finally, I discuss the contributions
this article makes to research on markets, identity, and status, and conclude by outlining how it
can inform future research.
MARKETS AS IDENTITY SPACES
Identity and Markets
Research on identity has been reinvigorated by renewed efforts to develop a theoretical
definition of organizational forms (Carroll and Hannan, 2000; Pòlos et al., 2002; Hsu and
Hannan, 2005). Organizational identity is, according to this stream of research, defined by the
externally enforced social codes that specify the features an entity can possess rather than by the
organizational features its internal members believe are central, distinctive, and enduring (Albert
and Whetten, 1985). Social codes are cultural objects that imply both cognitive recognition and
imperative standing, thus functioning as descriptive signals that allow categorization and
7
prescriptive rules that constrain conduct (Pòlos et al., 2002). It is the composition of social codes
rather than the individual codes themselves that defines an identity, and it is typically the
composition that is enforced by external audiences. An identity also is a form or category if it
applies to multiple entities and if violating its social codes causes audiences to devalue the
carrier of the identity. An organizational form is a collective identity that abstracts from the
uniqueness of individual organizations to typify their commonality and provide a common label
for individual organizations (Hsu and Hannan, 2005). For example, a ‘brewpub’ is a form
identity defined by a specific combination of social codes, including small-scale production of
ale and beer, the use of hand-crafted methods, and the sale for consumption at the production site
(Carroll and Swaminathan, 2000).
The importance of identity extends beyond organizations to markets (White, 1992). Most
economic sociologists agree that markets are social structures, equating social structure with
either social relations (Burt, 1992; Granovetter, 1985) or cultural systems (Emirbayer and
Goodwin, 1994; Abolafia, 1998). Viewing social relations as resource distributions and cultural
systems as cultural schemas, Sewell (1992) argues that social structures are intersections of both.
A resource is a source of power that can be drawn upon when needed, and resources are typically
unevenly distributed within social systems. Status, defined as “the prestige accorded individuals
because of the abstract positions they occupy rather than because of immediately observable
behavior” (Gould, 2002: 1147), is an unevenly distributed social resource. Status is important in
markets because it functions as a signal of quality that affects both how firms occupying a
particular status position are perceived by external audiences and how the firms with whom they
are affiliated are perceived (Podolny, 1993, 2001). A cultural schema is a generalizable
procedure applied in the enactment or reproduction of social life, including recipes for action,
8
social norms, and cognitive categories. Cultural schemas constrain market participants by
preventing types of action that violate core norms and expectations and enable them by shaping
their understanding of markets and by constructing their identities, goals, and aspirations
(Emirbayer and Goodwin, 1994; Zuckerman, 1999). By emphasizing that resource distributions
and cultural schemas intersect in markets, it becomes clear that identity is important in markets.
Product categories are important types of cultural schemas that are “neither imposed nor
orchestrated by producers or consumers but evolve from producer-consumer interaction feedback
effects” (Rosa, Porac, Runser-Spanjol, and Saxon, 1999: 64). Because product categories emerge
in interactions between producers and their various audiences, they provide a shared interface
that organizes interactions within the market. The minivan category in the automobile market
allows manufacturers, journalists, and consumers to interact by providing a shared frame of
reference for producing, evaluating, and purchasing a particular type of automobile (Rosa et al.,
1999). Whereas product categories allow market participants to interact about expected product
attributes, status categories allow interactions about expected product quality. For example,
knowing that an automobile belongs to the minivan product category raises expectations about
specific product features; knowing that an automobile manufacturer belongs to a particular status
category raises expectations about a corresponding level of product quality. Status categories not
only allow market participants to make quality distinctions, membership in high-status categories
is typically equated with legitimacy and vice versa (Phillips and Owens, 2004). For example, it
required the active participation of members of the business elite to change the public perception
of hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts from normatively illegitimate financial innovations to
normatively legitimate governance mechanisms (Hirsch, 1986; Stearns and Allen, 1996).
9
Identity and Film Markets
Viewing markets as identity spaces provides a general framework to study the formation
of markets. To guide specific analyses of how identity helped legitimize illegitimate films, it is
useful to develop a simplified model of film production.2 A film is the product of collaborations
between different groups of professionals including screenwriters, directors, actors, and
cinematographers brought together and managed by a film producer. Although all these groups
contribute to making a film, I emphasize the two most important choices film producers make to
position films within the identity space: what genre of film to produce and what actors to use in
the film. The genre decision and the actor decision shape identity by positioning films
horizontally (product category) and vertically (status category) within the market space.
The choice of genre affects the identity of a film by positioning the film horizontally
within the film market in a particular film niche. The horizontal position of a film also may be
based on where it was produced (domestic versus foreign), when it was produced (studio versus
post-studio period), and who produced it (major studio versus independent studio). However, the
most salient aspect of film identity for film producers and regular audiences is arguably genre
(Altman, 1999; De Silva, 1998). Genres are not only socially constructed organizing mechanisms
used to categorize similar artistic products (DiMaggio, 1987), but also cultural toolkits that allow
artists to build upon already established and validated narrative frameworks and artistic
conventions (Swidler, 1986). A film genre is composed of different genre elements that represent
a range of expressions for film producers and a range of expectations for audiences that reflect
2
I deliberately ignore the complexity of film production and the many different organizations
involved in film production to focus on identity. Faulkner (1983), Eliashberg, Elberse, and
Leenders (forthcoming), and Austin (1986) provide detailed descriptions of the different stages
of film production and organizations involved in film production, distribution, and exhibition.
10
the social and aesthetic sensibilities of producers and audiences (Schatz, 1981). Film producers
therefore can use genres to envision and frame new products and to shape the expectations of
audiences by communicating the content of their films through a shared frame of reference
(Bielby and Bielby, 1994). Genres also constrain film production by limiting creativity and
variation, forcing producers to stay within familiar narratives and cinematic experiences to avoid
alienating audiences (Schatz, 1981). A film genre is, in other words, composed of genre elements
or social codes that enable and constrain the construction of individual film identities, whereas a
film market is composed of different genres that collectively shape the market space by
providing mechanisms to differentiate and categorize films horizontally.
The choice of actors affects the status of a film, thereby positioning the film vertically
among other films within its niche. By signaling quality, status differentiates film with similar
horizontal identities. The most important aspect of quality for film producers is the popularity of
the film among regular audiences: Critical acclaim alone cannot keep film producers in business
if they consistently fail to draw audiences. That high-status actors (film stars) represent more
valuable resources than other actors because of their perceived abilities to draw large audiences
is widely accepted in the film industry.3 The empirical evidence is nevertheless surprisingly
mixed: Some research supports the ability of film stars to draw large audiences (Litman and
Kohl, 1989), other research does not (Ravid, 1999) (see Elberse and Eliashberg, 2003, for a
review). Film attendance is difficult to predict because people lack stable film preferences,
repeatedly discovering what they like by watching films (De Vany and Walls, 1996). These
discoveries are subsequently communicated to other people, creating unpredictable information
3
John Landis, director of Animal House (1978) and The Blues Brothers (1980), quips: “You ask
them, ‘What do you think of the script?’ And they answer, ‘If you can get Harrison Ford then it’s
a good script. If you can’t then it’s a bad one’” (Albert, 1998: 249).
11
cascades in the process. Even if the relationship between film stars and film attendance in
general is illusive, film stars increase the likelihood of a blockbuster (De Vany and Walls, 1999),
reduce the damage from negative reviews (Basuroy, Chatterjee, and Ravid, 2003), and are after
genre and word of mouth the most important self-reported reason audiences watch a film (De
Silva, 1998). By using actors to position films vertically within a niche, film producers increase
the (unlikely) chances of success: “Film makers can position a movie to improve its chances of
success, but after a movie opens the audience decides its fate” (De Vany and Walls, 1999: 315).4
Whereas I distinguish analytically between product categories or genres and status
categories or actors, these categories are commonly confounded in individual film markets at
specific points in time. For example, some genres, such as drama, are commonly viewed as
higher status than other genres, such as martial arts, winning more Academy Awards and getting
more attention from film critics (Zuckerman and Kim, 2003; Hsu, 2006). However, the
confounding of genre and status is an outcome of the average amount and quality of the
resources used on films within each genre rather than inherent cinematic differences between
each genre. The prominence of chambara films in Japan, which is a particular type of jidai-geki
or historical films that feature sword-fighting samurais, illustrates that the status of a genre, even
martial arts, is not inherent to the genre itself (Thompson and Bordwell, 2003). The status of a
genre depends instead on the quality of the resources used in genre films, such as renowned
director Akira Kurasawa’s and actor Toshiro Mifune’s continued participation in chambara
4
Two examples illustrate these dynamics: An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) with relatively
unknown Richard Gere had a predictably modest opening on 346 screens bringing in about $3M
but played ultimately on 1,050 screens resulting in lifetime revenues of almost $130M.
Waterworld (1995), on the other hand, with superstar Kevin Costner had a predictably strong
opening on 2,268 screens bringing in more than $21M but collapsed resulting in lifetime
revenues of less than $89M (far below its budget).
12
films, even after they had achieved high status.5 Similar processes have been witnessed in other
cultural industries. For example, Phillips and Owens (2004) note that early jazz was deemed
illegitimate largely because of its association with African Americans and only began gaining
legitimacy after higher-status white classical-trained musicians formed jazz ‘orchestras.’
A film market now can be abstractly described as a social system in which film producers
make films by combining abstract genres and concrete actors and in this process give each film a
particular identity in the market space. The horizontal and vertical positioning of a film is
particularly important when the film contains new combinations of genre elements for which no
established niche exists to provide a supporting social identity. New combinations of genre
elements increase the already high economic uncertainty surrounding film projects but also can
add social uncertainty to the project if the new combinations include normatively illegitimate
genre elements. The legalization of picture pornography gave film producers the legal
opportunity to use normatively illegitimate pornographic genre elements in their films, most
notably full frontal nudity and explicit sex acts. Before theorizing the use of genres and actors to
create a legitimate identity for films containing pornographic genre elements, I first describe the
empirical context in which I examine the use of identity to legitimize illegitimacy.
THE DANISH FILM INDUSTRY 1960-19786
The Danish film industry recently has gained international recognition by winning
5
The popular and artistic success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) starring
Yun-Fat Chow may even have increased the status of the martial arts genre in areas of the world
that have traditionally viewed martial arts films as low-status films.
6
The description of the Danish film industry is based on Nissen (2001a, 2001b), Piil (2000,
2003), and the Danish Film Institute’s film databases (www.dfi.dk).
13
Academy Awards and Palme D’Ors for Babettes Gæstebud [Babette’s Feast] (1988) by Gabriel
Axel, Pelle Eroberen [Pelle the Conqueror] (1989) by Bille August, and Dancer in the Dark
(2000) by Lars von Trier but is actually among the oldest film industries in the world. The first
studio, Nordisk Film, was founded in 1905. In 1911, it became the first studio to produce feature
films, years ahead of the major Hollywood studios. The industry traditionally has been
dominated by four studios (Nordisk Film, Saga, ASA, and Palladium), which accounted for 81
percent of the 138 Danish films produced in the 1950s. The most popular genre in the 1950s was
folk comedy, often based on pastoral novels by Danish writer Morten Korch, which evoked rural
life in an idealized way. In the 1960s, the market share of these studios dropped to 54 percent of
194 Danish films. Two new studios, Merry and Novaris, were formed in 1958 and 1960,
capturing 16 percent of the market, and more independent producers started film production. The
traditional studio structure finally collapsed in the 1970s. The market share of the four old
studios and two new studios dropped to 31 percent of the 191 Danish films produced in this
decade, and only Nordisk Film survived.
The demise of the established studios can be attributed to several factors: the shrinking
popularity of folk comedy in the 1960s, increased competition from television, and a subsequent
dramatic decline in average yearly ticket sales from 9.6 tickets per person in 1960 to 4.8 in 1970
(Dinnesen and Kau, 1983: 417). The enormous drop in ticket sales forced the studios to
experiment with other genres in an effort to bring audiences back to the theaters. Each studio
responded differently to this challenge. Saga and ASA continued to make comedy films as they
did in the 1950s, either relying on novels by Morten Korch (ASA), or merely updating the rural
context to an urban or suburban context (Saga). Neither strategy was successful. Saga closed its
studio in 1965 and moved production to Palladium before finally closing in 1976. ASA was sold
14
in 1964 and its new owners produced more artistic films that typically failed to attract large
audiences. Merry produced comedies set in the Danish Army, varying only the feature characters
by shifting from male soldiers to female soldiers following the admission of women to the
Danish military in the early 1970s. Merry stopped production in 1979. Only Nordisk Film
successfully transformed the comedy genre. The success was driven by the development of a
new comedy genre – the crime comedy. Fourteen ‘Olsen-Banden’ crime comedies were
produced between 1968 and 1981 (and one in 1998). These films about the (mis)adventures of
Egon Olsen and his two partners in crime continue to be the most popular films ever made in
Denmark, with three selling more than one million tickets (in a country with a total population of
a little more than five million people).
Palladium, in contrast, began using erotic novels exploring the sexual awakening of
young men and women as manuscripts for films. Annelise Meineche directed four films between
1965 and 1970 based on erotic novels by Danish writer Carl Soya and Norwegian writers Jens
Bjørnboe and Agnar Mykles. All four received negative reviews from critics but were immensely
popular with audiences. The most controversial was Uden en Trævl [Without a Stitch] (1968),
which was initially completely banned by official censors but later released when four erotic
scenes were removed. The U.S. Customs services tried to prevent it from entering the U.S. but
eventually acquiesced after a court declared the film socially and artistically significant. Novaris
also began using erotic novels as manuscripts. Mac Ahlberg directed three films from 1965 to
1970 based on novels by Swedish writer Siv Holm. Like the Palladium films, these films
achieved national and international commercial success despite disparaging reviews from critics.
All were exported to the U.S., where one, Jeg – En Kvinde [I – A Woman] (1965), inspired Andy
Warhol to make I – A Man (1967). Despite these successes, Novaris was forced to stop
15
production in 1970 because of financial mismanagement. Independent directors also began
exploring films with erotic themes. For example, Gabriel Axel, winner of the first Danish
Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1988, made a docudrama, Det Kære Legetøj [Danish
Blue] (1968), about erotic magazines and films, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival
and widely exported.
Although these films were markedly different from the pastoral comedies of the 1950s,
they never crossed the boundary to pornography. Yet to increase public interest, studios often
exaggerated the amount of nudity and the explicitness of the erotic scenes on film posters and
other advertising material. This changed, however, when the Danish government pioneered
legalizing picture pornography in June 1969. The film industry now could produce, distribute,
and exhibit any film genre for which they could identify a market. Two things happened in
response to the legal changes. First, small previously illicit producers of pornography moved
production and distribution aboveground and were able to secure mainstream theatrical releases
for films such as Sex i København [Sex in Copenhagen] (1971) by Erling Wolter and Sådan er
Porno [This is Porn] (1971) by Werner Lenz. These pornographic films certainly reached larger
audiences than before, but many exhibitors (movie theaters) refused to screen them, and most
people still considered it normatively illegitimate to watch pornographic films in public. The
push for legalization of pornography had primarily come from the cultural elite, who viewed
legalization as an issue of freedom of (artistic) expression (Thing, 1999). So while most Danes
opposed censorship of pornography in 1968 (Christensen and Gregg, 1970), participating in or
openly consuming pornography was still considered immoral and condemnable.
The second response came from traditional film producers who had to decide if and how
to take advantage of the legalization of pornography. The decision was not whether to begin
16
making pornographic films, but whether they could use individual pornographic genre elements
in mainstream films. Building on its success with films exploring erotic themes, Palladium
combined elements from comedy and pornography to create a new type of film. Palladium
collaborated with director John Hilbard to produce Mazurka på Sengekanten [Bedside Mazurka]
(1970), the first of eight Bedside films produced by Palladium between 1970 and 1976.7 Inspired
by the success of the first Bedside films, Anders Sandberg, the son of the owner of Merry Film,
formed the companies Happy Film and Con Amore to produce I Jomfruens Tegn [In the Sign of
Virgo] (1973) directed by Finn Karlsson and five other Zodiac films, directed by Werner
Hedmann, from 1974 to 1978.8 The Bedside and Zodiac films differed from the erotic films of
the 1960s in two important ways. First, they were not based on erotic novels (Bedside Mazurka
was an exception). Second, they introduced pornographic genre elements including full frontal
nudity (male and female) and graphically explicit sex acts. While there were minor differences
between the Bedside and the Zodiac films (the Zodiac films were on average more pornographic
than the Bedside films), the similarities dominated.9 The processes through which the use of
7
The seven other Bedside films are: Tandlæge på Sengekanten [Bedside Dentist] (1971);
Motorvej på Sengekanten [Bedside Highway] (1972); Rektor på Sengekanten [Bedside Dean]
(1972); Romantik på Sengekanten [Bedside Romance] (1973); Der Må Være en Sengekant
[Come to My Bedside] (1975); Hopla på Sengekanten [Jumping at the Bedside] (1976); Sømænd
på Sengekanten [Bedside Sailors] (1976).
8
The five other Zodiac films are: I Tyrens Tegn [In the Sign of Taurus] (1974); I Tvillingernes
Tegn [In the Sign of Gemini] (1975); I Løvens Tegn [In the Sign of Lion] (1976); Agent 69
Jensen i Skorpionens Tegn [In the Sign of Scorpio] (1977); Agent 69 Jensen i Skyttens Tegn [In
the Sign of Sagittarius] (1978).
9
With the exception of the last Zodiac film, which was a sequel to the second last Zodiac film,
all the Bedside/Zodiac films were indpendent from each other, having different characters, story
lines, and scenography.
17
genre elements and actors in the Bedside/Zodiac films created a new film identity and ensured its
legitimacy are the empirical focus of this study.
But why use pornographic genre elements in the first place? The success of films based
on erotic novels, such as Palladium’s Sytten [Seventeen] (1965), which cost $143K to produce
but earned revenues above $570K (Dinnesen and Kau, 1983: 478), gave film producers a strong
economic incentive to explore the use of pornographic genre elements. Using pornographic
genre elements also presented a possible competitive advantage over television programming.
The only television station in Denmark, Danmarks Radio [Danish Broadcast Corporation], was
controlled by the state and operated like the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) as a public
service station, which prevented it from broadcasting graphic films. Indeed, Biograf-Bladet (a
monthly magazine distributed to theater owners) introduced Palladium’s Uden en Trævl
[Without a Stitch] (1968) by explicitly stating that it would probably draw a large audience
because television was unlikely to show erotic films (1968: 8). Finally, unlike most other Danish
films, erotic films were very successful abroad. Before the opening of Tre Slags Kærlighed [I –
A Woman 3] (1970), producer Peer Guldbransen said that he expected critics to dislike the film
but that the criticism had little importance because the film had already been exported to several
countries including the U.S., Germany, and Japan (Dinnesen and Kau, 1983: 460). The perceived
revenue potential presumed, however, that audiences would consider films using pornographic
genre elements normatively legitimate rather than categorizing them as illegitimate pornography.
LEGITIMIZING ILLEGITIMACY
The identity of a film is partly determined by the combination of different genre elements
and actors in the early stages of film production and communicated to audiences through a
18
number of different marketing efforts when the film is ready to be exhibited. Film producers use
genre labels to communicate the identity of a film (Bielby and Bielby, 1994), and audiences use
these genre labels to decide which films to watch (Austin, 1989: 74; De Silva, 1998). Genre
labels are important interfaces for two different reasons. First, genre labels shape the
expectations of audiences. By invoking some genres and not other genres in their communication
with audiences, film producers create an implicit contract with potential audiences about the
types of experiences they will have watching the film. If there is a mismatch between the
communicated identity of a film and the experienced identity, audiences are more likely to apply
inappropriate frameworks to evaluate the film, which increases the likelihood they will dislike
the film and therefore initiate negative information cascades (Austin, 1989: 16). Second, genre
labels determine the potential size of an audience. Just as fine arts appeal to narrower audiences
than popular arts (DiMaggio and Useem, 1978), some film genres appeal to broader audiences
than other genres. Different genres, holding quality constant, simply have different market
potential. The carrying capacity of the niche for horror films, for example, is significantly
smaller than the carrying capacity of the niche for comedy films because of institutionally
mandated age requirements for horror films and because horror films have traditionally been
considered poor taste among many audiences.
Genres are not only important to categorize films, but also are an important mechanism to
categorize audiences on their tastes (DiMaggio, 1987; Peterson and Kern, 1996). Individual
tastes are part of a larger hierarchical structure of tastes that overlaps with the social status
hierarchy, in which fine arts (highbrow) occupy the top tier, granted prestige through its
historical alignment with the social elite, and popular culture (lowbrow) occupies the bottom of
the hierarchy (Gans, 1974). The alignment of the two hierarchies encourages obeisance to the
19
aesthetic standards of the fine arts, especially among the upwardly mobile. For the same reason,
people may deny liking artistic genres popular among groups with lower status than their own
(Gans, 1974; Bryson, 1996), even if public statements about genre preferences are different from
genre choices made in private. The importance of publicly distancing oneself from cultural
products that are normatively illegitimate is particularly strong because these products suggest
not only that the user has poor tastes, something associated with lower classes, but also has an
immoral character. Even if many people want to consume illegitimate products or engage in
illegitimate activities in private, most are not willing to risk scandalizing themselves by partaking
in the same behaviors in public (Adut, 2005). To capture large audiences for illegitimate
products, such as pornography, producers must provide a mechanism for audiences to categorize
the illegitimate products with legitimate products while maintaining the distinctiveness of the
normatively illegitimate product.
Pornography is a form of cultural expression (Kipnis, 1999) focused on representations of
the human body or sexual activity with the intent of sexual arousal. Sociologically, pornography
is an interesting cultural expression because it transgresses cultural norms and social taboos
“intrinsic to upholding class distinctions: good manners, privacy, the absence of vulgarity, the
suppression of bodily instincts into polite behavior” (Kipnis, 1999: 174). It also is a site of
struggles about positions in cultural hierarchies and, more fundamentally, inclusion in the
cultural hierarchy itself. When pornography is allowed a position in cultural hierarchies, it is
invariably relegated to a position at the bottom of the hierarchy, taking on “all the associations of
a low-class thing” (Kipnis, 1999: 175). When pornography is not allowed a position in cultural
hierarchies, struggles emerge about what should be classified as pornography. Beisel (1993)
describes the controversy surrounding the arrest of a prominent art dealer selling photographic
20
reproductions of nude paintings in late nineteenth century New York City. The ensuing struggle
whether to interpret nude reproductions as legitimate art or as illegitimate pornography illustrates
that it is important to construct appealing identities for proponents of a particular interpretation.
Emphasizing that “European cultural sophisticates,” not the “dirty-minded denizens of the
Bowery,” were consumers of similar reproductions, opponents of censorship mobilized elite
New Yorkers against censorship by shaping their interpretation of the photographs as art (Beisel,
1993: 159). The Bedside/Zodiac films faced a similar classification problem.
The threat of public exposure in watching pornographic films was very real in Denmark
in the early 1970s. Audiences for pornographic films risked public exposure because theaters
were located on busy main streets or in close proximity to other heavily trafficked areas. Because
theaters could show only one film at the time, there was little doubt what film people seen
entering a theater were going to watch (unlike after video domesticated pornographic films and
multiplex theaters camouflaged film choices). The threat of public exposure increases the
importance of providing a way for audiences to categorize films as legitimate and maintain a
positive perception of themselves as morally uncompromised individuals. By providing a
mechanism to categorize films as legitimate, film producers also facilitate information cascade
because audiences can now talk about the film without stigmatizing themselves. One way to
accomplish this objective is to use genre labels in a way that ensures conformity and
differentiation: “Gaining the favor of an audience requires conformity with the audience’s
minimal criteria for what offers should look like and differentiation from all other legitimate
offers” (Zuckerman, 1999: 1402). I argue that film producers can create a new identity for films
by selectively recombining genre elements from different genres and legitimizing the identity
through the selective use of actors. By combining genre elements from different genres, film
21
producers ensured differentiation; by using established actors, they ensured that the new identity
would be considered legitimate.
USING GENRE ELEMENTS TO CREATE IDENTITY
Creating Identity: Theory
Aside from the production of the film, the main challenge for film producers is to create
an audience for their film. Most producers rely on auxiliary advertisement products such as film
posters, newspaper ads, television commercials, and film trailers to convince people to watch
their films.10 Because producers have an incentive to exaggerate the quality of their products,
advertising is most credible when product quality can be verified before purchasing the product
(search products) and less credible when product quality cannot be verified before making the
purchase (experience products) (Nelson, 1974). A film is an ‘experience convenience product’
because watching a film is necessary to accurately evaluate its quality, watching is relatively
cheap, and watching usually occurs only once (Franke, Huhmann, and Mothersbaugh, 2004). It
does not follow, however, that producers should avoid advertising films. Nelson (1974: 749)
suggested that consumers will “believe an advertisement for experience qualities when it tells
about the functions of the brand; [but] not believe the advertisement when it tells how well a
brand performs that function.” A claim such as “Titanic is the most romantic film ever” allows
people to classify Titanic with other romances, but does not help to determine if it actually is the
10
I focus mainly on advertisements aimed at regular audiences. Film producers also
communicate with film critics and theater owners, providing synopsis of future films to both
groups and data on attendance to theater owners if the film performed well at the opening (most
films in the study context opened in only one or a few theaters, typically in Copenhagen, after
which the film moved to other theaters throughout Denmark).
22
most romantic film ever. By focusing on the identity of a film in advertisements, film producers
help people classify the film with other similar films, whereas advertising the comparative
quality of the film is likely to be met with skepticism.
Film producers shape the horizontal identity of a film through their combination of
different genre elements and communicate this identity to audiences by extracting core genre
elements and combining them into auxiliary advertisement products. The purpose of film posters,
for example, is “to seduce the public with the essence of the film” (Barton, 2004: 5) through an
artistic exposition of core genre elements. Unambiguous genre assignments and monolithic
identities are rare because it is difficult to precisely define the boundaries between genres
(Bordwell, 1989: 147; Stam, 2000: 128-129). Most natural categories do not have both necessary
and sufficient criteria that clearly define category membership: Natural categories are more like
fuzzy sets centered on an abstract prototype or specific exemplar (Rosch et al., 1976; Hintzman,
1986; Murphy and Medin, 1985). Category membership is often based on family resemblance to
prototypes, which represent an average across category members, or based on individual
category members that represent an ideal or extreme category member (exemplar). For example,
people may classify a film as a western because it contains typical western genre elements, such
as horses and frontier landscapes, or because it share elements with specific films, such as John
Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) or Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). A film is,
in other words, assigned identity based on the extent to which the combination of specific genre
elements makes a film more prototypical of one genre than another (Swales, 1990: 49-52).
To create a unique film identity, and ensure a legitimate classification by the audience,
film producers must carefully balance how they use legitimate and illegitimate elements drawn
from existing genres in their advertisements. One way to balance legitimate and illegitimate
23
genre elements and make sure that audiences categorize the film as a legitimate film is to
emphasize legitimate genre elements and deemphasize illegitimate elements even though it may
misrepresent the true identity of the film. The original poster for the pornographic film Deep
Throat (1972), for example, deemphasizes its illegitimate pornographic identity by avoiding
displaying pornographic genre elements, relying instead on prominently displaying its x-rating to
draw attention to its true identity. By deemphasizing the illegitimate genre elements that
differentiate the film from other films, film producers break with traditional marketing strategies
that emphasize the factors that differentiate products. When the differentiating factor is
illegitimate, however, emphasizing it would prevent audiences from publicly affiliating with the
product, even if they privately seek out the product because of the differentiating factor. The
inability to publicly affiliate with a product always suppresses the actual market for that product,
but suppression is particularly strong when purchase decisions are driven by information
cascades that require being comfortable sharing product experiences with other people.
These arguments emphasize the importance of balancing legitimate and illegitimate genre
elements in the creation of a new identity relying on illegitimate genre elements, thus suggesting
that such an identity would emerge as a bridge between legitimate and illegitimate genres. To
provide empirical support for this argument, I analyze identity networks based on the identity
codes embedded in film posters. Specifically, the creation of a new identity for Bedside/Zodiac
films implies that these films cluster together in the identity networks (shared identity) and that
they cluster together outside other clusters (unique identity). Alternatively, if the Bedside/Zodiac
films are randomly scattered throughout the identity network, they do not have a shared identity;
if they are located together within an existing cluster, they do not have a unique identity.
24
Creating Identity: Methods
Film posters have historically been the key advertisement product used to sell tickets
(Barton, 2004) and they represent an important link between cinema and society (King, 2003).
The importance of film posters as advertisements was particularly pronounced in Denmark in the
1970s because television commercials were not allowed, and the location of movie theaters on
busy main streets ensured broad exposure to film posters. I use the opening posters for nearly all
the 242 Danish feature films (excluding animations, film for children, and documentary films)
that had theatrical release between 1965 and 1978.11 By using the entire population of film
posters, sample-selection bias, a common problem in genre analyses (Altman, 1999: 17), is
avoided. An important challenge in reading identity from film posters is that identities emerge
through combinations of different linguistic and pictorial codes that individually may or may not
be prototypical of a particular genre. For example, nudity is a prototypical element in
pornographic films because all pornographic films contain nudity, but it is also commonly used
in many non-pornographic films. The combination of prototypical and non-prototypical
linguistic and pictorial codes makes individual identities ambiguous and connects films using
similar codes in complex networks. Following Wittgenstein (1953: 27), I view genres, like other
natural categories, as clusters in networks: “We see a complicated network of similarities
overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of
detail.”12
11
The Danish Film Institute provided access to film posters for all Danish feature films from
1960 to 1978.
12
I avoid a potentially important problem by using the opening film posters to create identity
networks. Specifically, although current genre classifications from film databases, such as The
Internet Movie Database, are useful approximations, they are nevertheless ahistorical
25
Another challenge in reading identity from film posters is to classify the individual
linguistic and pictorial codes contained in movie posters and allow this classification to
determine the identities of individual films. Using all the Danish film posters produced between
1960 and 1978, I developed a coding scheme that focuses on five pictorial codes and one
linguistic code. The pictorial codes are contained in the artistic presentation of the poster and
include graphic style, thematic content, setting, time, and female nudity. The linguistic code is
contained in the text on the poster. Graphic style refers to codes derived from the type of pictures
on the poster and is coded along three dimensions: photography, drawing, and caricature.
Thematic content refers to codes derived from the content of pictures on the poster and is coded
along six dimensions: comedy, drama, action, romance, erotic, and sex.13 Setting refers to codes
derived from the physical location of the activities in the poster and is coded along three
dimensions: urban, rural, and interior. Time refers to codes derived from the temporal location of
the activities in the poster and is coded along three dimensions: past, present, and future. Female
nudity refers to codes derived from the degree of nudity shown on the poster and is coded along
five dimensions: legs, underwear, full back, breasts, full front. Text refers to codes derived from
the words used on the poster (including the title of the film) to describe the content of the film
(production details such as actors and directors are not considered) and is coded on six
dimensions: comedy, drama, action, romance, erotic, and sex).
Following Lévi-Strauss’s (1963) method of focusing on recurrent patterns of binary
classifications that do not always reflect the perception of the film at opening (see Altman’s
(1999: 34-38) account of how Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903) originally was
classified as a railway film within the travel genre and only later was reclassified as a western).
13
An erotic code depicts actors in sexually intimate positions whereas a sex code depicts actors
engaging in sexual acts, including intercourse and other forms of genital contact.
26
opposition, a poster was coded either one or zero on each dimension discussed above. All the
codes, except female nudity, were coded on one or more dimensions (female nudity is ordinal
scale; higher dimensions imply ‘more’ nudity than lower dimensions). Figure 1 illustrates the
coding scheme using two very different films.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 1 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Brand-Børge Rykker Ud [Fire-Børge to the Rescue] (1976) is coded “1” for caricature (graphic
style) because of the distorted heads, “1” for country (setting) because it takes place in the
country side, “1” for present (time) because it is current, “1” for comedy and action (thematic
style) because splashing water in the face of another person is a comedy element and being
chased by people with guns is an action element, “1” for full frontal nudity (female nudity)
because of the three naked women, and “1” for comedy language (text) because of the words
‘grinebider farce’ [giggling farce]. For each other dimension, the poster was coded “0.” Per [Per]
(1975), on the other hand, was coded “1” for photo (graphic style) and “1” for comedy language,
drama language, romance language, and erotic language for the use of the words ‘humor’
[humor], ‘udnyttelse’ [exploitation], ‘kærlighed’ [love], and erotik [eroticism]. The aggregate
binary patterns of linguistic and pictorial codes contained in the posters for Brand-Børge Rykker
Ud and Per clearly suggest that they are very different films (as would be easily ascertained by a
casual observer). However, the films still map onto the same linguistic comedy code.14
14
By focusing on the presence of shared genre elements, I implicitly adopt a semantic approach
to genre as opposed to a syntactic approach, which would emphasize how these genre elements
are organized in the film (Altman, 1984). The semantic approach is appropriate in this context
because the focus is on the signaled identity read from film posters before having seen the film
rather than on the actual identity revealed in the film.
27
The usefulness of the coding scheme depends on the extent to which the codes and
dimensions signify important aspects of identity. The choice of codes is both general to research
on film identity and specific to studying the use of illegitimate genre elements. Specifically,
graphic style, thematic content, setting, time, and text are general codes, whereas female nudity
is particular to this context. Similarly, some of the individual dimensions defining each code,
such as photo versus drawing and urban versus country, are applicable in most research, whereas
other dimensions, such as erotic and sexual thematic content, are specific to this study. The
advantage of this approach is that it provides the basis for constructing networks that are relevant
to explore identity construction at the boundary of pornography and other genres. Other research
may rightfully focus on other codes. A study focusing on gender roles in cinema, for example,
would focus on a different set of relevant codes relating to the portrayal of men and women in
film posters. The disadvantage of this approach is that it introduces a subjective element into the
analysis that could bias the findings. Most categorizations contain subjective elements. Bordwell
(1989: 130) notes that “all mapping is selective, that complete coverage of every discriminable
code offered by the film is impossible” because of the subjectivity of individual observers, the
polysemy of cinema as a signifying system, and the disjunction between material and meaning.
I took several steps to ensure that subjectivity does not bias my findings. First, I reviewed
existing genre taxonomies including Lopez (1993), The Library of Congress’ Moving Image
Genre-form Guide (Taves, Hoffman, and Lund, 2005), and Dirks (2005) as background for
developing the coding scheme. For example, Dirks (2005) suggests comedy is “consistently and
deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.) by
exaggerating the situation, the language, action, relationships, and characters,” whereas action
has “high energy, big-budget physical stunts and chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights,
28
escapes, destructive crisis (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), non-stop motion,
spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous, often two-dimensional good-guy heroes (or
recently heroines) battling bad guys.” Based on these descriptions of prototypical genre
elements, the exaggerated splashing of water in Brand-Børge Rykker Ud is coded as comedy
content, whereas being chased by people with guns is coded as action content. Second, to ensure
completeness, I use the existing genre taxonomies and descriptions of prototypical genre
elements to develop a larger more comprehensive coding scheme that initially included more
codes and dimensions than those described in this study. Since most films focused on comedy
and drama in a Danish context, many identity codes and dimensions were irrelevant: No films
were set in the future, for example, and male nudity never occurred. Starting with an initial
coding scheme that is more comprehensive than necessary, I avoided neglecting potentially
important identity-defining codes.
After developing the coding scheme, three additional people coded the film posters. The
coders were provided with the coding scheme and a general description of film genres. To
familiarize the coders with the process, they first coded posters produced between 1960 and
1964, a period prior to the study sample. The coders did not have any exposure to Danish film
history before starting, they could not read Danish (I provided translations), they were unaware
of the purpose of the study, and they coded separately. The characteristics of the coders and the
conditions under which they worked minimized potential bias. The initial inter-rater agreement
on each of the dimensions was very high (kappa always exceeded 0.72 and was typically greater
than 0.85 (Fleiss, 1981)). The time dimension is an exception. Time was difficult for non-natives
to code because of the absence of historical frameworks necessary to situate individual time
codes. Most disagreements were easily resolved after further inspection because of the objective
29
nature of most dimensions. Collapsing the coders’ mapping into a single binary pattern and
comparing it to my own mapping revealed a similarly high degree of inter-rater agreement. The
high degree of inter-rater reliability does not imply that the actual identities of all films are
accurately assessed, because the posters may misrepresent the actual identity: “Posters are
primarily advertisements and their task is to connect with the people on the street, not with the
images on the screen” (King, 2003: 6). The high inter-rater agreement does imply consistency in
the aggregate pattern of perceived identities based on the film posters.
I used the combined binary mappings of codes on posters to create binary two-mode (film
by code) rolling networks for each year from 1970 to 1978 (each network captures nine years of
film production, allowing me to capture the key period from 1970 to 1978 in one network).
These networks were transformed to valued co-occurrence networks (Breiger, 1974) in which
each cell counts the number of dimensions shared by two films (diagonals were ignored): The
more dimensions two films have in common, the more similar identities are conveyed by their
posters. Because maintaining the fuzziness of genres is critical, I chose not to force individual
films into particular genre categories but instead use the networks to illustrate the overall genre
system. If the argument that film producers used genre elements to create a new and unique
identity for Bedside/Zodiac films, then these films should cluster together (shared identity) and
the Bedside/Zodiac cluster should be distinctive from other clusters (unique identity). I use the
Kamada-Kawai spring embedded algorithm (as implemented in Pajek (Batagelj and Mrvar,
2004)) to draw the genre topology. The Kamada-Kawai algorithm assumes that each pair of
vertices (films) is fitted with a spring of equal length to the graph theoretic distance between
them, and that the optimal layout of vertices is the layout that minimizes the total spring energy
30
in the network (Kamada and Kawai, 1989).15
Creating Identity: Results
To show how genre elements were combined to create a unique identity for
Bedside/Zodiac films, I focus first on linguistic codes. Linguistic codes often are more explicit
than pictorial codes (describing a film as funny is more explicit than depicting people splashing
water at each other) and are therefore useful in creating a baseline genre network. Panel A in
Figure 2 presents the identity networks for films produced between 1970 and 1978 based on
linguistic codes alone: The nodes/vertices represent films and the edges/lines represent distances
between films. The more dimensions the posters of two films have in common, the closer the two
films are located to each other in the network. Spatial proximity means that the identities
communicated to audiences are more similar.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 2 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------To facilitate interpretation of the identity networks, I circled the major clusters or genres of films
according to the identity dimensions: Films within a cluster share more genre dimensions than
films in different clusters (formal cluster analyses provided similar results). A closer inspection
of the major clusters shows that they can be split into minor clusters (sub-genres), typically
around the periphery where films bridge to other clusters. However, such fine distinctions are not
necessary to document the existence of a new identity for Bedside/Zodiac films.
The identity network based on linguistic codes alone (Panel A) provides initial support
15
Since several different layouts can minimize the total spring energy depending on the initial
random layout, I annealed each network by redrawing them several times after the first local
minimum had been found to make sure the basic configuration is stable.
31
for the existence of a new genre between comedy and pornography. This network shows that
pornographic films, identified by their explicit references to pornography and the use of
pornographic linguistic and pictorial codes in film posters, cluster together in the southeast part
of the network. Together they constitute a genre of films that appears distinct from comedy and
drama, the two major genres. The Bedside/Zodiac films cluster together in the southern part of
the network between comedy and pornography, suggesting that film producers successfully
created both a shared identity (homogeneity within the cluster). Whether they created a unique
identity (heterogeneity across clusters) for these films is more ambiguous in the linguistic
identity networks. Although the Bedside/Zodiac films are located between comedy and
pornography, the language used on the Bedside/Zodiac posters is more similar to comedy
posters, suggesting that they derive more of their identity from comedy than pornography.
Indeed, the linguistic identity network suggests that Bedside/Zodiac films represent a sub-genre
within the comedy genre that is still uniquely identifiable because it shares more similarities with
pornography than prototypical comedies.
Because the network in Panel A is based on linguistic codes only, it is important to test its
validity. The scattered locations of the eight Olsen Banden films in the drama cluster challenge
the overall validity of the identity topology because the posters for these films (see Appendix)
are very similar, and their key pictorial codes such as caricature often are associated with
comedy. To address this problem, I increased the number of dimensions used to create the
networks by adding pictorial codes. Panel B shows how the identity network changes after
adding graphic style, thematic content, and female nudity to the text-based network in Panel A.16
16
I also added setting and time to analyses not reported here, but they primarily made the
network more random, suggesting they are less relevant (less prototypical of any genre) pictorial
codes than graphic style, thematic content, and female nudity.
32
The two networks are overall similar: Pornographic films still cluster together even though they
are more dispersed than before (they are more similar in linguistic codes than in pictorial codes),
and the Bedside/Zodiac films still cluster together between comedy and pornography. The main
difference between the two networks, however, is that the eight Olsen-Banden films now cluster
together between drama and comedy, which reflects the obvious similarities between their
posters and the label often used to describe them: crime comedy. In addition, the Bedside/Zodiac
films are further from comedy, moving from a sub-genre to something closer to an independent
genre. Thus the identity networks provide consistent support for the argument that film producers
created a shared and unique identity that allows audiences to categorize Bedside/Zodiac films as
a new type of film.17
Finally, Figure 3 presents biyearly identity networks for 1970, 1972, 1974, and 1976, all
based on nine years film production (the networks for 1970 and 1972 only goes back to 1965).
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 3 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------The four networks in Figure 3 show the gradual emergence and consolidation of the new genre
identified in Figure 2 as more films with the new identity were produced. Whereas the identity of
a film is a combination of existing genre elements, a genre emerges as that combination of genre
elements (with small variations) is reproduced in other films. As the number of Bedside/Zodiac
films increases from 1970 to 1978, it not only becomes clear that they share the same identity but
also that the shared identity is different from other identities. A unique identity space is carved
out through a process resembling reproductive or density dependent form emergence (Carroll
17
Note that the similarities in film titles (the use of ‘bedside’ and ‘zodiac’ references) only
suggest that these films share an identity, not that this identity is unique (different from other
identities). Only the identity networks provide the full picture.
33
and Swaminathan, 2000; Ruef, 2000).
USING ACTORS TO LEGITIMIZE IDENTITY
Legitimizing Identity: Theory
Having shown how genre elements are used to create identities, I now focus on how
actors help ensure that the identity is viewed as legitimate. When film producers make decisions
about which actors to cast in particular roles, they first match actors’ demographic and physical
characteristics and their experiences and skills within particular genres to the role requirements.
Within the set of actors meeting the role requirements, the use of higher-status actors signals
quality and ensures that audiences classify film as legitimate by grouping it with the other films
in which those actors appeared, regardless of genre. Although production costs can be greatly
reduced by using anonymous actors, as is typically the case in pornographic films, anonymous
actors have no legitimizing value for the project, shrinking the potential market for the film.
Higher-status actors may capture some of the value of expected increased revenues because they
command higher wages (Ravid, 1999), but they also increase the (unlikely) likelihood that the
film becomes a blockbuster (De Vany and Walls, 1999). This is important because a film
producer cannot necessarily make two films without stars for the price of one film with a star
because most production costs are unrelated to the actors.18 Davis and Greve (1997: 15) argue
that status plays an important role in establishing the normative legitimacy of controversial
practices: “The actions of high-status actors take on a halo of approval quite apart from their
actual merit.” From the perspective of producers, the status hierarchy of actors is a legitimization
18
The costs of producing the special effects in films like The Fugitive (1993), for example,
would be the same with or without a big star like Harrison Ford to anchor the film, suggesting
that it is impossible to make two similar films with lesser actors for the same budget.
34
mechanism, with disproportional legitimizing power accruing at the top of the hierarchy: Several
low-status actors do not equal one high-status actor.
From the perspective of actors, the status hierarchy represents an opportunity structure
(Blau, 1994; Sørensen, 1996), with disproportional opportunities accruing at the top. As actors
climb the hierarchy, they get both more opportunities to play different roles and they can charge
a higher price for playing a particular role, which implies that their opportunity cost of playing a
particular role increases.19 The opportunity costs of participating in a particular film are
dependent not only on available alternative opportunities, but also on how participating in a
particular film will affect actors’ future careers. Although traditional actors are not cast in roles
that require participation in explicit sex acts or full nudity, they risk reputational damage by
participating in films using pornographic genre elements.20 The future costs of reputational
damage rise throughout the status hierarchy and are especially high at the top. As actors move up
the status hierarchy, they can expect to receive more attractive future role opportunities with a
higher degree of certainty unless they somehow stigmatize themselves. Stigmatization occurs for
different reasons including appearing in unpopular films and being typecast for a particular type
of role in a way that makes it difficult to switch to other types of roles. The boundary between
illegitimate pornography and mainstream films has historically been nearly impossible to bridge:
Very few actors have successfully crossed over from pornography to mainstream and vice
19
Superstars like Tom Cruise, for example, always have more opportunities to participate in
films than they have the capacity for, thus suggesting every time they accept a role they
implicitly turn other roles down.
20
The roles requiring full nudity and explicit sex acts are played by anonymous (not credited)
actors or actors who had debuted in these roles.
35
versa.21 The stigma of pornography is costly, precluding audiences and actors from full social
acceptance (Goffman, 1963).
While the potential reputational costs may be higher for high-status actors, the risk of
actually incurring these costs could be lower. Research on middle-status conformity suggests that
high-status actors are more willing to deviate from role expectations than middle-status actors
because their status protects them from the negative consequences of deviation, whereas middlestatus actors view conformity as a way to become high status (Phillips and Zuckerman, 1999).
However, being able to deviate from role expectations does not in itself provide an incentive to
deviate from them. High-status actors typically can reach their full capacity in legitimate
activities and therefore need some incentive to shift scarce capacity toward potentially
illegitimate activities. Since high-status actors are already paid more than other actors, increasing
their fees would merely inflate the general costs of using high-status actors by establishing new
salary standards. Other non-monetary incentives also are unlikely. Earning artistic acclaim
provides a powerful incentive for high-status actors to accept lower pay and participate in
commercially risky, even controversial film projects, such as Nicole Kidman in Lars von Trier’s
Dogville (2003). But artistic acclaim is hardly a relevant incentive in the case of Bedside/Zodiac
films. The aspiration for these films was not to create cinematic art but simply to generate as
much revenue as possible by entertaining as many people as possible.
Film producers may desire to use mainstream high-status actors to ensure that audiences
view a new type of film as legitimate, but the opportunity costs for high-status actors risking
21
Brian De Palma intended to use porn star Annette Haven in Body Double (1984) but was
forced by executives from Columbia Pictures to use unknown Melanie Griffith instead,
suggesting that not having participated in any films is better than having participated in
pornographic films.
36
stigmatization are also high because of their abundant future role opportunities. Low-status
actors, on the other hand, may be willing to participate in illegitimate film projects because they
have few alternative options, but the demand for these actors is also low because they provide
less legitimacy and marketability to film projects. Based on these arguments, I expect that
middle-status actors are the most likely actors to be used to legitimize potentially illegitimate
identities: They are better able to legitimize film projects than low-status actors and have lower
opportunity costs than high-status actors.
Legitimizing Identity: Methods
I use a longitudinal panel research design and logistic regression to test the argument that
middle-status actors were most likely to participate in Bedside/Zodiac films. The sample of
actors is composed of all the actors who participated in at least one Danish feature film from
1960, ten years before the first Bedside film was released, to 1978, when the last Zodiac film was
released. Because I am interested in which established actors were most likely to participate in
the new Bedside/Zodiac films, the sample was confined to the actors who debuted in a
mainstream film and participated in at least one mainstream film in the ten years before the focal
year (more than 98 percent of actors have less than ten years between two roles). While Danish
films use Danish actors almost exclusively, foreigners were occasionally used to play roles of
foreigners. Because it is unlikely that these foreigners participated in other Danish films, I
deleted them from the sample (the few foreigners that relocated to Denmark and appeared in
more than one film were retained). I also deleted occasional non-actors such as musicians,
athletes, and politicians who played themselves. Finally, I removed actors whose year of birth
could not be determined (these actors were most likely extras for whom the only information was
37
their name, and they participated only in one film in more than 95 percent of the cases). The
information about actors was drawn from several online databases, such as Film i Danmark
(www.filmidanmark.dk), Dansk Film Database (www.danskefilm.dk), and Danish Film Institute
(www.dfi.dk), which contain information about all the Danish films that had theatrical releases in
Denmark. The final sample is composed of 830 different actors accounting for 5,757
observations.
Dependent and Independent Variables. The dependent variable is a binary variable
coded “1” if a particular actor participates in a Bedside or Zodiac film in a given year and coded
“0” otherwise.
I measure status in three different ways. The first status measure quantifies the position
actors occupy within the actor hierarchy. The measure is based on both the number of films the
actor participated in and the importance of the roles the actor played. Actors who participated in
important roles in many films have, by this definition, higher status than actors who participated
in marginal roles in few films. The importance of a role was determined by the order in which
actors received credits at the end of a film. I calculate position-based status by summing the
inverse credit rank in each traditional film an actor had participated in up to the year before the
focal year (Position-Weighted Credits and Position-Weighted Credits Squared). The data covers
all Danish films after 1930, allowing accounting for an actor’s entire career history. Although the
inverse credit order is not a perfect measure of the importance of an actor (actors are on rare
occasions listed alphabetically or in order of appearance), it does capture the fact that the
difference in importance between being ranked one (1/1) and four (1/4) is bigger than the
difference between being 15 (1/15) and 18 (1/18). To check the robustness of the measure, I
recalculated it treating actors within different ranges (such as one and two, one to four, five to
38
ten, or above 15) equal and added a decay function that depreciated the value of participating in a
film linearly over ten years. The results presented here are robust to these different ways of
calculating position in status hierarchy.
The position measure of status captures an actor’s relative social standing among actors
as perceived by the film producers. An actor’s position in the status hierarchy directly influences
the actor’s attractiveness to film producers, making it the most appropriate measure in this
context. Actors also could derive status from other sources such as the theater (stage). The
theater was an important source of status and a stable source of income for many actors. Piil
(2003) noted that until the 1970s actors typically emphasized their theater work rather than their
film work. The importance of the theater also is reflected in the dominant position of theater
critics: Actors’ birthday announcements and obituaries were typically written by theater critics
and journalists specialized in theater. Although it is impossible to track the theater career of all
the actors, data is available about the theater at which an actor received a formal education in
acting (if any). I use data on theater education to create two binary variables: The first is coded
“1” if an actor received a formal acting education at The Royal Theater in Copenhagen (Royal
Theater) and “0” otherwise; the second is coded “1” if an actor received it from another theater
(Other Theater) and “0” otherwise. The Royal Theater in Copenhagen dates back to 1746 when a
royal privilege was granted to ‘arrange Danish plays’ and it continues to be the most prestigious
theater in Denmark. Although the other theaters are less notable, having an education from any is
more distinguished than having no formal education. In terms of educational background, the
Royal Theater conveys high status, other theaters middle status, and not having a formal
education low status.
Another important source of status is cultural consecration by film critics (Allen and
39
Lincoln, 2004). Beginning in 1948, the Filmmedarbejderforeningen (an association of critics and
other film writers in Copenhagen) has given a Bodil for the best Danish film and the best Danish
actor and actress in leading and supporting roles. The prize is given in much the same way as
Academy Awards: Several candidates are nominated in each category and one winner is
announced during a show covered by the media. Receiving a Bodil is different from receiving an
Academy Award, however, because it is based on votes from a small group of critics rather than
a broad group of actors and directors. Winning a Bodil for a lead or supporting role is the highest
critical acclaim an actor can receive, conveying considerable status. Participating in a Bodilwinning film is another source of critical acclaim for an actor, although it conveys less status
than receiving a Bodil. To capture the two sources of cultural status, I created two binary
variables: The first is coded “1” if an actor had received a Bodil for a lead or supporting role
(Bodil) and coded “0” otherwise; the second is coded “1” if an actor had participated in at least
one Bodil-winning film (Bodil Film). Because receiving an individual Bodil conveys higher
status than participating in a Bodil-winning film, I included the few actors who had received a
Bodil and participated in a Bodil-winning film only among the actors who had received a Bodil.
In terms of cultural consecration, having received a Bodil conveys high status, having
participated in a Bodil-winning film middle status, and not having either low status.
Control Variables. I include several additional variables to control for alternative
explanations. The position-based status measure reflects actors’ entire career history. However,
some actors may, for a number of idiosyncratic reasons not directly related to their status,
currently experience a short term surge in the number of roles they play. For example, actors
may have agreed to participate in a number of minor roles for a particular film studio or have
gained a more temporary or faddish popularity that does not reflect their overall status. Similarly,
40
some actors may be less concerned about their status or even future role opportunities and
instead focus on maximizing their short term number of roles, regardless of the type of film in
which they participate. I therefore control for the number of traditional (non-pornographic) films
an actor participated in the focal year and the prior year to avoid confounding relatively stable
status positions with current actor activity (Current Actor Activity), obviously while recognizing
that current actor activity is affected by overall status. Although two actors may have the same
status, one actor’s career may be peaking now, whereas the other actor’s career peaked years
ago. To adjust for these potential differences, I include a variable measuring the number of years
since the career peak (or the career high to date) (Years Since Best Year). The career peak refers
to the year in which the cumulative sum of roles played until and including that year reaches its
maximum. Because the value of having participated in a role decreases over time, I depreciated
each role linearly over ten years.
Actors who participated in earlier Bedside/Zodiac films may be more likely to participate
in future releases; they had already overcome potential resistance, gained experience with the
genre, and interacted with the people behind the films. Actors also may be more likely to
participate if they worked with the same directors on other films. I therefore control for whether
an actor has prior appearances in Bedside and/or Zodiac films (Prior Bedside/Zodiac
Participation) or prior experiences with a director (Prior Experience with Director). I control for
the age of the actor using a continuous variable (Age and Age Squared) and a binary variable
coded one if the actor is less than 18 years old (Minor) in the focal year. I also included a gender
variable coded “1” if the actor is a woman (actress) and “0” otherwise to control for potential
gender differences in participation in Bedside/Zodiac films. Finally, the number of released
mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films varies from year to year, providing more role
41
opportunities in some years than others. I therefore include fixed effects for year to control for
the activity level within the film industry. Table 1 provides summary statistics and bivariate
correlations.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Table 1 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Statistical Analysis. I use maximum-likelihood logistic regression models to test the
middle-status deviance hypothesis (probit models provided similar results). The logit model is
appropriate because the dependent variable is binary (Long, 1997). I report robust standard errors
(White, 1980) and a random effects model (Sayrs, 1989) because each actor contributes multiple
non-independent observations (fixed effects models are inappropriate because several variables
do not vary over time). The results are robust to these alternative specifications.
Legitimizing Identity: Results
Table 2 presents the regression models testing the argument that middle-status actors are
more likely to participate in potentially illegitimate films than high-status or low-status actors.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Table 2 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Model 1 is the base model containing only the control variables. The control variables show that
actors who were currently more active in mainstream films were more likely to participate in
Bedside/Zodiac films. The positive effect of current activity suggests that actors that simply
participated in more films, regardless of their status, also were more likely to participate in
Bedside/Zodiac films. The effects of prior experience in Bedside/Zodiac films also had a strong
positive effect on the likelihood of participating again in Bedside/Zodiac films, whereas prior
experiences with the director had no effect.
42
Model 2 adds the quality-based status variables. It shows that receiving a Bodil or
participating in a Bodil-winning film does not affect the likelihood of participating in a
Bedside/Zodiac film. Model 3 adds the education-based status variables. Although both
education variables are positive and significant in Model 3, Royal Theater is not significant in
the complete model. The positive and significant effect of receiving a formal acting education
outside the Royal Theater and the lack of an effect of receiving an acting education from the
Royal Theater provides preliminary support for the hypothesis that middle-status actors are more
likely to participate in Bedside/Zodiac films. Middle-status actors educated outside the Royal
Theater are about twice as likely to participate as high-status actors from the Royal Theater and
as low-status actors without a formal acting education. Model 4 includes the position-based
status variables. It confirms that middle-status actors were more likely to participate than either
high-status or low-status actors. The position variable is positive and significant, and the squared
position variable is negative and significant, which implies that the relationship between status
and participation is inversely u-shaped.
While these results provide initial support for the middle-status deviance argument, it is
necessary to determine whether the curvilinear relationship between status and participation in
Bedside/Zodiac films is also observed in the case of mainstream films. The observed curvilinear
relationship could reflect simply the pyramidal structure of films rather than middle-status
deviance. The pyramidal structure implies that there are few leading roles for high-status actors
compared to supporting roles for middle-status actors, whereas the peripheral roles at the bottom
can be filled by many low-status actors (and an even greater number of outsiders). In other
words, the curvilinear relationship could be observed because middle-status actors have more
roles to play in a film than high-status actor and are likely to face less competition for their roles
43
than low-status actors. To address this possibility, I recoded the dependent variable
distinguishing between not participating in any films, only participating in mainstream films,
participating in mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films, and only participating in Bedside/Zodiac
films and reanalyzed the data using multinomial regression. If the curvilinear relationship
between status and participation is caused by middle-status deviance, it should be more
pronounced in predicting participation in mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac than mainstream or
Bedside/Zodiac only (as compared to not participating in any films).
Table 3 presents the results of multinomial regression analyses. The first model contains
the control variables and the second model includes the status variables. I also test whether the
differences between the estimated parameters for the same variable across different categories of
the dependent variable are statistically significant using pair wise chi-square contrasts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Table 3 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Model 2 shows that actors with more alternative opportunities and prior Bedside/Zodiac
participation are more likely to participate in mainstream films only, mainstream and
Bedside/Zodiac films, and Bedside/Zodiac films only than not participate in any films.
Moreover, the chi-square contrasts show that alternative opportunities have a significantly
smaller effect on participation in Bedside/Zodiac films only. In contrast, prior Bedside/Zodiac
participation has a significantly smaller effect on participation in mainstream films only. Model 2
also shows that actors with a formal theater education and actors who had received a Bodil or
appeared in a Bodil film were more likely to participate in mainstream films than either not
participating in a film or participating in Bedside/Zodiac films (alone or in conjunction with
mainstream films). Finally, Model 2 shows that the effect of position-based status on
44
participation in mainstream films is linear whereas the effect is curvilinear on participation in
mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films, thus confirming the curvilinear effect observed in the
binary models for actors participating in both mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films. The chisquare contrasts confirm that the significant curvilinear effect of status on participation in both
mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films is stronger than the insignificant curvilinear effects of
status on participation in mainstream or Bedside/Zodiac films only.
The curvilinear effect of position-based status (within the observed range) on the
predicted multiplier of the base rate of participating in mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films is
illustrated in Figure 4.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 4 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 4 shows that the curvilinear effect of status on participation in Bedside/Zodiac films is
amplified by distinguishing between not participating in any films, only participating in
mainstream films, participating in mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac films, and only participating
in Bedside/Zodiac films (Table 3), compared to distinguishing only between participating and
not participating in Bedside/Zodiac films (Table 2). Since the inflection happens at a relatively
high status level (about three or more than one standard deviation above mean status), it is
important to note that middle status here really refers to middle status in an overall high status
group of actors. The low mean and relative high inflection point is not surprising given that the
vast majority of actors only manage to get one or maybe two roles in a lifetime. The skewness of
the actor status hierarchy is similar to status hierarchies in other markets such as investment
banking (Podolny, 1994).
The position-based status measure is based on the assumption that most actors are
45
generalists participating in films from different genres. However, actors may specialize in
different genres, thus suggesting that the overall status hierarchy fragments into local genrespecific status hierarchies. Zuckerman, Kim, Rittmann, and Ukanwa (2003) observed, for
example, that actors in the U.S. film market who had specialized in comedy subsequently were
less likely to work in other genres and vice versa. If actor specialization was a prevalent feature
of the Danish film market, then the actors participating in Bedside/Zodiac films could be highstatus comedy actors but middle-status actors overall. However, given the dominance of the
comedy genre in Denmark and the relatively small number of non-comedy films, there were far
fewer opportunities for Danish actors compared to actors in larger film markets to specialize in
specific genres and in particular to specialize in genres other than comedy. I nevertheless
recalculated the position-based status measure using only participation in the films identified as
comedies in Figure 2 and found the results to be largely the same.
DELEGITIMIZING ILLEGITIMACY
The identity networks document the emergence of a new film identity, and the statistical
models provide evidence consistent with the theoretical argument that middle-status actors
played a key role in legitimizing the new identity. It is nevertheless important to examine the
performance and viability of the new film genre to assess if the participation of middle-status
actors actually ensured normative legitimacy. Although it is impossible to directly determine the
extent to which audiences in the early 1970s viewed Bedside/Zodiac films as legitimate or
illegitimate, the actual popularity of the films among audiences provides an initial assessment of
the extent to which audiences viewed them as socially acceptable entertainment. Figure 5
illustrates how Bedside/Zodiac films performed as measured by their ticket sales in Danish
46
theaters compared to other Danish films (foreign films have been excluded because of selection
bias; distributors mainly import films that have already proven successful in their home markets).
It shows that Bedside/Zodiac films typically performed above the 75th percentile of the market
and that they captured a relatively high market share until 1978.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 5 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 6 compares the average number of tickets sold for all Danish pornographic,
mainstream, and Bedside/Zodiac films from 1970 to 1978. It shows that Bedside/Zodiac films
performed significantly better than pornographic films and mainstream films (all other films).
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 6 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Figures 5 and 6 suggest that the new identity for Bedside/Zodiac films was indeed viewed as a
legitimate identity as judged by the large number of audiences willing to watch these films in
public. A potential alternative explanation is that the Bedside/Zodiac films were simply higher
quality than pornographic films. Quality differences are almost certainly part of the explanation,
although it is important to note that the Bedside/Zodiac films were practically without exception
reviled by film critics. However, that film critics actually reviewed Bedside/Zodiac films but not
pornographic films provides another indicator of differences in legitimacy. Film critics initially
reviewed pornographic films in mainstream newspapers but stopped reviewing them almost
immediately, whereas they continued reviewing Bedside/Zodiac films despite their harsh initial
reviews. Having the attention of film critics suggests that Bedside/Zodiac films, unlike
pornographic films, were viewed as members of the legitimate film industry (cf. Zuckerman,
1999; Zuckerman and Kim, 2003).
47
But if Bedside/Zodiac films achieved legitimacy, why did the genre collapse so suddenly
and irrevocably in 1978? Three possible explanations are particularly important. First, identities
constrain innovation. The key to sustaining and reproducing markets for non-necessary
experience products is to introduce variation in the products to keep consumers interested. The
film market is no exception. Producers must be sufficiently innovative to attract attention and
meet demands for novelty while at the same time staying within the context of familiar narrative
experiences (Schatz, 1981). Pornography can be varied by a constant flow of new anonymous
actors participating in an increasing variety of sexual activities, and mainstream genres can use
actors from the entire status hierarchy to provide variation. The new genre was constrained by its
narrow legitimacy. To maintain its legitimacy, producers could not move beyond conventional
sexual activities into more sophisticated pornography nor could they use a wide variety of actors
to continuously renew the genre. Several film critics noted the lack of innovation in the
Bedside/Zodiac films. Iversen (1976), for example, write in his review of I Løvens Tegn [In the
Sign of Lion] that although Bedside/Zodiac films were initially innovative films, they have
become monotonous, always having to include pornographic genre elements. Pornographic genre
elements, however, are ‘identity restricting’ elements (Carroll and Hannan, 2000) that cannot be
changed without changing the identity of the films.
Second, identities are contestable. I described the process of positioning potentially
illegitimate films within the identity-status space from the perspective of film producers
interacting with audiences through film posters and actors. Other research emphasizes the
importance of having third-party intermediaries, most notably film critics, confer identity on
films (Hsu and Podolny, 2005) and certify their legitimacy (Zuckerman and Kim, 2003). Genres
are sites of struggle over assigning genre memberships to individual films and drawing the
48
boundaries between genres among producers, critics, and audiences (Altman, 1999: 99). The
creation of an identity for Bedside/Zodiac films was no exception. The press material provided to
film critics and exhibitors by film producers consistently avoided using pornographic genre
references to describe Bedside/Zodiac films and relied instead on references to prior
Bedside/Zodiac films or a mixture of genre labels such as ‘erotic comedy’ on film posters.
Although critics typically recognized the attempt to combine comedy and pornography in
Bedside/Zodiac films, they contested the identity claims promulgated by producers and labeled
Bedside/Zodiac films as pornography (in particular the Zodiac films). For example, BJ (1975)
renamed I Tvillingernes Tegn [In the Sign of Gemini] I Pornoens Tegn [In the Sign of Porno]
characterizing it as ‘pornographic exploitation,’ and Keller (1975) relabeled all the Zodiac films
‘porno entertainment.’
The contestation of the identity of Bedside/Zodiac films prevented institutional
consolidation of the carefully constructed identity. Institutional consolidation of identity requires
agreement about the codes and expectations for an identity, whereas a lack of institutional
consolidation can impose conflicting demands on products claiming a contested identity (Hsu
and Hannan, 2005). It is unlikely that the lack of institutional consolidation directly caused the
collapse of the new genre. Figure 5 shows that the films continued to do very well until the final
collapse in 1978, despite the earlier contestation over their identity. The contestation of a
legitimate identity and the imposition of an illegitimate identity, however, may have indirectly
prevented recovery after the collapse. Identity contestation made it riskier to participate in
potentially illegitimate film projects, and the failure to attract audiences in 1978 made it difficult
to convince producers and actors that the expected financial gain would compensate for the risk.
Although it is impossible to test this argument directly, a subtle shift in the way film critics
49
described the participation of established actors, from focusing on their legitimizing role to
ridiculing them for participating, provides some anecdotal support for the negative impact of
identity contestation.
Third, identities attract imitation. The creation of a successful market identity naturally
attracts imitation from other market participants seeking to take advantage of the new market
opportunities created by the new identity. Imitation crowds the market niche occupied by the
new identity, thus increasing competition for the market niche’s scarce resources, ultimately
reducing entry rates and increasing exit rates (see Carroll and Hannan, 2000, for a review of
density dependence research). Foreign films contributed to crowding the niche for
Bedside/Zodiac films. As other countries followed Denmark in legalizing pornography, it
became possible to import both pornographic films and other non-pornographic films using
pornographic genre elements. Two important developments contributed to crowding. First, a
number of foreign directors began experimenting with pornographic genre elements in dramatic
productions including Nagisa Oshima’s Ai No Correda [In the Realm of the Senses] (1976), Just
Jaekin’s Histoire d’O [Story of O] (1976), and Tinto Brass’ Caligula (1980). More similar to the
Danish Bedside/Zodiac films, the first of 13 French/Italian ‘Emmanuelle/Emanuelle’ films
opened in 1975 (with two new additional films opening each year until 1980). Although these
foreign films on average did not attract as large an audience as the Bedside/Zodiac films, they
still attracted relatively large audiences, thereby saturating the demand for mainstream films
containing pornographic genre elements.
The Danish film market also was quickly flooded with cheap foreign pornography.
Figure 7 shows the number of pornographic films that had theatrical release in Denmark between
1970 (when the Bedside/Zodiac films opened) to 1991 (when pornographic films had completed
50
their migration to video).
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Figure 5 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Figure 7 also shows that the U.S. quickly gained a dominant market position once pornographic
film production became possible in the U.S., a position it maintained until video forced
pornographic films out of the theaters in the early 1990s. To show that foreign pornographic
films contributed to crowding in its neighboring niches, it would be ideal to analyze the identity
communicated by the film posters developed for foreign films. Unfortunately, foreign
pornographic film posters were not systematically stored and preserved. But I have data on all
the films that played in Danish theaters between 1970 and 1991, their country of origin, their
original and Danish titles, and the number of tickets sold for each film. To the extent that film
titles are important identity marks, as suggested by the identity networks, foreign pornographic
films with non-pornographic film titles are likely viewed as having a less pornographic identity
than pornographic films with pornographic film titles. I expect therefore that more tickets were
sold to pornographic films with non-pornographic titles than to pornographic films with
pornographic titles.
Table 4 shows that foreign pornographic films with non-pornographic titles, either given
by the original producer or provided by the Danish film distributor, indeed sold more tickets than
foreign pornographic films with pornographic titles.22 By giving foreign pornographic films a
22
Non-pornographic film titles include titles that are non-descript (no genre references, e.g.,
Nurses) and titles intended to be funny (even if they contain pornographic genre references, e.g.,
Nurses Do It with Care), whereas pornographic titles focus on the pornographic genre references
(Sex with Nurses). I estimated the models with and without Emmanuelle and Report films, which
refer to French Emmanuelle films, Italian Emanuelle films, and German Schulmädchen-Report
51
non-pornographic title, foreign pornographic films diluted the Bedside/Zodiac identity and
increased crowding in its market niche, both making the niche less attractive to Danish film
producers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Insert Table 4 about here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Whether the production of Bedside/Zodiac films stopped in 1978 was caused by the lack
of variation in Bedside/Zodiac films, the contestation of their legitimate identity, or imitation and
crowding in its market niche, it does not imply that the identity disappeared, only that the birth
rate of new carriers dropped to zero. The identity itself has survived as a category used by film
scholars to identify and describe films (Dinnesen and Kau, 1983; Nissen, 2001b) and even
obtained its own entry in a film encyclopedia (Schepelern, 1999). As other categories, identities
do not require current carriers but exist as cultural schemas for future use or, in the context of
markets, as niches that may or may not be populated in the future.
DISCUSSION
This study argues that identity entrepreneurship is important in the creation of markets
for legal but normatively illegitimate products. Based on the theoretical framework that markets
are identity spaces, I argue that markets for illegitimate products are created by forging new
product identities from existing identities and drawing on existing status hierarchies to legitimize
the new product identities. By forging a new legitimate identity, people can categorize otherwise
illegitimate products with legitimate products, increasing the likelihood that people are willing to
publicly associate with these products. These arguments were substantiated and supported in a
and Hausfrauen-Report films (and other Report films as well), because the identity of these films
is ambiguous (some are more like Bedside/Zodiac, others are more like pornographic films).
52
comprehensive analysis of the Danish film industry following the legalization of pornography. I
argue specifically that film producers seeking to take advantage of the legalization of
pornography used genre elements and actors to create a unique identity between legitimate and
illegitimate genres and legitimize the identity. Network analyses of the use of linguistic and
pictorial genre elements on film posters to document the successful creation of a unique genre
identity between comedy and pornography and regression analyses of what actors participated in
the new films shows that middle-status actors were most likely to legitimize the new genre.
These theoretical arguments and supporting empirical evidence advance research on markets,
identity, and status.
Contributions to Research on Markets
Three perspectives dominate sociological research on markets emphasizing the role of
states, social relations, and culture respectively. States create the institutional conditions for the
emergence of stable product markets. By establishing and enforcing property rights, governance
structures, and rules of exchange, states provide stable and reliable frameworks for firms to
organize, compete, and cooperate (Campbell and Lindberg, 1990; Fligstein, 1996). States also
define the boundaries between legal and illegal markets, thus facilitating the creation of markets
for some (legal) products and suppressing markets for other (illegal) products. The emergence of
markets depends not only on products being legal, however, but also on products being
considered normatively legitimate within the broader social system embedding the market. This
study points to the importance of identity entrepreneurship in the formation of mass markets for
normatively illegitimate products. It emphasizes specifically the creation of new legitimate
identities instead of reinterpreting existing identities (Zelizer, 1978) as a mechanism to shift
53
perceptions of illegitimate and legitimate.
By viewing markets as social relations, significant progress has been made to understand
important market phenomena including pricing, cooperation, and collapse (Baker, 1984; Uzzi,
1997; Jensen, 2006). The market-as-social-relations perspective has nonetheless been criticized
for ignoring cultural systems. Emirbayer and Goodwin (1994) argue that cultural systems have
internal logics and organizations of their own that cannot be reduced to social structures. Cultural
systems enable market activities by helping market participants to understand the market and
constrain market activities by imposing norms and values that prevent certain activities. By
viewing markets as identity spaces, I contribute to sociological research on markets by providing
a specific theoretical framework that allows integrating social relations in the form of status
categories and cultural systems in the form of product categories in empirical research. To
paraphrase White (1992), my study suggests that identities are the interfaces in which social
relations and cultural systems intermesh and shape social organization such as markets. The
study of normatively illegitimate films shows how the identity-spaces framework can guide
empirical research by providing an integrated framework focusing on horizontal and vertical
product positioning for understanding the formation and collapse of markets for normatively
illegitimate products.
Contributions to Research on Identity
By focusing on how identities are created and legitimized, this study contributes to recent
sociological research on identity, which argues that identities are composed of social codes and
that social forms are identities pertaining to multiple entities (Pòlos et al., 2002). Despite careful
theoretical analyses of the relationships between social codes, identities, and forms, the specific
54
processes through which social codes combine to form individual identities and individual
identities become shared social forms have received less attention. Arguing that the identity of a
film is partly defined by its genre elements, I emphasize active institutional entrepreneurship in
the creation of identities. The analyses of film posters illustrate how film producers combined
genre elements in a way that created a unique identity for Bedside/Zodiac films that distanced
them to pornographic films but also discreetly invoked pornography as an illegitimate source of
differentiation. Density dependence is often viewed as the key process through which individual
identities become social forms: As the number of entities with identical or related identities
increases, these identities are more likely to be accepted and proliferate (Ruef, 2000; Carroll and
Swaminathan, 2000).
This study shows, in support of the density dependence argument, that the reproduction
of individual identities is necessary for the emergence of a shared and different identity.
However, this study also provides insights into the formation of the identities used by individual
identity carriers, thus avoiding taking identities for granted and only focusing on the vital rates of
identity carriers. The identity networks also emphasize the importance of considering the
location of individual identities within the overall market space to make sure that the identity
actually is different, thus supporting a community approach to identity research (Ruef, 2000).
Moreover, I argue that the use of status hierarchies to position an entity vertically within a
market niche represents a complementary mechanism to account for why some identities develop
into social forms. Status is particularly relevant in the early stages of the proliferation of an
identity before it has developed into a social form by providing a direct mechanism to shape its
legitimacy. By using middle-status actors to legitimize Bedside/Zodiac films, film producers
were able to draw large audiences, which allowed the identity to proliferate and develop into a
55
new genre (form).
Contributions to Research on Status
By defining markets as identity spaces explicitly dimensioned by product and status
categories, I avoid confounding two different ways of positioning products. When markets are
reduced to status structures and identities are reduced to status positions, it is implicitly assumed
that vertical differentiation is more important than horizontal differentiation. This assumption
may or may not be justified depending on the particular empirical context, but ignoring
differences in identity that are unrelated to status position neglects potentially fruitful research
areas. For example, while vertical differentiation traditionally dominated horizontal
differentiation in the investment banking industry (Podolny, 1993), deregulation changed this by
allowing commercial banks to enter the industry, which induced investment banks to engage in
identity-based competition to protect their market shares.
This study also contributes to research on middle-status conformity by emphasizing the
importance of middle-status deviance rather than middle-status conformity in legitimizing
illegitimacy. Phillips and Zuckerman (2001) discuss the scope conditions of the middle-status
conformity argument, focusing in particular on the social psychological and structural conditions
that induce middle-status conformity. This study adds an additional economic scope condition
that is particularly relevant in economic markets: When the opportunity to deviate increases with
status but the value of deviating increases less with status than the opportunity costs of deviating,
middle-status deviance is more likely than middle-status conformity. The opportunity costs of
deviating are particularly important when capacity is fixed and deviation implies switching
capacity to deviant activities. For example, the capacity of actors is, unlike the capacity of law
56
firms, fixed, which explains the difference between middle-status deviance in film markets and
middle-status conformity in law markets (Phillips and Zuckerman, 2001).
CONCLUSION
In closing, by viewing markets as identity spaces, I have provided a framework for
analyzing the creation of markets for illegitimate products. This framework can be extended to
other markets and provide a useful theoretical framework for analyzing identity in other social
systems. Indeed, White (1992: 4) views identity as the foundation of a general theory of social
action asking how “identities intermesh to form social organization.” The emphasis in this article
is more modest, focusing primarily on markets for normatively illegitimate products. These
markets require special attention to identity because of the lack of institutionalized segregating
mechanisms that allow people to distance themselves from normatively illegitimate products and
activities. Markets for normatively illegitimate products thus represent a particularly useful
context in which to first apply the theoretical framework developed here. Identity is, however,
also important in markets for legitimate products as vividly illustrated in Rao et al.’s (2003)
research on identity movements in French gastronomy. Their study illustrates the importance of
identity in the nouvelle cuisine movement and how it encouraged French chefs to abandon
classical cuisine. The carriers of identity vary from context to context but I expect the
fundamental processes are the same: Entrepreneurs co-create markets and categories allowing
people to both make sense of the market and justify their involvement in the market. The validity
of this claim awaits future research.
57
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64
65
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
11)
12)
13)
Mean
Critics-Bodil (1, 0)
0.05
Critics-Bodil Film (1, 0)
0.26
Education-Royal Theater (1, 0)
0.14
Education-Other Theater (1, 0)
0.16
Position-Weighted Credits
1.15
Position-Weighted Credits Squared 4.95
Current Actor Activity
0.39
Years Since Best Year
8.48
Prior Bedside/Zodiac Participation 0.03
Prior Experience with Director
0.02
Age
44.93
Minor (1, 0)
0.02
Woman (1, 0)
0.44
SD
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9) 10) 11) 12) 13)
0.22 1.00
0.43 -0.13 1.00
0.35 0.18 0.12 1.00
0.37 0.13 0.06 -0.18 1.00
1.90 0.47 0.19 0.34 0.15 1.00
20.56 0.39 0.06 0.15 0.07 0.87 1.00
0.76 0.19 0.07 0.05 0.16 0.20 0.13 1.00
7.84 0.09 0.20 0.23 0.00 0.38 0.22 -0.20 1.00
0.22 0.00 0.05 0.02 0.11 0.08 0.02 0.11 0.01 1.00
0.13 0.04 0.02 0.02 0.05 0.06 0.04 0.16 -0.05 0.01 1.00
15.73 0.09 0.25 0.19 -0.09 0.28 0.17 -0.06 0.51 0.00 0.00 1.00
0.14 -0.03 -0.06 -0.06 -0.03 -0.05 -0.03 -0.04 -0.07 -0.02 -0.01 -0.30 1.00
0.50 0.01 -0.13 0.05 -0.02 0.02 0.00 -0.10 0.01 -0.04 -0.03 -0.15 0.04 1.00
TABLE 1
SUMMARY STATISTICS AND BIVARIATE CORRELATIONS
TABLE 2
LOGISTIC REGRESSION: PARTICIPATION IN BEDSIDE/ZODIAC FILMS (N = 5,757)a
1
2
3
Status Variables
Position-Weighted Credits
Position-Weighted Credits Squared
Education-Royal Theater (1,0)
Critics-Bodil (1,0)
Prior Bedside/Zodiac Participation (1,0)
Prior Experience with Director (1,0)
Age
Age Squared
Minor (1,0)
Woman (1,0)
Year 1971 (1,0)
Year 1972 (1,0)
Year 1973 (1,0)
Year 1974 (1,0)
Year 1975 (1,0)
Year 1976 (1,0)
Year 1977 (1,0)
Year 1978 (1,0)
Intercept
LR
ΔLR
Degrees of Freedom
a
0.73***
(0.20)
-0.11**
(0.04)
0.64**
(0.21)
-0.10**
(0.04)
0.49
(0.39)
0.59*
(0.27)
-0.13
(0.49)
-0.30
(0.26)
6
Random Effects
0.82**
(0.26)
-0.12*
(0.05)
0.39
(0.39)
0.82**
(0.32)
-0.32
(0.61)
-0.21
(0.30)
0.07
(0.44)
-0.09
(0.26)
Critics-Bodil Film (1,0)
Years Since Best Year
5
0.69*
(0.31)
0.73**
(0.26)
Education-Other Theater (1,0)
Control Variables
Current Actor Activity
4
0.36***
(0.07)
-0.02
(0.02)
3.80***
(0.25)
0.23
(0.48)
-0.01
(0.04)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.87
(0.61)
-0.02
(0.22)
0.24
(0.35)
0.24
(0.34)
-0.09
(0.33)
-1.30**
(0.42)
-0.92**
(0.33)
-0.48
(0.33)
-1.70***
(0.40)
-1.43***
(0.38)
-3.71***
(1.02)
0.36***
(0.07)
-0.02
(0.02)
3.82***
(0.25)
0.23
(0.48)
-0.01
(0.04)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.88
(0.60)
-0.04
(0.23)
0.24
(0.35)
0.23
(0.34)
-0.10
(0.33)
-1.31**
(0.42)
-0.93**
(0.33)
-0.48
(0.33)
-1.71***
(0.40)
-1.44***
(0.38)
-3.70***
(1.02)
0.32***
(0.07)
-0.03
(0.02)
3.73***
(0.24)
0.09
(0.47)
-0.02
(0.04)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.80
(0.64)
-0.03
(0.21)
0.22
(0.35)
0.27
(0.34)
-0.08
(0.33)
-1.30**
(0.42)
-0.92**
(0.33)
-0.44
(0.33)
-1.65***
(0.40)
-1.38***
(0.38)
-3.59***
(1.03)
0.28***
(0.06)
-0.03
(0.02)
3.66***
(0.24)
0.03
(0.48)
-0.01
(0.04)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.81
(0.59)
0.03
(0.21)
0.20
(0.35)
0.25
(0.33)
-0.12
(0.33)
-1.35**
(0.43)
-0.97**
(0.33)
-0.49
(0.33)
-1.71***
(0.40)
-1.46***
(0.38)
-3.97***
(1.04)
0.28***
(0.06)
-0.03†
(0.02)
3.64***
(0.25)
-0.03
(0.49)
-0.02
(0.04)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.79
(0.62)
-0.04
(0.22)
0.21
(0.35)
0.28
(0.33)
-0.09
(0.33)
-1.35**
(0.43)
-0.95**
(0.33)
-0.46
(0.33)
-1.68***
(0.40)
-1.42***
(0.39)
-3.85***
(1.04)
0.26**
(0.08)
-0.06**
(0.02)
2.68***
(0.37)
-0.08
(0.50)
-0.01
(0.05)
0.00
(0.00)
-0.41
(1.08)
-0.18
(0.26)
0.42
(0.38)
0.58
(0.38)
0.28
(0.40)
-1.18*
(0.47)
-0.69
(0.44)
-0.12
(0.42)
-1.53**
(0.48)
-1.23**
(0.47)
-4.87***
(1.20)
616.44***
616.78***
0.34
18
634.20***
17.76***
18
638.76***
22.32***
18
649.65***
33.21***
22
2
χ =
175.05***
22
16
Robust standard errors in parentheses, two-tailed tailed tests, † p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
66
MULTINOMIAL LOGISTIC REGRESSION: PARTICIPATION IN BEDSIDE/ZODIAC FILMS (N = 5,757)a
A
Model 1
B
C
Mainstream Mainstream Bedside/
and Bedside/ Zodiac
Only
Zodiac
Only
Status Variables
Position-Weighted Credits
Position-Weighted Credits Squared
Education-Royal Theater (1,0)
Education-Other Theater (1,0)
Critics-Bodil (1,0)
Critics-Bodil Film (1,0)
Control Variables
Current Actor Activity
Years Since Best Year
Prior Bedside/Zodiac Participation (1,0)
Prior Experience with Director (1,0)
Age
Age Squared
Minor (1,0)
Woman (1,0)
Year 1971 (1,0)
Year 1972 (1,0)
Year 1973 (1,0)
Year 1974 (1,0)
Year 1975 (1,0)
Year 1976 (1,0)
Year 1977 (1,0)
Year 1978 (1,0)
Intercept
χ
2
Δχ
Degrees of Freedom
1.28***
(0.05)
0.01
(0.01)
0.46**
(0.16)
-0.23
(0.36)
0.06**
(0.02)
-0.00***
(0.00)
-0.11
(0.36)
-0.07
(0.09)
-0.01
(0.18)
-0.23
(0.16)
-0.32†
(0.17)
0.05
(0.16)
0.30†
(0.16)
0.30†
(0.15)
-0.05
(0.15)
-0.00
(0.16)
-3.29***
(0.43)
1.46***
(0.10)
-0.02
(0.02)
4.18***
(0.34)
0.18
(0.67)
-0.06
(0.05)
0.00
(0.00)
-1.14
(1.17)
-0.50
(0.31)
0.05
(0.46)
-0.60
(0.52)
-0.09
(0.43)
-1.83*
(0.73)
-1.15*
(0.53)
-0.14
(0.44)
-1.50**
(0.55)
-1.71**
(0.60)
-3.76**
(1.33)
0.79***
(0.10)
-0.00
(0.02)
3.77***
(0.30)
0.12
(0.56)
0.08†
(0.04)
-0.00†
(0.00)
-0.28
(0.81)
0.27
(0.24)
0.35
(0.49)
0.55
(0.47)
-0.22
(0.50)
-0.94*
(0.46)
-0.55
(0.45)
-0.64
(0.48)
-2.38**
(0.72)
-1.23*
(0.50)
-6.18***
(1.07)
Model 2
E
F
Mainstream Mainstream Bedside/
and Bedside/ Zodiac
Only
Zodiac
Only
0.14*
(0.06)
-0.00
(0.00)
0.39**
(0.13)
0.36**
(0.11)
0.47*
(0.19)
0.25*
(0.10)
1.04**
(0.30)
-0.14**
(0.05)
0.61
(0.43)
0.72*
(0.34)
0.52
(0.47)
-0.13
(0.29)
0.20
(0.19)
-0.03
(0.03)
0.57
(0.43)
0.80**
(0.27)
-0.89
(0.69)
-0.34
(0.37)
1.14***
(0.05)
-0.02*
(0.01)
0.42*
(0.17)
-0.35
(0.36)
0.04*
(0.02)
-0.00**
(0.00)
-0.22
(0.37)
-0.13
(0.09)
-0.01
(0.18)
-0.22
(0.16)
-0.37*
(0.17)
0.00
(0.17)
0.28†
(0.17)
0.32*
(0.16)
-0.02
(0.16)
0.02
(0.16)
-2.90***
(0.42)
1.25***
(0.09)
-0.06**
(0.02)
3.95***
(0.36)
-0.24
(0.68)
-0.08
(0.05)
0.00
(0.00)
-1.05
(1.12)
-0.47†
(0.28)
-0.01
(0.48)
-0.52
(0.51)
-0.14
(0.44)
-1.95*
(0.77)
-1.23*
(0.55)
-0.06
(0.44)
-1.41*
(0.55)
-1.68**
(0.61)
-3.81**
(1.37)
0.74***
(0.10)
-0.01
(0.02)
3.65***
(0.30)
-0.04
(0.57)
0.06
(0.04)
-0.00
(0.00)
-0.26
(0.86)
0.18
(0.26)
0.36
(0.49)
0.60
(0.47)
-0.19
(0.50)
-0.95*
(0.47)
-0.57
(0.45)
-0.62
(0.49)
-2.38**
(0.73)
-1.25*
(0.50)
-6.01***
(1.07)
1218.20***
1419.55***
48
201.35***
66
2
a
D
Robust standard errors in parentheses, two-tailed tailed tests, † p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
67
2
χ
Contrasts (Full Model)
D=E
D=F
E=F
8.51**
0.10
7.59**
7.49**
1.11
4.74*
0.22
0.15
0.01
1.12
2.52
0.05
1.73
2.58
0.26
0.49
1.61
3.42†
1.89
17.26***
22.48***
3.50†
0.11
3.26†
112.57*** 127.82***
0.68
0.03
0.24
0.06
4.89*
0.16
5.17*
5.52*
0.10
5.12*
0.55
0.00
0.26
1.44
1.41
4.72*
0.00
0.53
0.32
0.56
2.85†
2.54
0.25
0.73
0.01
6.36*
4.12*
1.32
7.62**
3.27†
0.79
0.77
3.56†
0.77
6.36*
10.47**
1.21
7.60**
6.06*
0.31
TABLE 4
OLS REGRESSION: EFFECT ON TICKET SALES (SQRT) OF FOREIGN PORNOGRAPHIC FILMS
HAVING NON-PORNOGRAPHIC FILM TITLES (1970-90)a
Model 1
All Foreign Pornographic Films
Model 2
Minus Emmanuelle & Report Films
Non-Pornographic Film Title (1, 0)
10.78**
(3.84)
7.21*
(3.52)
Northern Europe (1, 0)
25.17***
(5.66)
7.13
(4.68)
18.35***
(2.10)
20.87***
(5.33)
0.70
(4.92)
17.59***
(1.95)
-0.96***
(0.09)
24.61***
(10.90)
-0.91***
(0.09)
27.46**
(10.18)
0.26
512
36.05***
0.26
482
35.44***
Southern Europe (1, 0)
Year (1970 = 0)
2
Year
Intercept
Adjusted R2
Observations
F (7, Observations minus 8)
a
Standard errors in parentheses, two-tailed tailed tests, † p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001; USA is
comparison country (305 films); Northern Europe is Sweden (9 films) and West Germany (71 films); Southern Europe
is France (115 films) and Italy (12 films).
68
FIGURE 1
ILLUSTRATIVE FILM POSTERS
‘Brand-Børge Rykker Ud’
[Fire-Børge to the Rescue]
1976
‘Per’
[Per]
1975
69
FIGURE 2
IDENTITY NETWORKS 1970-1978
Panel A: Text Codes
Drama
Comedy
Panel B: Text, Graphic Style, Thematic Content, and Female Nudity Codes
Comedy
Drama
Pornography
Bedside/Zodiac
Olsen Banden
70
71
1
1974
Based on text, graphic style, thematic content, and female nudity codes
Bedside/Zodiac
Pornography
1970
FIGURE 3
BIYEARLY IDENTITY NETWORKS 1970-19761
1976
1972
72
Multiplier of Unobserved Base Rate
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
11
12
13
Position-based Status of Actor/Actress
7
14
15
16
17
18
Multinomial Model:
Participation in Bedside/Zodiac Only
Multinomial Model:
Participation in Mainstream Only
Multinomial Model:
Participation in Mainstream and Bedside/Zodiac
Binary Model:
Participation in Bedside/Zodiac
FIGURE 4
PREDICTED MULTIPLIER: PARTICIPATING IN BEDSIDE/ZODIAC FILMS
19
20
73
Number of Tickets Sold (Thousands)
0.10
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0.00
125
100
75
50
25
0
1978
0.12
150
1977
0.14
175
1976
0.16
200
1975
0.18
225
1974
0.20
250
1973
0.22
275
1972
0.24
300
1971
0.26
325
1970
0.28
350
0.32
0.34
0.36
0.38
0.30
Marketshare
75 Percentile
Zodiac Film
Bedside Film
0.40
375
400
425
450
475
500
FIGURE 5
BEDSIDE/ZODIAC AVERAGE ATTENDANCE AND MARKETSHARE
Marketshare
74
Average Number of Tickets Sold (Thousands)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
Pornographic Films
Bedside/Zodiac
Mainstream Films
218.97***
-19.53
-19.44
-28.83
87.49
67.10
391.94***
215.00**
279.35***
-210.59*
-119.43*
Adjusted R2: 0.35
Observations: 168
F (10, 157): 8.49***
* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001
Constant
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
Pornographic Films
Mainstream Films
OLS Regression: Number of Tickets (Sqrt)
FIGURE 6
DIFFERENT GENRES AT THE BOX OFFICE
75
Number of Pornograhic Films
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
a
Northern Europe is Sweden and West Germany; Southern Europe is France and Italy.
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991
Northern Europe
Southern Europe
USA
FIGURE 7
FOREIGN PORNOGRAPHIC FILMS 1970-1991a
76
1972
1976
1971
1975
1977
1973
APPENDIX
OLSEN-BANDEN FILM POSTERS
1978
1974