When Technology Shapes Creativity: VFX Innovation, and the Rise and Fall of a New Cinematic Genre

• In Event: Production of Culture Perspectives

Abstract

This study examines how the introduction of VFX technologies in the film industry has reshaped the industrial landscape, contributed to the emergence of a new genre, and deepened inequalities in both economic returns and artistic prestige. Classic theory on cultural production argues that the symbolic elements of culture are shaped by the social systems within which they are created, distributed, and evaluated (Peterson & Anand, 2004), and treats technology, industry structure, markets, and occupational careers as parallel social forces that shape symbolic goods. Yet the bulk of empirical evidence on genre emergence to date has been developed within the category/categorization framework (Kim & Askin, 2024; Lena & Peterson, 2008; van Venrooij, 2015), focusing on how reactions from markets, critics, and the press enable or prevent the survival and prosperity of artistic innovations (demand-side mechanisms), while offering comparatively limited attention to the supply-side processes through which new genres are produced and institutionalized. In this paper, we explore another facet of this story by examining how technologies can serve as a critical supply-side driving force of genre emergence. We use VFX technologies as a case to highlight how technological change can disrupt cultural industries and to discuss its sociological implications for inequality. Using computational methods, we offer one of the first systematic, large-scale quantitative examinations of this topic.

Author

• Likun Cao, Purdue University