I always thought that the piece of the world best suited to orthodox Marxist analysis was making of movies.
Conceiving of movie making and changes in movie making as modes of production and as social systems probably is the best way to understand how a movie gets made. Classical Hollywood modeled itself on the factory system. A director such as Ingmar Bergman, could be looked at as a medieval craftsman with his own apprentices, etc. The modern "independent" film-maker can be seen as a post-industrial contractor.
Or look at the manufacture of the "Star System" from silent days until today. The star system was a way to create commodified personae that functioned as a faux "Aristocracy" replacing the old Aristocracy and diverting attention from those who were the economic aristocrats. What better way to illustrate the "fetishism" of commodities and its mystifications? The evolution of movie technology also often revolutionized the ways movie were made destroying one system after another. If you look at movie making from the point of view of the kinds of institutions and organizations that produce the movies suddenly the landscape surrounding the individual movie makers becomes quite clear.
By the way Carrol, Bergman often used the same comparison as you did in one of these threads. He compared the process of making a film to building a medieval cathedral. The comparison is both apt and wrong. Apt because it is obvious that movie making is a vast collective enterprise. Wrong because building such cathedrals were often multi-generational enterprises funded to promote local pride. Ironically, Bergman is one director who comes close to being an author of the films he directs, writing the screenplay, involved in every aspect of the process, using his own "theatrical" company, etc.
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