In my film theories class, taught by Professor Wagner, cinema is dealt with as the grand subject of the 20th century. It's kind of hard to think of cinema now as the central pillar of American society, but it once dominated not only American culture but was watched almost by nearly all the people and nations in the world that could afford it. In the 1940's, right before and after WWII was when cinema spectatorship in America peaked, attracting something like 40 million people EVERY WEEK out of the population of 90 million (I don't remember the exact statistic, but I believe it was roughly half the American population). In the 40's, cinema defined culture as much as culture defined cinema.
National ticket sales crashed in the 50's and 60's with the breakup of Hollywood monopolies, the coming of television, and many other reasons. Ticket sales regained some ground in the 70's and have been relatively constant in recent years, but nothing near the glory of the golden years.
Our homework mainly consists of reading the major film theorists of the last 100 years. Many theorists think of cinema as an educational tool, not in the sense of multiplication tables but cinema teaches people how to behave and how to "be" people. Think of it for a second, when we include the other media forms--such as TV and the internet--that all serve the singular purpose that cinema used to hold, that of mass entertainment, you begin to realize how much media has affected your perceptions of the world and personal identity. Think of the major events that happen in your life: forming and maintaining friendships and romantic relationships, working at a job, traumatic events such as national or natural disasters or the loss of someone close ... As people, we probably experienced all these things maybe hundreds of times on TV and movies before we experienced them in real life. It becomes obvious that media influences every aspect of our lives, maybe even more than our experiences in real life. I guess that's why contemporary American society is often called a media society.
In lecture, Prof. Wagner stated that it was cinema that taught people how to deal with the mass of sensory stimuli that we now navigate so easily. It was cinema that first bombarded people's senses with tons of visual and audio information, and as people have grown more accustomed to so much stimuli, the cinema has also grown more overflowing with information, mostly through the increased frequency of cutting and enabling technologies in visual and audio special effects. What we now see as ordinary everyday tasks, such as driving fast in heavy traffic, or surfing the internet while listening to music and aiming friends, are really only possible after the education of cinema and other media that have taught us how to deal with such overwhelming amounts of information. In general, people 150 years ago didn't interact with their surroundings in ways that included any where near as much relevant information as we do now.
