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The Battle of the Crater in Recent Fiction

Stephen Cushman

in Cold Harbor To the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign

Stephen Cushman extends Levin’s coverage with an examination of the Crater in recent fiction and film. Using Charles Frazier’s best-selling Cold Mountain (1997), Anthony Minghella’s cinematic version ... More

Stephen Cushman extends Levin’s coverage with an examination of the Crater in recent fiction and film. Using Charles Frazier’s best-selling Cold Mountain (1997), Anthony Minghella’s cinematic version of the novel (2003), Duane Schultz’s Glory Enough for All (1993), and Richard Slotkin’s The Crater (1980), Cushman, who is a poet and a historian, explores stylistic choices, differences between written and spoken language in the 19th century, the challenge and potential reward of mining historical sources to create fictional treatments, and the importance of audience. Cushman’s discussion of Slotkin’s handling of black characters and interweaving of historical, literary, and political sensibilities has implications far beyond the topic and texts of the essay.Less

Conclusion The public face of film translation history

Jean-François Cornu

Carol O’ (ed.)

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

This concluding chapter goes beyond summing up the main issues addressed in the volume. It emphasises how its methodology was designed to foster an awareness of the significant stakes of film ... More

This concluding chapter goes beyond summing up the main issues addressed in the volume. It emphasises how its methodology was designed to foster an awareness of the significant stakes of film translation history for film history in general. It provides further leads to expand and deepen our knowledge of translated films as essential elements of film history and the film-going experience. A core element of the volume, key archival issues include the accurate identification and cataloguing of prints of translated films: silent films with localised intertitles, dubbed and subtitled versions of talking films. The editors remind the readers how they intend the volume to be a first step in identifying the material aspect of film translation history, and sharing the findings and related excitement with the general public.Less

The Private Life of the Prime Minister? Politics, Drama and Documentary in Pääministeri and Palme

Anneli Lehtisalo

in Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Cultures in the Global Marketplace

Palme and Pääministeri can be considered exceptional films in their respective national contexts. Politics and public figures have not been a typical subject for contemporary feature films in Sweden ... More

Palme and Pääministeri can be considered exceptional films in their respective national contexts. Politics and public figures have not been a typical subject for contemporary feature films in Sweden or in Finland, although similar topics have thrived in Anglo-American media culture. Films like The Deal (UK, 2003), Looking for Fidel (USA, Brazil, 2004), The Queen (UK, France, Italy, 2006) and Margaret (UK, 2009) have depicted the political past and present by portraying the experiences or actions of known politicians in different generic modes, such as documentary dramas, documentaries and fictional biographical films. The film Palme differentiates itself in the Swedish context with its extremely controversial main character and sensitive topic. In Finland, as well, politicians have rarely been depicted in recent years. The documentary drama Pääministeri exemplifies such Finnish films. Although the docudramatic mode was not unprecedented in Finland, Pääministeri exemplified a new, international trend in television production by depicting a dramatised account of a living person and a relatively recent political incident.Less

‘Asking the Audience’: Quiz Shows and Their Viewers

Su Holmes

in The Quiz Show

Although quiz shows often encourage us to ‘play’ along, and they encode the participation of the audience into their textual form, there have been virtually no audience studies in this sphere. This ... More

Although quiz shows often encourage us to ‘play’ along, and they encode the participation of the audience into their textual form, there have been virtually no audience studies in this sphere. This chapter seeks to address this neglect. Moving from the early broadcast origins of the quiz show up until the advent of ‘interactive’ television, it considers the ways in which the viewer at home has been encouraged to participate. It then moves on to explore how fan cultures on the internet offer insights into audience interaction with the quiz show (and its cultural politics). But as such fans are also often contestants, the chapter returns to the questions of ‘performance’ and ‘authenticity’ examined in Chapter 5.Less

‘Desperately Seeking the Audience’: models of audience reception

Kristyn Gorton

in Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion

This chapter considers how we can understand the term 'audience' and critically outlines some of the ways in which the audience has been approached, theorised and researched. It argues that the ... More

This chapter considers how we can understand the term 'audience' and critically outlines some of the ways in which the audience has been approached, theorised and researched. It argues that the history of audience research is characterised by a division between powerful media and powerful viewers; that is, between understanding the media as capable of influencing and therefore affecting viewers and understanding viewers as capable of influencing and therefore affecting the media. This chapter also includes new developments in audience research.Less

The Shanghai Painted Fan: Form, Format, and Function

Roberta Wue

in Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai

Addresses Shanghai painting through the fashionable painted fan. Often overlooked because of its modest size and ambitions, the fan’s identity as a mobile image and object of self-adornment boosted ... More

Addresses Shanghai painting through the fashionable painted fan. Often overlooked because of its modest size and ambitions, the fan’s identity as a mobile image and object of self-adornment boosted its popularity in late Qing Shanghai, appealing to consumer tastes for flamboyant display and conspicuous consumption. This chapter examines the ways in which the painted fan embodied Shanghai School painting through the use of popular subjects, dynamic styles and compositions, and its fusion of accessory and artwork. The fan is also examined as a fashionable and sought-after commodity, retailed and distributed through Shanghai’s glamorous fan and letter-paper shops, contributing to the growth of the city’s vigorous art market for an urban middle-class clientele.Less

Introduction

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

The cusp of the 1980s and 1990s saw the crystallisation in the United Kingdom of a debate — or, more precisely, a critique — which rapidly came to dominate academic discussion of recent cinematic ... More

The cusp of the 1980s and 1990s saw the crystallisation in the United Kingdom of a debate — or, more precisely, a critique — which rapidly came to dominate academic discussion of recent cinematic representations of the past, particularly but not solely in the British context: the critique of so-called ‘heritage films’ or ‘heritage cinema’. This book explores, by empirical means, the scholarly lacuna around the audiences who watch and enjoy heritage films. The book's primary source for this purpose is the Heritage Audience Survey, a questionnaire-based study conducted in the late 1990s to generate an analysis of the demographic characteristics and social identities, film viewing habits, film tastes, and wider attitudes and pleasures of 92 members of the UK film audiences for period films.Less

The Heritage Audience Survey: Methodology and Issues

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

This chapter investigates contemporary audiences for period films, specifically, the Heritage Audience Survey participants, in the United Kingdom from a range of perspectives. It describes the ... More

This chapter investigates contemporary audiences for period films, specifically, the Heritage Audience Survey participants, in the United Kingdom from a range of perspectives. It describes the development, design, methodological rationale and practicalities (and limitations) of the Heritage Audience Survey itself. In view of the centrality of class ideologies and matters of class culture, the wider components of identity and the formation of middle-brow ‘good taste’ to the heritage-film debate and its assumptions about film audiences, a defining feature of this book is that it is as interested in the ‘intertextual organisation’ of the audience members it studies as it is in their readings and uses of heritage films. The survey is simultaneously a study of respondents' current and recent film viewing habits, film tastes and attitudes in the late 1990s, but one which is able to situate these historically and contextually in relation to the cinematic and cultural-political context of the 1980s heritage debate, the late 1990s ‘present’ of the survey, and points in between.Less

Demographics and Identities: A Portrait of the Survey Respondents

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

This chapter analyses the demographic backgrounds of respondents of the Heritage Audience Survey and a wider range of indicators of identity, with some comparative reference to the demographics of ... More

This chapter analyses the demographic backgrounds of respondents of the Heritage Audience Survey and a wider range of indicators of identity, with some comparative reference to the demographics of the wider cinema audience in the 1990s (and the thinner existing evidence on the demographics of film audiences in the United Kingdom for specific period films) as established in the limited publicly available industry sources. The chapter identifies the distinguishing features of the two subsamples, highlighting those most resonant in relation to the heritage-film debate, and those of likely relevance in interpreting and understanding respondents' particular tastes, orientations and attitudes in relation to period films. Mindful of the very specific links between class fraction, class identity and educational capital on the one hand, and ‘cultural capital’, cultural preferences and formation of film tastes on the other, this chapter takes an interest in a varied range of indicators of respondents' identities — from self-reported sexual orientation to minutiae of schooling, university types, literary adaptations and heritage films, and occupational cultures.Less

Respondents' Film Viewing Habit(u)s

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

The critique of heritage cinema has demarcated ‘heritage films’ as institutionally and culturally distinct from the mainstream in particular ways that mark enjoyment of them as a taste, and a sphere ... More

The critique of heritage cinema has demarcated ‘heritage films’ as institutionally and culturally distinct from the mainstream in particular ways that mark enjoyment of them as a taste, and a sphere of consumption, characterised by a degree of (self-conscious) separation from commercial popular film/culture. This chapter examines the general contours of Heritage Audience Survey respondents' cinemagoing and film viewing habits — or more precisely, their film habitus, focusing on period films. It discusses respondents' frequency of cinemagoing and viewing of films in other media, the relative place of commercial and art cinema venues within their habitus — and, indeed, whether they saw films at the cinema at all (which a significant contingent of older respondents in the National Trust subsample did not).Less

Patterns of Film Taste: Period and Non-Period Films

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

This chapter explores the specifics of Heritage Audience Survey respondents' tastes in films: both in general and with reference to period films. It looks at profoundly contrasting patterns between ... More

This chapter explores the specifics of Heritage Audience Survey respondents' tastes in films: both in general and with reference to period films. It looks at profoundly contrasting patterns between the Time Out and National Trust subsamples in terms of film familiarity, adventurousness of film viewing and film tastes. Notwithstanding their ostensibly ‘uncinematic’ characteristics, did some respondents enjoy heritage films in the context of popular cinema tastes, or as part of a more informed cinephilia by others? How many films (from lists presented in the questionnaire) they recalled seeing across both period and non-period films? The majority of listed films were placed into classificatory groups — not divulged to respondents — for the purpose of analysing film tastes. The chapter considers two final indicators of patterns of ‘heritage’ film taste: the numbers of films directed by James Ivory and seen by respondents and the numbers of listed benchmark 1980s to mid-1990s film and television adaptations from Jane Austen novels they had seen.Less

Audience Pleasures, Attitudes and Perspectives 1: Visual Pleasure and ‘Authenticity’, Engagement and Escape

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

This chapter looks at Heritage Audience Survey respondents' self-worded testimonies to explore what these — and wider survey evidence — revealed about their viewing positions, film tastes, attitudes ... More

This chapter looks at Heritage Audience Survey respondents' self-worded testimonies to explore what these — and wider survey evidence — revealed about their viewing positions, film tastes, attitudes and expectations in relation to period films (including heritage films), as well as their dispositions and orientations in relation to a variety of critical questions around ‘heritage film’. Respondents were invited to express their views in their own words in response to open questions asking what they most enjoyed, or did not enjoy, about the period films they watched. This analysis also draws upon two multiple-choice elements in the survey questionnaire: a list of twenty-eight pre-suggested ‘pleasures’ (visual pleasures and pleasures of narrative), which respondents might hypothetically find in period films, and a list of seventy-four attitude statements, expressing a range of views, opinions or positions in relation to period films, ‘quality’ literary adaptations, and the suppositions of existing discourses around these. Finally, the chapter discusses the discourse of authenticity as well as pleasures of engagement and disengagement.Less

Audience Pleasures, Attitudes and Perspectives 2: ‘Quality’, Literary Pleasures, Adaptation and Cultural Value

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

This chapter explores Heritage Audience Survey respondents' conceptions of ‘quality’ in relation to the period films they watched, and their positioning in relation to the ‘literary’ pleasures ... More

This chapter explores Heritage Audience Survey respondents' conceptions of ‘quality’ in relation to the period films they watched, and their positioning in relation to the ‘literary’ pleasures offered by many period films (including, but not solely with reference to, literary adaptations), as well as attitudes and expectations in relation to adaptation itself. The function of period films as a substitute for reading classic novels or factual history, or going to the theatre, was given as a (or the) primary reason why the respondent enjoyed them. In addition to the ‘British cinema’ attitude statement, the questionnaire had pre-suggested two pleasures: ‘seeing leading British actors/actresses at their best’ and ‘pride in seeing British cinema at its best’ — which conflated the notions of ‘quality’ with ‘Britishness’. Many respondents associated American cinema with an inauthenticity not confined to period detail. National Trust subsamples' self-worded replies confirmed that at least some of them did indeed believe that recent, particularly post-1980, British period films and television dramas were superior to those of earlier decades, centrally due to their scrupulous ‘authenticity’.Less

Conclusions: Period Film Audiences, the Heritage Film Debate and Audience Studies

Claire Monk

in Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK

This chapter draws together the most significant points to emerge from an analysis of the ‘heritage film audiences’ — as represented by the two groups who participated in the Heritage Audience Survey ... More

This chapter draws together the most significant points to emerge from an analysis of the ‘heritage film audiences’ — as represented by the two groups who participated in the Heritage Audience Survey — and considers their implications for the debate around heritage cinema. These implications are centred around questions of the coherence and distinct(ive)ness of the ‘heritage film audience’ (or audiences); the related question of how far respondents exhibited a self-identity as period-film viewers; the question of respondents' levels of consciousness or self-consciousness in relation to the heritage-film debate itself; and the question of audience autonomy (that is, how far respondents were able to produce their own distinct audience discourses around period films). This book turns from a sociological focus on the composition and identities of period film audiences, via questions of cultural (pre-)disposition, film consumption practices, and film tastes, to a more interpretative reading of the ‘texts’ presented by ‘respondents’ views and attitudes and, ultimately, their cultural-political positioning in relation to period films.Less

Introduction Theaters of Pardoning

Bernadette Meyler

in Theaters of Pardoning

The introduction draws on theories of genre and existing work in early modern law and literature to define the attributes and explain the significance of theaters of pardoning. Demonstrating the ... More

The introduction draws on theories of genre and existing work in early modern law and literature to define the attributes and explain the significance of theaters of pardoning. Demonstrating the surprisingly significant number of seventeenth-century English plays that end with pardons, the introduction identifies these forms of tragicomedy as theaters of pardoning. It also emphasizes how the historical interrelations among the institutions and actors of law, drama, and politics in seventeenth-century England brought conceptions of pardoning from theater to law court to palace and back.Less

Familial Address and the Aesthetics of Lunli

Jing Jing Chang

in Screening Communities: Negotiating Narratives of Empire, Nation, and the Cold War in Hong Kong Cinema

Chapter 4 examines the didactic message promoted by Hong Kong’s left-leaning Cantonese filmmakers (including the Union, Xinlian, Overseas Chinese and Hualian) through their lunlipian (Family ... More

Chapter 4 examines the didactic message promoted by Hong Kong’s left-leaning Cantonese filmmakers (including the Union, Xinlian, Overseas Chinese and Hualian) through their lunlipian (Family melodrama or social ethics films). In particular, I argue that the pedagogical work of lunlipian was not merely through narratives of a reconfigured Confucian family, but also through the audience-hailing effect of marketing, which constructed cinemagoers as members of a collective family in Hong Kong’s postwar community. The critical intervention of this chapter is to unpack the usage and function of lunlipian from contextual, critical, and textual perspectives, and to theorize the social function of lunlipian as a didactic familial address that contributed to the postwar process of screening community. In theorizing the lunli mode of storytelling, this chapter suggests a new periodization of Cantonese golden age cinema that presents an alternative narrative, from one of aesthetic rupture and commercial decline, to one of moral and didactic continuity and industrial adaptation. Screening community during the 1960s therefore is constituted as a negotiated site of spectatorship as well as a strategy of audience address.Less

Tubular Genealogy I: Race, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Identities in Family History Television and Related Practices

Christine Scodari

in Alternate Roots: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Genealogy Media

The third chapter interprets discourses of post-identity, race/ethnicity, and intersections with gender and class in terms of salient issues and historical contexts such as slavery, Jim Crow, ... More

The third chapter interprets discourses of post-identity, race/ethnicity, and intersections with gender and class in terms of salient issues and historical contexts such as slavery, Jim Crow, internment, and similar circumstances represented in 21st century family history TV and its reception. Reception is analyzed via ethnographic (including virtual-ethnographic) investigation. The chapter incorporates auto-ethnographic experiences and insights with regard to the processes, tools, and outcomes of genealogical practices, considering their bearing on the investigation’s critical trajectory, as well as the implications of racial, ethnic, and intersected modalities of identity as inferred from genealogical documents.Less