Location and spread in shot length distributions

The typical characteristics of the distribution of shot lengths in a motion picture are:

• The distribution is decidedly non-normal – it is positive skewed. Although it is possible to conceive of a film that would have a normal or even a negative distribution of shot lengths this does not occur in fact, and I have never come across any film in which the shot lengths were not positively skewed.
• The distribution will include some outlying data points that are far from the average value (the mean or the median shot length).

An additional characteristic worth exploring is the linear relationship between the average value of a shot length distribution and the spread of the data around that value. Figures 1 to 6 plot the average value (the mean and the median shot lengths) of the 50 Hollywood films I used in my analysis of the impact of sound technology on film style (20 silent and 30 sound) against three measures of absolute dispersion – the standard deviation, the interquartile range, and the median absolute deviation. The coefficient of determination is given as a measure of the linear relationship between location and spread. The correlation coefficients for all the comparisons are significant at the 95% level.

Figure 1 Mean shot length v. standard deviation for silent Hollywood films produced from 1920 to 1928 inclusively (n = 20).

Figure 2 Median shot length v. interquartile range for silent Hollywood films produced from 1920 to 1928 inclusively (n = 20).

Figure 3 Median shot length v. median absolute deviation for silent Hollywood films produced from 1920 to 1928 inclusively (n = 20).

Figure 4 Mean shot length v. standard deviation for sound Hollywood films produced from 1929 to 1931 inclusively (n = 30).

Figure 5 Median shot length v. interquartile range for sound Hollywood films produced from 1929 to 1931 inclusively (n = 30).

Figure 6 Median shot length v. median absolute deviation for sound Hollywood films produced from 1929 to 1931 inclusively (n = 30).

In general the linear relationship between location and spread for these films is evident, but may be quite weak. The strongest linear relationship occurs between the median shot length and the median absolute deviation, and the strength of these relationship increases from the silent to the sound era. In both cases there is a substantial proportion of the variance that is unexplained, but overall films with greater median shot lengths exhibit greater variation in their shot lengths.

The relationship between the mean shot length and the standard deviation shows weaker linearity, with approximately one-third of the variance unexplained for both groups of films although there is a small increase in the strength of the relationship from the silent to the sound eras.

The relationship between the median and the interquartile range (IQR) for the sound films shows a weak linear relationship for the sound films, but only a very weak relationship for the silent films – although the r is significant (t [18] = 4.1090, p = 0.0007), over half the variance in the IQR is unexplained. R² for the silent films is 0.4840 and for the sound films is 0.7490, though why such a difference should occur for this relationship and not for the others is a mystery. There is clearly something about the relationship between the median shot length and the interquartile range in the sample of silent films that requires further exploration.

We can say that for Hollywood films of the 1920s and early silent period the average shot length of a motion picture increases so does the variability of shot lengths. As expected, for skewed data sets the linear relationship between measures that do not rely on a mathematical relationship to the mean are the strongest. It seems likely that other groups of films will exhibit similar relationships between measures of location and spread (although perhaps not for the median and the IQR), but it will take further studies to test this hypothesis.

From science to chaos with David Cronenberg

The cinema typically places women on the side of a chaotic and capricious nature in opposition to the male dominated social hierarchy that is enforced through military power and what Carol Clover terms ‘white science:’ ‘Its representatives are nearly always males, typically doctors, and its tools are surgery, drugs, psychotherapy, and other forms of hegemonic science’ (1992: 66). In the science fiction films of David Cronenberg science and technology represent attempts to resist the tendency towards ever-increasing chaos. Medicine, surgery and psychotherapy are the tools that are used to preserve the integrity of the human mind and body, and are exclusively employed by men and (typically) directed towards women. However, these attempts are futile as the American chemist G.N. Lewis stated in his interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics: ‘when any actual process occurs it is impossible to invent a means of restoring every system concerned to its original condition.’ The products of science become something new that breaks free of their scientifically generated order. As Linda Nochlin states, ‘The most potent natural signifier possible for folly and chaos [is] woman unleashed’ (1991: 35). What is interesting about Cronenberg’s films is that he views the failure of science and the unleashing of chaos as creative acts.

Science and technology

As an example of this moment of failure/creation of science we might look at Rabid. The film begins with a motorcycle accident in which Hart and Rose are severely injured. In order to save Rose’s life Dr. Dan Keloid performs emergency plastic surgery. The aim here is clearly the preservation of life but as a result of the operation Rose becomes a new biological creature. Rose wakes to find that she can only digest blood, which she extracts from her victims through a penile barb that has developed in her armpit. Rose, as a product of the surgical process, breaks free of the realm of science as she can no longer be classified or controlled within a laboratory environment. In fact Rose quite literally escapes the world of science as she goes on the run spreading a form of rabies throughout Montreal. Science has, by accident, created the carrier of the disease.

Such emergent evolution is not restricted to the human form as it can also be seen to transform technology. The telepods in The Fly are intended, like H.G. Wells’ time machine, to ‘end all concepts of transport, of borders and frontiers, of time and space.’ The result is not that intended by the scientist, but, as Scott Bukatman points out, Brundle is successful: ‘the dissolution of geographic boundaries yields before the breakdown of genetic and bodily hegemony … telepathy and physical projection break down the dichotomy between public and private; subjectivity and temporality collapse; man merges with machine: we have arrived in a zone without borders’ (1993: 268). Technology is as unpredictable as nature despite our efforts to control it. A device designed for tele-transportation becomes a gene-splicer, its womb-like mechanical beehives fusing the scientist and fly to create something new. As Cronenberg describes it, ‘instead of having a defective machine, we have a nicely functioning machine that just has a different purpose’ (Newman 1989: 116). This is echoed by Brundle when he says, “I seem to be stricken by a disease with a purpose.”

Alternatively scientists such Professor Brian O’Blivion and Dr. Paul Ruth become involved in the efforts of the military-industrial complex to control North America and to dictate the social order. Ruth administers the drug ephemerol to individuals who subsequently develop telepathic powers. As an employee of Consec Ruth is also recruiting these ‘scanners’ for intelligence work. The theme here is one of control through science linked to the military. Ephemerol gives relief to the voices in the heads of the scanners but in order to ensure a supply they must give themselves over to the Consec plan. However, in Darryl Revok we find a rogue with his own plan, one who cannot be manipulated by Consec. The ability of the military-industrial complex to control society is far from complete, especially where the physical nature of the human mind is concerned. Order is continually breaking down as the scanners turn on their masters inciting a revolt that is as physical as it is political.

The scientist dominates Cronenberg’s films and can be seen to be, in general, a reformulation of Wells’ Dr. Moreau. Dr. Hal Raglan, in The Brood, demonstrates many of the qualities of Moreau in particular. Prendick’s description of Moreau’s physical appearance – ‘his serenity, the touch almost of beauty from his set tranquillity, and from his magnificent build’ (Wells [1896] 1946: 87) – might as easily apply to Oliver Reed as Raglan, and both doctors are dangerously charismatic. Each of the doctors works in isolation fearing society’s response to their controversial methods. Each has a project to encourage the evolution of man by removing the obstacles of emotion and sensation from our development. Through the therapy of ‘psychoplasmics’ Raglan seeks to reintegrate individuals like Nola Carveth into society. In order to do this he has his subjects physically manifest their mental disorders. Moreau works towards his goal through surgery to remove the physical sensations of pleasure and pain. In each case the result is the same. Through the intervention of the scientist nature is populated by monstrosities that break free of the scientific and social order imposed upon them to devour man, and in particular the scientist. As Moreau is killed by his ‘manufactured monsters,’ the identical children of Nola’s brood destroy Raglan. As with Ballard’s scientists, Cronenberg’s figures carry the signature of universal destruction within their own bodies. A disease will carry the name of the scientist, such as Rouge’s Malady, or the scientist will carry the name of a disease, such as Brian O’Blivion, whose name recalls the nova of W.S Burroughs’ fiction [1].

The chaotic woman

The women in Cronenberg’s films typically act as ‘patient zeros,’ with the first manifestations of the disease to be found on the female body or in the female environment. There are two groups of women who fulfil this function. The first contains those women whom we see contract the disease directly as a result of their interaction with science and technology. This infection is not restricted to the female population but within the cinema of entropy is almost always the woman who becomes the carrier of the virus. Notable exceptions are to be found in Stereo where both sexes become transformed by the theories of Dr. Luther Stringfellow and in Scanners where both sexes are again transformed by the drug ephemerol. Those who fit into the first group are to be found in Cronenberg’s films between 1970 and 1980 and those of the second group from Videodrome to the present. In Crimes of the Future the female population of the world is infected with Rouge’s Malady, transmitted through the Doctor’s cosmetic products. Annabelle, the mistress of Dr. Emil Hobbes in Shivers, is infected in a similar manner by the Doctor’s parasites. In Rabid, Rose is contaminated by the emergency plastic surgery she undergoes following a motorcycle accident. It is through the science of ‘psychoplasmics’ that Nola Carveth in The Brood can become the chaotic mother of her bizarre ‘children.’ The Brood is, in many ways, a retelling of Mary Shelley’s play Prosperine (1820), which turns the analogy of female fruitfulness as equal to natural plenitude on its head to draw the accompanying conclusion that female rage leads to universal destruction. As Meena Alexander describes it,

If nature, as the common figure is held female, and if woman’s procreative powers are intimately involved and analogous to the cycles of birth, death and renewal visible in the landscape, then maternal loss must equal natural devastation, and a mother’s rage at the loss of her child can tighten and twist into a vision of universal destruction: ‘Ceres for ever weeps, seeking her child And in her rage has struck the land with blight’ (1989: 12).

The devastated landscape of Cronenberg’s films is conditioned by the role of the woman and comes to reflect the ‘shape of rage’ felt by Nola at the loss of her daughter to her husband in the same manner as Ceres ‘threatens to cast the whole of created nature back to chaos’, having lost her daughter to the ‘King of Hell’ (Alexander 1989: 13).

The second group consists of those women who have already been infected prior to the beginning of the narrative but who demonstrate the symptoms of entropy. Nicki Brand shows through her decadence that she has been infected and this is seen in the masochistic mutilation of her body. In Dead Ringers, Claire Niveau is biologically mutated with her trifurcate uterus, and in Naked Lunch (1991) Joan Lee is addicted to bug powder. Once infected the process of transmission is the same for both these groups. The virus is communicated by the interaction of male and female. Entropy is a sexually transmitted disease. In those instances where the technology is the dominant method of communicating the virus it is specifically associated to sex. The videodrome is a pornographic arena and the cars of Crash become the focus of sexuality with their metallic forms joining with and amputating human sexual functions.

In Veronica Quaife, in The Fly, we find the embodiment of the woman as an agent of entropy that is specifically related to technology. How she became infected is not explained to us but it is through her interaction with Seth Brundle that the scientist becomes diseased. Veronica’s contagious state is revealed to us early on in the film when she gives Brundle a ride in her car back to his apartment/laboratory. Her driving, the union of woman and heat engine, makes Brundle feel a motion sickness similar to that of Well’s time traveller. Her disruption of his life is total. Through sex she infects the scientist who then transmits the disease to his technology. She awakens Brundle to the flesh and this inspires him to pass on the information to the computer that controls the telepods. She tells Brundle, “I want to eat you up. That’s why old ladies pinch babies’ cheeks. It’s the flesh. It makes you crazy.” Veronica then goes out to buy new clothes for her new boyfriend, who has to this point been the very definition of fashionable order. He is always to be found immaculately and identically dressed from day to day. Veronica, in purchasing a red T-shirt and a leather jacket, disrupts this order and it is noticeable that once infected Brundle wears only those clothes bought for him by Veronica. He sheds the symbols of his order once infected. Veronica is an example of Robert Graves’ white goddess, ‘her word communicates indeterminacy through the poetic idiom’ (Chambers 1992: 106). In the department store scene her editor, Stathis Borans, describes her as a “goddess.” Veronica is able to communicate indeterminacy through her word as a journalist. As in Videodrome the power to control information makes the media a transmitter of the disease. Veronica’s apartment is a testament to her chaotic state, as it lies strewn with debris. Her attitude towards this mess only reinforces this view. She tells Stathis that she is, “very consciously lazy and disorganised.” In this statement it is Veronica herself who states that she is apathetic and suffers from a decay of energy, and that her natural state is one of disorder.

Devolution

We see throughout the Cronenberg’s films a transformation of the human body under the influence of technology and the female. The most startling image of decay occurs in Videodrome with the rapid decomposition of the body of Barry Convex, which goes the way of the second law with his highly ordered biological constitution becoming a disordered mess.

The most recurrent theme of devolution is cannibalism and Cronenberg uses the consumption if the human flesh as a clear indicator that man has degenerated to a state of being ‘less human’ than our ‘ancestors of three or four thousand years ago.’ We see this in Shivers where a woman grabs a passing waiter shrieking “Hungry for love! Hungry for love!” As in Burroughs’ fiction cannibalism is repeatedly linked to sexuality. In Rabid it is the penile barb that Rose uses to drink the blood of her victims. Her physical need is reminiscent of Prendick’s revival after taking a substance that ‘tasted like blood.’ Compare Veronica’s description of the flesh with Burroughs’ sexual cannibals, where the “flesh drives you crazy” and she fantasises about eating Brundle. It is noticeable that these cannibals are all females feasting themselves on male flesh. Here we see Burroughs’ description of woman as a virus given physical form as they consume the male body. The major exception to this comes in The Fly where it is Brundle who turns on Stathis Borans, digesting his foot and arm with corrosive enzymes, but this only occurs after he has been introduced to the flesh by Veronica.

A further manifestation of the devolution of man is the homogenisation of appearance and sexuality. The most obvious example of this transformation in Cronenberg’s films occurs in The Brood. Nola’s “children” are identical in appearance with each possessing the same crude mockery of Candice’s face and dressed in identical clothes. Significantly they posses no sexual organs at all and it is this kind of omni-sexuality that dominates Cronenberg’s conception of the homogenisation of man. As he states, ‘Human beings could swap sexual organs, or do without sexual organs as organs per se, for procreation … The distinction between male and female would diminish, and perhaps we could become less polarised and more integrated creatures’ (quoted in Rodley : 82). We see a change in the bodies of Max Renn and Seth Brundle towards a more feminine state. Max develops an enormous slit in his belly, vaginal in its construction, and Brundle, resistant to an alcohol rub from Tawny, is described as having the “skin of a princess.” This idea of homogenisation also features in Dead Ringers. The Mantle twins are a natural mutation that has produced its own “manufactured monsters.” As gynaecologists they continue this manufacturing process, as Beverly puts it: “we make women fertile.” Beverly, although physically a male, is seen to have many female qualities, least of all his name. The Mantle twins ultimately lose the power to differentiate between each other.

In Crash man is already a technological animal. In a scene reminiscent of O’Blivion’s prophecies we see a cameraman wearing a Steadicam frame. Whereas in Videodrome the television set was to become the retina of the mind’s eye, in Crash the whole body is given over to the function of technology. The Steadicam operator shows us that technology of every kind is transforming our bodies and our functions in subtle ways that we do not even notice. The car crash is one of the most extreme forms of this modification but one that occurs repeatedly and relentlessly. This union of body and technology has given rise to a new species of human as we see in their titles. For example, ‘cameraman,’ or as Catherine refers to one of James’ sexual partners, ‘cameragirl.’ These bio-technological entities represent, like Max Renn and Seth Brundle in their final phases, an updating of Moreau’s ape-man. Cronenberg constantly associates man to the machines that dominate his world. As Leslie Dick has noted the satin bras that appear frequently mirror the shine and the curvature of the bodywork of the cars, in particular the 1955 Porsche 550 Sypder used in the recreation of James Dean’s fatal crash [2]. The stockings and suspenders of Catherine and Helen Rimmington are taken to their technological conclusion in Gabrielle’s callipers. Helen’s leather gloves and James’ jacket gleam like the cars but also recall the all-leather interiors, of Vaughan’s 1963 Lincoln in particular.

Decadence

To the late Victorians decadence was a sure sign of a society in decay. This is also true of Cronenberg’s films, where decadence is most commonly portrayed as sexual excess. In Shivers the revealed aim of Dr. Emil Hobbes is to turn the world into a “beautiful orgy.” As each individual is infected they are transformed into pleasure-driven zombies. Cronenberg throughout the film transgresses the moral codes governing sexuality and violence as the most basic instincts of our bestial ancestors are represented to us. In Videodrome decadence is associated with the ever present pornography and is openly referred to in Masha’s “Apollo and Dionysus” with its bacchanalian excesses. Nicki Brand speaks of living in “over-stimulated times” where stimulation is sought for its own sake. She describes herself as living in a state of heightened stimulation and is regularly dressed in a bright red dress that recalls the videodrome arena.

Cronenberg has been criticised, in particular by Robin Wood (1983: 115-116), for his supposedly anti-liberal representation of sexuality. For Wood, films such as Shivers and Rabid attack the sexual liberation of the 1960s and assume a more conservative position with the horror inflicted upon the participants in Starliner Towers, for example, as punishment for their decadence. However, it must be acknowledged that Cronenberg’s films are, like Ballard’s fiction, descriptive and not prescriptive. Shivers takes the breakdown of social and moral order to its logical extreme and allied with Cronenberg’s views on omnisexuality we approach Sade’s longing for a combination of species where the boundaries of gender no longer have meaning. This crossing of boundaries is not confined to human social/sexual relations, as Sade urges ‘a transgression of the limits separating self from other, man from woman, human from animal, organic from inorganic objects’ (Jackson 1981: 73). Ballard and Cronenberg both take up this theme with the fetishisation of the car in Crash, the television in Videodrome, and the fly and the telepods in The Fly. Shivers should not be regarded as reactionary as it exhibits the falsity of order as a restriction of human sexual impulses. As Rosemary Jackson points out, for Sade, ‘social order, ethics, morality, institutionalised activity, are all revealed as ‘un-natural’ conditions imposed on a natural disorder’ (1981: 74). Dr. Emil Hobbes is Sade’s agent in bringing about the return to disorder, and Cronenberg plays out the decadence of Starliner Towers as the logical conclusion to these principles. Similarly Iain Sinclair has described Crash as a ‘Sadean dance,’ and Ballard has remarked that “Crash is a movie De Sade would have adored” (Sinclair 1999: 62, 69).

Notes

1. On the relationship between horror and evolution in The Island of Dr. Moreau see Redfern (2004a). On the relationship between Burroughs and Cronenberg see my essay on the narrative of Videodrome (Redfern 2004b).
2. In a scene cut from the finished film and taken directly from Ballard’s Crash, Cronenberg specifically made this link between sexuality and the machine. In the screenplay we find the following action: ‘Karen, Catherine’s secretary, a moody, unsmiling girl, is methodically involved in the soft technology of Catherine’s breasts and the brassieres designed to show them off’. See Cronenberg (1996: 6).

References

Alexander, M. (1989) Women in Romanticism London: MacMillan.

Bukatman, S. (1993) Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-modern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press.

Chambers, J. (1992) Thomas Pynchon. New York: Twayne.

Clover, C. (1992) Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. London: BFI.

Cronenberg, D. (1996) Crash. London: Faber & Faber.

Jackson, R. (1981) Fantasy, the Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen.

Newman, K. (1989) Nightmare Movies. New York: Harmony Books.

Nochlin, L. (1991) Women, art, and power, in N. Bryson, M. Ann Holly and K. Moxey (ed.), Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation. Oxford: Polity Press: 13-47.

Redfern, N. (2004a) Abjection and evolution in The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Wellsian: The Journal of the H.G. Wells Society 27 2004: 37-47.

Redfern, N. (2004b) Information and entropy: the disorganisation of narrative in Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Entertext 4 (3) 2004: 6-24.

Rodley, C. (1992) Cronenberg on Cronenberg London: Faber & Faber.

Sinclair, I. (1999) Crash. London: BFI.

Wells, H.G. ([1896] 1946) The Island of Dr. Moreau. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Wood, R. (1983) A dissenting view, in P. Handling (ed.) The Shape of Rage: The Films of David Cronenberg. Toronto: General Publishing: 115-135.

The relative dispersion of shot lengths

Studies comparing the change in shot length distributions in Hollywood films with the coming of synchronous sound have focused on measures of central location – the mean or median shot length of a film. The change in the mean shot length from the silent to sound era has been put at approximately six seconds, although this figure is suspect due to the asymmetrical nature of shot length distributions; while the change in the median shot length has been estimated at 2.9 seconds. Similar attention has not been paid to the change in the dispersion of shot lengths that also occurred in the shift from silent to sound cinema. In fact, it is common for mean shot lengths to be presented with no measures of dispersion at all and this severely hampers any useful interpretation of the results.

In my study of the impact of sound on shot length distributions I noted that the interquartile range of sound films was greater than those of silent films, indicating that there is greater variation in the shot length distributions of the sound films. While this method of comparing the variation of shot length distributions is perfectly fine, it is not perhaps the simplest method and using measures of relative dispersion may prove easier to interpret.

Measures of Relative Dispersion

In order to compare the relative dispersion of shot length distributions, three measures of relative dispersion were calculated for each film from a sample of Hollywood silent films produced from 1920 to 1928 inclusive (n = 20) and from a sample of sound films produced in Hollywood from 1929 to 1931 inclusive (n = 30) (see my earlier study for the descriptive statistics of these films). The mean values of each coefficient for the two samples were compared using a t-test assuming unequal variances. Calculations were conducted using Microsoft Excel 2007 and GraphPad Instat v3.10 (2009).

The three measures of dispersion considered are the coefficient of variation (CV), the quartile coefficient of dispersion (QCD), and the coefficient of median deviation (MD). The relative measures of dispersion for the silent films are presented in Table 1 and for the sound films in Table 2.

TABLE 1 Relative measures of dispersion for Hollywood silent films, 1920 to 1928

TABLE 2 Relative measures of dispersion for Hollywood sound films, 1929 to 1931

Coefficient of variation

The coefficient of variation is the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean:

CV = SD/M

The coefficient of variation for the sound films (M = 1.1912, SD = 0.2319) is greater than those silent films (M = 0.9015, SD = 0.1393), t (47) = 5.5217, p = <0.0001. On this measure of dispersion, the shot lengths of a Hollywood sound film are more dispersed by almost a third (32.14%) than the silent films.

Quartile coefficient of dispersion

The quartile coefficient of dispersion is calculated using the lower (Q₁) and upper (Q₃) quartiles of the shot length distribution:

QCD = Q3-Q1/Q3+Q1

The quartile coefficient of dispersion for the sound films (M = 0.5748, SD = 0.0617) is greater than those silent films (M = 0.4833, SD = 0.0522), t (45) = 5.6409, p = <0.0001. On this measure of dispersion, the shot lengths of a Hollywood sound film are more dispersed by almost a fifth (18.83%) than the silent films.

Coefficient of median deviation

The coefficient of median deviation is the ratio of the median absolute deviation from the median shot length (MAD) to the median shot length [1]:

MD = MAD/Median

The coefficient of median deviation for the sound films (M = 0.5825, SD = 0.0680) is greater than those silent films (M = 0.4735, SD = 0.0473), t (47) = 6.6813, p = <0.0001. On this measure of dispersion, the shot lengths of a Hollywood sound film are more dispersed by almost a quarter (23.01%) than the silent films.

Discussion

All three measures of relative dispersion provide similar results, but the coefficient of median deviation is the most reliable.

While the coefficient of variation makes complete use of the data and is the best understood of measures of relative dispersion, it relies on the mean shot length. As the distribution of shot lengths in a motion picture is typically positively-skewed with a number of outlying data points, the mean shot length is an unreliable statistic of film style. Consequently, the coefficient of variation can be expected to overestimate the dispersion of shot lengths in a film as the mean value is pulled towards the higher end of the distribution.

The quartile coefficient of dispersion is not dependent upon the mean shot length and so provides a more robust estimation of relative dispersion than the coefficient of variation. A drawback is that it uses only a limited amount of information in calculating the coefficient, and as a film may feature shot lengths that are much greater than the upper quartile it may underestimate the actual dispersion of shot lengths.

Like the quartile coefficient of dispersion, the median deviation does not use the mean shot length and can be relied upon as a more robust measure of relative dispersion. The median deviation has an advantage over the quartile coefficient of dispersion in that it uses more of the data by calculating the absolute deviation of each shot length from the median rather than relying on just two positional values. The quartile coefficient of dispersion can be regarded as an estimator of the coefficient of median deviation for the films looked at here.

In conclusion, we can say that with the introduction of synchronous sound to Hollywood in the late-1920s we not only see an increase in the median of the shot lengths of a motion picture, but also an increase in the variation shot lengths of sound films relative to silent films. Using the coefficient of median deviation we can estimate that increase to be of the order of 23%.

Notes

1. The coefficient of median deviation is based on the coefficient of mean deviation, but replaces the average absolute deviation with the median absolute deviation in order to prevent extra weight being given to shots of duration that are unusually long.

Conspiracy and Disaster in Hollywood

Two genres that have been significant in post-war Hollywood cinema are the conspiracy movie and the disaster film. With the end of World War II in the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the nuclear arms race that followed, and the paranoia of the Cold War, it is conspiracy and disaster movies that have voiced America’s deepest fears about its relationship to the rest of the world on the one hand, and the struggle to define what is American and what is un-American at home.

From the point of view of someone interested in how cinema deals with these types of questions these genres are interesting because of the way they occur together and interact. Both genres deal with fundamentally the same problem: that our deepest fears may be realised – that the world is coming to an end and that the person we share our life is not who we think they are. Both these genres deal with anxiety, the prolonged, persistent, irrational belief that something (although we may not know what) is going to happen.

By conspiracy movie I mean a film in which there is some paranoid element that leads us to conclude that the world as we experience it is not the world as it is – films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1954), Seven Days in May (1964), The Parallax View (1974), or Shadow Conspiracy (1997) are good examples of how people are not what they seem, that the US government is ruled by the military, or that through mind control can be used to turn individuals into assassins. Timothy Melley refers to this pervasive strain in American popular culture ‘agency panic:’

An intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy or self-control – the conviction that one’s actions are being controlled by someone else, that one has been ‘constructed’ by powerful agents (2001: 62).

Agency panic provides a model of conspiracy in American culture based around a notion of diminished human agency in which the individual is subject to a broad array of social controls (the conspiracy). Conspiracy theory, in Melley’s view is a defence of the integrity of the self in the face of anxiety about the nature of individual action. As I have discussed elsewhere, the conspiracy movie is characterised by the emotional response of anxiety. Agency panic from The Hidden Persuaders, to the Unabomber’s manifesto, and to Invasion of the Body Snatchers is such an emotional response.

Disaster movies are harder to define as the cause of the disaster may vary considerably, but are characteristic by a certain scale of their events – disasters should be big, especially in Hollywood – or by their magnified impact on a small but largely self-contained social group (i.e. Jurassic Park (1993), Airport ‘77 (1977)). Global Pandemics (Panic in the Streets (1950), Outbreak (1997)), geological disaster (Earthquake (1974), Volcano (1997)), or the complete and utter destruction of the Earth (Armageddon (1997)) are all recurrent topics. There is also a sub-genre of films in which mass transit systems are out to get Americans – having watched films such as Airport (1970), Speed (1994), or even Titanic (1997) is it any wonder that investment in US public transport is lacking and that that car is supreme?

Like conspiracy films, disaster movies put the viewer in the position of being unable to control a situation: earthquakes, swarms of killer bees, meteors cannot be reasoned with. Something terrible will happen and we will not be able to control it. The potentiality of the disaster is the terrible thing – it is this that produces in the viewer a sense of anxiety.

Disaster movies are an essentially earthbound form: they operate, almost by definition, within the realm of the possible. People must believe ‘it’ could – indeed, very well might – happen to them (Roddick 1980: 246).

There is an initial loss of agency in the disaster movie leading to panic – but, and this is where the genre diverges from the conspiracy film, that loss of agency can ultimately be recovered. The world may never be the same again but human beings survive. We will be able to land the plane safely, the meteor will be destroyed (at the cost of Bruce Willis), the aliens will be defeated by a computer virus (which in no way plagiarises The War of the Worlds)  – there will be a plan and that plan will lead to the continuation of the human race.

There are also some films that involve both conspiracies and disasters: Deep Impact (1997), for example, starts off with a journalist trying to uncover what she thinks is a conspiracy but in fact uncovers a disaster (a meteor heading for earth); while in The China Syndrome (1979) California is a risk because of cover-up at a nuclear power plant.

To chart the changing impact of the conspiracy film and the disaster movie I have searched books, databases and the internet to find Hollywood’s output since the end of World War II and have come up with two samples on which I am going to base my analysis of anxiety in Hollywood cinema. I have identified some 93 conspiracy films and 102 disaster movies produced in Hollywood from 1947 to 2006 inclusive (not including TV movies, straight-to-video), and plotting the number of these types of films released by 5 year periods we can see some clear trends (Figure 1). Obviously, cycles of films do not fit neatly into five year periods, and this data set will continue to grow as I carry on the research but it is a useful guide.

FIGURE 1 Hollywood conspiracy and disaster films released from 1947 to 2006

Figure 1 shows that:

• There have been three major cycles of conspiracy movies: the ‘red scare movies’ of the early Cold War (1947-1959, 30 films); the New Hollywood films, in which the individual is threatened by state institutions (1965-1979, 25 films); and from 1990 to 2006, which includes the nostalgia/history films of the 1990s (e.g. JFK (1991)), bog-standard conspiracy genre-fare (e.g. Shadow Conspiracy), and new millennium films that deal primarily with the problematic nature of memory (Paycheck (2003)), identity and agency (The Bourne Identity (2002)), and reality (The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003).
• Although the conspiracy film never disappears, it does drop off markedly in the early 1960s (8 films) and the 1980s (7 films).
• The disaster movie is more of a constant feature of post-war Hollywood cinema, and does not have such large swings in popularity as the conspiracy film. Nonetheless, there are clusters of disaster movies – in the 1950s and 1960s there are 15 and 14 films, respectively; in the 1970s this increases to 28 films; there are 13 films in the 1980s (almost all of which are released in the first half of the decade); before another increase in the 1990s to 24 films (of which 18 come in the second half of the decade); and 8 in the 2000s, with 7 released from 2000-2004.
• The peak years for disaster movies are 1979 (7 films) and 1997 (8 films).
• Of 102 disaster movies, the disasters are: alien invasion (5 films), disease (10 films), man-made disasters (i.e. fire) (5 films), natural disasters (35 films), nuclear disasters (11 films), and disasters involving some form of transport (36 films).
• Of the 35 natural disaster films 3 involve avalanches, 9 involve some type of fauna (including bees (The Swarm (1978) and dinosaurs (Jurassic Park (1993))), 13 are geological (i.e. volcanoes, earthquakes), 5 involve meteors, and 5 involve some form of extreme weather event from tornadoes to hurricanes to global warming.
• Of the 36 transport disaster films 2 involve buses, 10 involve boats, and 24 feature aircraft disasters.

In summary, the genres of the conspiracy film and the disaster movie a born in the early years of the Cold War and their fortunes broadly coincide as their popularity waxes and wanes – particularly in the 1970s and 1990s. That they should occur together is, I think, due to the shared basis in exploring the our anxiety about the nature of the world and the potential for action in the face of events that exceed our control.

References

Timothy Melley, ‘Agency Panic and the Culture of Conspiracy,’ in Peter Knight (ed.) Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Post-war America. New York and London: New York University Press, 2001: 57-81.

Nick Roddick, ‘Only the Stars Survive: Disaster Movies in the Seventies,’ in D. Brady (ed.) Performance and Politics in Popular Drama: Aspects of Popular Entertainment in Theatre, Film, and television 1800-1976. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980: 243-269.

Establishing shots

The establishing shot is unique in the cinema in that it is distinguished not by its scale (e.g., medium long shot, close up) but by its function. Typically, this function is understood to involve the definition of on-screen space and on-screen spatial relationships. For example Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar describe an establishing shot in these terms:

Shot (usually long shot) used near the beginning of a scene to establish the inter-relationship of details to be shown subsequently in nearer shots (Reisz and Millar 1968: 399);

Equally we have the following definition:

A shot, usually at the beginning of a scene, that situates where and sometimes when the action that is to follow takes place before it is broken up through editing. Establishing shots also make clear the spatial relations among characters and the space they inhabit. … Establishing shots are usually long shots or extreme long shots, although not necessarily so (Blandford et al 2001: 86).

These definitions are fine as they go, but they do not capture something important about the role of establishing shots – they emphasise spatial qualities only whilst ignoring the role of establishing shots in organising the viewer’s comprehension of the narrative chain.

Two sequences

Two films provide examples with how sequences begin with a series of shots that do not define the space of the narrative, but nonetheless play an important role in preparing the viewer to receive narrative information.

Little Caesar (1931)

The action at “Little Arnie Gorch’s Casino” is comprised of thirty one shots, and plays an important role in setting up character relations in Little Caesar. The dramatic purpose of this scene is to define the relationship between a number of characters: to identify Rico, who desires the power and wealth of “Diamond” Pete Montana, as a violent liability at a time when the gangsters have been ordered to lie low by “Big Boy.” Rico’s designs on wealth and power are conveyed visually through a close-up shot from Rico’s point-of-view of “Diamond” Pete’s jewels and clothes. Dialogue is used to mark Rico out as a liability, as “Diamond” Pete says of him to Salvatore: ‘It’s guys like this torpedo of yours that cause all the trouble.’

The action of this sequence takes place in three spaces. Firstly, we are in the casino with the gamblers and the owner Little Arnie Gorch, who is informed that “Diamond” Pete is coming to see him (Figures 1-5). Then we move to the office of Little Arnie is the space where “Diamond” Pete first comes across Rico, and he explains that the crime commissioner McClure can’t be bargained with and therefore “Big Boy” has given the order to lie low (Figures 6-9 and 11-22). Finally, it is in the corridor outside the office where “Diamond” Pete and Rico come face to face, setting up the power struggle that will come later in the film (Figures 10 and 23-31).

The relevant narrative information in this scene is presented in the office and the corridor, but neither of these spaces is defined by the use of an establishing shot. The office is revealed to us as Little Arnie Gorch enters to see Salvatore and Rico waiting for him, but at no time during this sequence is there a shot long enough or wide enough to give the spectator an overall sense of the spatial extent of the room or the relationships between characters. At no point in the scene is ‘the inter-relationship of details to be shown subsequently in nearer shots’ established.

However, the scene does begin with two shots that show us we are in a casino and three shots of Little Arnie being informed that a meeting is taking place in his office. Why does the film begin the scene with in a space in which no narrative action will take place before moving to two other spaces, neither of which are established?

Figures 1-5 The opening shots of this sequence from Little Caesar let the audience know where we are and what is happening, but the action will not take place in the spaces we have so far been shown.

Figures 6-22 The scene then goes on to establish that Rico is a loose cannon who could make trouble for the “Diamond” Pete, who has come to tell the gangsters to lie low.

Figures 23-31 In the corridor Rico admires “Diamond” Pete’s finery and images himself taking over Pete’s role.

Pleasantville (1998)

An early sequence in Pleasantville comprises 14 shots (though I have only used 12 here – shots H and I are repeated), and sets up Tobey Maguire’s character as your typical shy high school student. The narrative of the film follows his character’s transformation into a more confident person having been sucked into a 1950s television show. The first seven shots (A-G) are of student’s arriving at school, but do not feature any characters who we will follow through the narrative. In fact, these seven shots reveal no narrative information whatsoever, and there is no dialogue until we see David in shot H. He appears to be asking the girl in shot I out on a date who would seem to be listening intently, but in shot J the distance between these two characters is revealed: David is in fact talking to no-one, and in shot K we see the girl is actually talking to some one else. The final shot of the sequence (L) is a very long shot of the school yard, and perhaps comes closest to the two definitions of the establishing shot given above except that it marks the end of this sequence rather than its beginning.

There is no shot in this sequence that establishes the spatial relationships of the narrative action that is to follow. There is no spatial continuity between shots A through G, and while H through L are spatially related we do not know how they are related to the earlier shots of this sequence.

The dramatic impact of this scene clearly depends on delaying the viewer’s awareness of the spatial distance between David and the object of his affections, but why then does it take so long to set up the sequence with seven shots that tell us nothing in particular about the narrative?

Figures A-H The opening seven shots carry no narrative information, while the remaining shots set up David’s character for the film

The role of the establishing shot

What is going on in these two films? Only shot L in Pleasantville comes close to the definition of an establishing shot, and yet in both sequences we have a series of shots that let the viewer know where we are. While it is certainly a part of the function of these shots (1-5 in Little Caesar, A-G in Pleasantville) to tell the viewer we are here, I think there is also an additional function of orientating the viewer in the narrative chain. These shots carry no narrative information, but they perform an important role in preparing the viewer to expect narrative information. The role these shots play is to alert and orientate the viewer – they say “here is a new sequence, pay attention.” In Little Caesar we also have dialogue to tell us what is going to happen in the rest of the sequence.

These types of preparatory gambits occur in language, and are called prefacing devices. Prefaces comprise a varied class of phenomena in the context of human interaction (gestures, micro-moments of silence, fully formed statements) that occur as prefatory components to bigger things to come (Streeck 1995). The function of a preface is to ‘foreshadow’ or ‘project’ something that comes after them, to bring into play and ‘prepare the scene’ (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; Schegloff 1984). Prefaces enable others to anticipate intended actions and to respond accordingly, thus synchronizing the understanding of the participants (Goody 1995).

This is, I argue, what is happening in the opening five shots of Little Caesar: we are being prepared to receive narrative information through a combination of shots, titles, and dialogue. In Pleasantville, the opening of the sequence is unnecessarily long: the same effect could have been achieved with fewer shots but the delay of the reveal is also important here. The establishing portion of this sequence not only makes the viewer aware that something is going to happen but also contributes to the narrative effect by heightening the viewer’s expectation of events to come.

Shots such as those in Little Caesar and Pleasantville have a role to play in establishing a sequence but they do not meet the definitions of establishing shots given above. An alternative definition of an establishing shot should include the following components:

• The establishing shot occurs at the beginning of a sequence.
• The establishing shot does not necessarily occur in isolation, and we may find that we are dealing with establishing shots in any particular sequence.
• The establishing shot is non-scalar: it is not limited to long or very long shots, and can be of any focal depth and field of view.
• The establishing shot may set up the overall space of a scene that will subsequently be broken down through analytical editing, but this is neither a necessary not a sufficient requirement to define its role in establishing a sequence.
• The establishing shot serves to orientate the viewer to the flow of the narrative by alerting her to the beginning of a new sequence, but does not itself carry narrative information.

Persson (1998: 24) writes that ‘some cinematic conventions … are not totally arbitrary. They are designed with careful consideration to the socio-psychological makeup of the spectator in order to produce specific effects.’ Establishing shots are not arbitrary and have an important role to play in organising the viewer’s attention so that these specific effects may be achieved in the viewer by the film.

References

Blandford, S., B.K. Grant, and J. Hillier (2001) The Film Studies Dictionary. London: Arnold.

Goody, E.N. (1995) Introduction: some implications of a social origin of intelligence in E.N. Goody (ed.) Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Persson, P. (1998) Towards a psychological theory of close-ups: experiencing intimacy and threat, Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media 9: 24-42.

Reisz, K., and G. Millar (1968) The Technique of Film Editing. London: Focal Press.

Sacks, H., E.A. Schegloff, & G. Jefferson (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation, Language 50 (4): 696-735.

Schegloff, E.A. (1984) On some gestures’ relation to talk, in J.M Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds.) Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 266-298.

Streeck, J. (1995) On projection, in E.N. Goody (ed.) Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Prefaces comprise a varied class of phenomena in the context of human interaction (gestures, micro-moments of silence, fully formed statements) that occur as prefatory components to bigger things to come (Streeck 1995). The function of a preface is to ‘foreshadow’ or ‘project’ something that comes after them, to bring into play and ‘prepare the scene’ (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974; Schegloff 1984). Prefaces enable others to anticipate intended actions and to respond accordingly, thus synchronizing the understanding of the participants (Goody 1995).

The global film industry in Poland, 2002 to 2007

The cinemas of the former Eastern bloc countries emerged from behind the iron curtain into a globalising film industry. This post looks at the example of feature film production in Poland that originates outside the country, and explores the range of global connections through incoming autonomous films and co-productions. The results show that while a significant number of these films have been produced in Poland, the range of the countries involved in these productions is limited and reflects the traditional dominance of the global film industry by Hollywood and the major European film industries.

The globalisation of the film industry

While the film industry has always been international, Lorenzen (2007, 2008) identifies the shift to a global film industry as the increasing interconnectedness among firms and the places in which they operate leading to greater integration in four areas: (1) filmmaking has moved beyond its traditional European/North American base to become a globally ubiquitous activity; (2) global consumption is replacing more localised forms of film experience for audiences; (3) production has become globalised as producers look for new creative partnerships and as Hollywood productions have been ‘offshored’ and ‘outsourced’ (Vang and Chaminade 2007) to production centres that offer competitive advantages in the form of reduced costs and/or tax incentives; and, (4) the global forms of organisation have emerged with in the shape of ‘media empires’ that are globally owned and globally active (e.g. Sony, Viacom, News Corporation).

One of the main arguments put forward for the globalisation of the film industry is the increase in co-productions, in which the development of a motion picture is funded by companies based in more than one nation, and where production may take place in more than one nation bring together a multinational cast and crew. Such production arrangements mean that no national identity can be assigned to a film as a cultural product, and, that as a consequence of this, film is a global medium in which limiting notions of nationhood are no longer relevant. The mobility of films which cross international borders (see Higson 2000)

One of the problems with discussing globalisation and the cinema is that analysts tend to focus primarily (if not exclusively) on questions of production. Viewed in the simple terms described above, the globalisation of the film industry is a relatively straightforward process that has seen the spread of film production around the world. However, since the 1940s the film industry has been distribution led, and it is distributors who act as the gatekeepers to film markets. Balio (1996: 27) quotes Harold L. Vogel:

Ownership of entertainment distribution capability is like ownership if a toll road or bridge. No matter how good or bad the software product (i.e., movie, record, book, magazine, TV show, or whatever) is, it must pass over or cross through a distribution pipeline in order to reach the consumer. And like any toll or road bridge that cannot be circumvented, the distributor is a local monopolist who can extract a relatively high fee for use of his facility.

This analogy can be extended from the local to the global, and following the merger of media companies to form vertically and horizontally integrated media empires that operate in markets across the world has led to the emergence of global monopolists who cannot be circumvented. The processes of globalisation that have emerged in the film industry have not fundamentally altered the governance of the film industry, which, Coe and Johns (2004) point out, remains concentrated in a limited number of global media empires that are based in a small, select group of cities comprising Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Even among this select group we can identify an imbalance between the dominance of the American cities and the second tier status of the others in the global film industry.

Poland and the global film industry

As a film industry that has had to develop in the context of globalisation following the demise of the centralised Soviet model, Poland is an instructive example of how the film industry has become globalised without fundamentally changing the nature of the film industry.

Polish film policy since 2005

Film policy in Poland was Cinematography Act of 2005, which created the Polish Film Institute and regulated the funding of film production. A principal objective of this act was to enable Poland to be more successful in attracting films to Poland as well as boosting domestic production, which had been slowly declining to 2004. Two key definitions were introduced: autonomous production – in which a production comes into Poland from outside and does not have a Polish counterpart; and, co-productions with a Polish partner. In both cases, producers are required to register as companies in Poland, and all production activity within Poland is subject to Polish law. While co-productions are typically viewed as undermining the national in a global film industry, it is also important to remember that they are promoted as part of national film policy by creating connections in order to bring investment into a country. Since 2007, Poland has also introduced regional production funds to develop production facilities at a more local level. Additionally, Poland is a member of the pan-European production schemes Eurimages and Media 2007, which also promote cross-border co-productions in the European Union. Like many countries, Poland has sought to place itself within the global film industry as a destination for productions. The schemes directed by the Polish Film Institute are intended to increase the level of production in the country by making funding available either through direct subsidies or indirect tax breaks. Although it is a requirement of a co-production agreement that the non-Polish partner cannot claim exclusive distribution rights, there has not been any attempt to address the nature of motion picture distribution. The Polish Film Institute reports an increase in production from 2006 and a part of this has been an increase in the number of co-productions, but this may be seen as largely a process of modernisation whereby policies that have been successful elsewhere have been adopted (Poland’s film policy is now very similar to that of the UK and many other European countries) and have had the impact of raising production levels relative to the recent past without fundamentally transforming Poland’s position in the global film industry.

Connecting Poland to the global film industry

Data was collected from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) by searching for productions shot in Poland and that were either incoming productions with no local production partner (autonomous productions) or productions which did have such a partner (co-productions). Only feature-length fiction films are included in the sample. Where a film has connections to more than one country (e.g. there is more than one co-producing partner), then it counts once for each country, and so the total number of connections exceeds to total number of productions. A limitation of this data is that it is only able numerate the number of connections between industries, and is not able to give an estimate of the value of these connections by looking at the amount of production spend in Poland of each film.

Data was collected for a total of 52 films produced in Poland from 2002 to 2007 inclusive, of which 30 are co-productions or and 22 are autonomous films. The results are presented in Table 1 and Figure 1.

TABLE 1 Co-productions and autonomous productions to shoot in Poland, 2002-2007

FIGURE 1 Poland in the global film industry, 2002-2007

KEY: AT – Austria; AU – Australia; CA – Canada; CH – Switzerland; CZ – Czech Republic; DE – Germany; ES – Spain; FR – France; IL – Israel; IN – India; IT – Italy; LU – Luxembourg; NL – Netherlands; PL – Poland; RU – Russia; SK – Slovakia; SW – Sweden; UK – United Kingdom; US – United States

The films in the sample have between them a total 72 connections, with co-productions accounting for approximately 60% of these. Although these films connect the Polish film industry to those of nineteen other countries, the range of countries is limited. Fourteen are European countries, and only and Russia and Switzerland are not members of the European Union. These fourteen countries account for 52 connections in total, and of these 34 are from just three countries: France, the United Kingdom, and – most importantly – Germany. Beyond Europe three countries have only a single connection to Poland, while Canada has four and the United States has thirteen of the twenty non-European connections. Only the US and Germany have connections that reach into double figures, and only France and the UK have connections that also number more than five. With more than a quarter of the total, it is clear that Germany is Poland’s most significant co-producing partner and is also an important source of incoming productions. The global reach of film production is, then, somewhat limited to Poland’s immediate neighbours and North America. Although the Polish Film Institute has reported an upsurge in feature film production since 2005, Poland has not become a production hub in the global film industry. It has been a source of locations for films and for co-productions in the immediate area. Beyond the major film producing countries with which it is connected (Germany, the US, France, the UK), the connections tend to one-off events with no sustained relationship.

The results of this brief survey are nothing surprising. Poland finds itself like many countries competing to attract mobile productions in a global film industry and has adopted measures similar to those elsewhere (subsidies, tax breaks, regional production funds). Its relationship to other film industries is determined primarily by the continued domination of the US and (albeit on a smaller scale) if Western Europe. As production costs rise in Poland, or as new territories that are able to offer even cheaper production facilities whilst maintaining production standards, Poland’s number of connections will decrease as productions move elsewhere.

Overall, the global film industry is a lot less globalised than we are led to believe, and while filmmaking may now be a ‘globally ubiquitous activity’ the connections between productions in different parts of the world are essentially limited.

References

Balio, T. (1996) Adjusting to the new global economy: Hollywood in the 1990s, in A. Moran (ed.) Film Policy: International, National, and Regional Perspectives. London: Routledge: 23-38.

Coe, N.M., and Johns, J. (2004) Beyond production clusters: towards a critical political economy of networks in the film and television industries, in D. Power and A.J. Scott (eds) The Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture. London: Routledge: 188-204.

Higson, A. (2000) The limiting imagination of national cinema, in M. Hjort and S. MacKenzie (eds.) Cinema and Nation. London: Routledge: 63-74.

Lorenzen, M. (2007) Internationalization vs. globalisation of the film industry, Industry and Innovation 14 (4): 349-357.

Lorenzen, M. (2008) Creativity at Work: On the Globalisation of the Film Industry, Creative Encounters Working Papers 8.

Vang, J., and Chaminade, C. (2007) Global-local linkages, spillovers, and cultural clusters: theoretical and empirical insights from an exploratory study of Toronto’s film cluster, Industry and Innovation 14 (4): 401-420.

The empirical analysis of film style

The analysis of film style by empirical means – i.e. the use of statistics – is an important part of film studies. It is also an important part of other disciplines – information management, research on emotion, advertising, computational media aesthetics – and this tends to be overlooked by film scholars. This week’s post includes a range of references to the analysis of film style – and most of these can be accessed for free on the internet.

References to books may only be available through Google Books, in which case the previews available may be limited. As a general rule, I have not included film studies texts that refer to statistics of film style unless they deal in some way with methods of analysis. If a piece is available online but only through a subscription service I have not included a link. The links were correct as of the date of posting, but if anyone finds a broken link let me know.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does give a range of papers that bring new approaches to film studies in areas that have not really been explored and which can enable film scholars to link together different fields: just how does the fast cutting of adverts have an emotional impact on consumers? How do we define genres in terms of their quantitative features rather than the qualitative?

Adams B 2003 Where does computational media aesthetics fit? IEEE Multmiedia 10 (3): 18-27.

Adams B, Dorai C, and Venkatesh S 2002 Formulating film tempo: the computational media aesthetics methodology in practice, in C Dorai and S Venkatesh (eds) Media Computing: Computational Media Aesthetics. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 57-79.

Adams B, Dorai C, and Venkatesh S 2000 Role of shot length in characterizing tempo and dramatic story sections in motion pictures, IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia, 13-15 December 2000, Sydney, Australia: 54–57.

Adams B, Dorai C, and Venkatesh S 2000 Study of shot length and motion as contributing factors to movie tempo, 8^th ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 30 October – 3 November 2000, Los Angeles, CA: 353–355.

Adams B, Dorai C, and Venkatesh S 2002 Finding the beat: an analysis of the rhythmic elements of motion pictures, The 5th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, 23-25 January 2002, Melbourne, Australia.

Bordwell D and Thompson K 1985 Toward a scientific film history? Quarterly Review of Film Studies 10 (3): 224–237.

Brandt M 1994 Traditional film editing vs. electronic nonlinear film editing: a comparison of feature films, Nonlinear. NB: There’s no description of the statistical tests used in this study even though it states that the results are statistically significant. As no value for α is given, it is hard to judge what ’statistically significant’ means in this context.

Buckland W 2008 What does the statistical style analysis of film involve? Literary and Linguistic Computing 23 (2): 219-230. NB: This is a review of Barry Salt’s Moving into Pictures (see below), and contains an error (confusing the correlation coefficient for the coefficient of determination) that is not in Salt’s book.

Dorai C and Venkatesh S 2001 Computational media aesthetics: finding meaning beautiful, IEEE Multimedia 8 (4): 10-12.

Dorai C and Venkatesh S 2002 Bridging the semantic gap in content management systems – computational media aesthetics, in C Dorai and S Venkatesh (eds) Media Computing: Computational Media Aesthetics. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1-9.

Elsaesser T and Buckland W 2002 Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis. London: Arnold. NB: The chapter on the statistical analysis of film style is available at the cinemetrics website here.

Fishcer S, Leinhart R, and Effelsberg W 1995 Automatic recognition of film genres, Proceedings of the 3^rd ACM Multimedia Conference, 9-5 November 1995, San Francisco, CA: 295-304.

Fujita K 1989 Shot length distrbutions in educational TV programmes, Bulletin of the National Institute of Multimedia Education 2: 107-116. This paper can be accessed here by clicking on ‘CiNii Fulltext PDF.’

Fujita K 1992 Shot length distrbutions in educational TV programmes and their characteristics, in H Motoaki, J Misumi, and B Wilpert (eds) Social, Educational, and Clinical Psychology. Proceedings of the 22^nd International Congress of Applied Psychology, 22-27 July 1990, Kyoto, Japan: 192. NB: This appears to be a summary of the above paper.

Hanjalic A 2004 Content-based Analysis of Digital Video. Norweel, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Huang H-Y, Shih W-S, and Hsu W-H 2007 A movie classifier based on visual features, in WG Kropatsch, M Kampel, and A Hanbury (eds) Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, 27-29 August 2007, Vienna, Austria: 937-944.

Huang H-Y, Shih W-S, and Hsu W-H 2008 A film classifier based on low-level visual features, Journal of Multimedia 3 (3): 26-33.

Kang H-B 2003 Affective content detection using HMMs, Proceedings of the eleventh ACM International Conference on Multimedia 2-8 November 2003, Berkeley, CA: 259-262.

Kang H-B 2003 Emotional event detection using relevance feedback, Proceedings of the International Conference on Image Processing,  14-18 September 2003, Barcelona, Spain: 721-724.

Kang H-B 2003 Affective contents retrieval from video with relevance feedback, in TMT Sembok, HB Zaman, H Chen, S Urs, and SH Myaeng (eds) Digital Libraries: Technology and Management of Indigenous Knowledge for Global Access. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries, 8-12 December 2003, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: 243-252.

Maclachlan J and Logan M 1993 Camera shot length in commercials and their memorability and presuasiveness, Journal of Advertising Research 33 (2): 57-61.

Mittal A, Fah CL, Kassim A, and Pagalthivarthi KV Context-based interpretation and indexing of video data, in U Srinivasan and S Nepal (eds) Managing Multimedia Semantics. Hershey, PA: IRM Press: 77-98.

Nack F 2002 The future of media computing, in C Dorai and S Venkatesh (eds) Media Computing: Computational Media Aesthetics. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 159-186.

Nothelfer CE, DeLong JE, and Cutting, JE 2009 Shot structure in Hollywood film, Indiana Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science 4: 103-113.

Romatowska A 2004 Pickpocket: A statistical analysis, Offscreen 8 (4).

Rosenbaum J 2000 Is Ozu slow? Senses of Cinema 4.

Salt B 1974 Statistical style analysis of motion pictures, Film Quarterly 28 (1): 13-22.

Salt B 1992 Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, second edition. London: Starwood.

Salt B 2001 Practical film theory and its application to TV series dramas, Journal of Media Practice 2 (2): 98-113.

Salt B 2006 Moving into Pictures: More on Film History, Style, and Analysis. Starwood, London.

Schaefer R 1997 Editing strategies in television news documentaries, Journal of Communication 47(4): 69-88.

Taskiran CM and Delp EJ 2002 A study on the distribution of shot lengths for video analysis, SPIE Conference on Storage and Retrieval for Media Databases, 20-25 January 2002, San Jose, CA.

Tian Q and Zhang H-J 1999 Video shot detection and analysis: content-based approaches, in CW Chen, Y-Q Zhang (eds) Visual Information Representation, Communication, and Image Processing. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc: 227-254.

Tiemans R 2004 A content analysis of political speeches on television, in KI Smith, K Kenny, S Moriarty,  and G Barbatsis (eds) Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. New York: Routledge: 385-404.

Totaro D 2004 Reflections on the Pickpocket statistical analysis, Offscreen 8 (4).

Truong BT and Venkatesh S 2005 Finding the optimal temporal partitioning of video sequences, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, 6-9 July 2005, Amsterdam, Netherlands: 1182-1185.

Tsivian Y 2008 What is cinema? An agnostic answer, Critical Inquiry 34 (4): 754-776.

Vasconcelos N and Lippman A 2000 Statistical models of video structure for content analysis and characterization, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 9 (1): 3–19.

Young C 2007 Fast editing speed and commercial performance, Admap 483: 30-33.

Young C 2007 Fast-working advertising, Admap 484: 32-34.

The impact of sound on film style

This post is the last of three draft papers that apply statistical analysis to questions of film style. This I focus on the impact of sound technology on shot length distributions by examining the change in the median shot length and the interquartile range. You can access the pdf here: Nick Redfern – The impact of sound technology on Hollywood film style, and the abstract is presented below.

Quantitative analyses of the impact of sound technology on shot lengths in Hollywood cinema have claimed that, with the coming of sound, the mean shot length increased from ~5s to ~11s, and that this indicates a major change in film style as cutting rates slowed. However, the mean shot length is not a robust statistic of film style due to the positive skew of the data and the presence of outlying data points in shot length distributions. The median shot length is shown to be a more robust statistic unaffected by shape of shot length distributions, and the impact of sound technology on Hollywood is analysed through looking at the median shot lengths of silent films produced between 1920 and 1928 (n = 20, median = 4.4s [95.86% CI: 3.7, 5.1]) and sound films produced from 1929 to 1931 (n = 30, median = 6.9s [95.72% CI: 5.9, 8.7]). The results show that there is an increase in shot lengths in the early sound era (Mann-Whitney U = 32.5, P = <0.0001, PS = 0.0542), but that this change is much less than that described by studies using the mean shot length (HLΔ = 2.9s [95% CI: 1.8, 4.1]). Looking at the interquartile ranges of the silent films (median = 4.8s [95.86% CI: 4.3, 5.7]) and the sound films (median = 10.7s [95.72% CI: 8.8, 12.1]), we see that there is an increase by HLΔ = 5.6 seconds (95% CI: 4.1, 7.1), indicating that shot lengths in sound films show greater variation than those of the silent era (Mann-Whitney U = 4, P = <0.0001, PS = 0.0067).

As before, I’ll leave this up for a while before submitting it to a journal (if I can find one), so feel free to comment.

Northern Ireland in Divorcing Jack and Wild About Harry

This paper was presented today at the Manchester Centre for Regional History’s Projecting the Region’s Conference at Manchester Metropolitan University.

‘It’s chaos out there …:’ Northern Ireland and the problem of identity in Divorcing Jack (1998) and Wild About Harry (2000)

Hybridity has become a key concept in cultural geography as an interpretive framework for understanding narratives and identities that are resistant to essentialist and essentialising notions of politics and culture (Mitchell 2005). In the study of contemporary British cinema in particular, hybridity has become the central concept in understanding the proliferation of class, racial and ethnic, and gendered and sexual identities and their interaction with British national identity. In this paper I argue that the multiplicity of identities in contemporary British cinema has been accommodated within a discourse of hybridity that defines British national cinema in dynamic terms. However, this concept of a hybrid British cinema has not included Northern Ireland. As in the rest of the UK, multiple identities are a feature of the cinema in Northern Ireland but there are key differences. These issues are explored through looking at two films produced in Northern Ireland at the end of the twentieth century – Divorcing Jack (1998) and Wild About Harry (2000). I argue that in these films the problem of identity in Northern Ireland is represented as the confusion that arises from multiple identities and that no inclusive framework to cope with such multiplicity has yet emerged.

Hybridity and identity in contemporary British cinema

The dominant narrative of hybridisation in contemporary British cinema has been set out by John Hill (1992, 1999), who has argued that the concept of a national cinema should be seen as dynamic and subject to change. Consequently, national cinemas cannot be regarded as being straightforwardly pure, but are necessarily hybrid in that they reflect the diverse nature of the nation itself. For Hill, it is only since the 1980s that a cinema in Britain has emerged that is capable of capturing this diversity. Although this means that the myth of the nation of earlier British films are no longer asserted with confidence, the hybrid cinema that emerged is more British for its diversity. A hybrid British cinema has emerged as a result of the ways in which the British cinema ‘became involved in a cultural politics of “identity” and “difference” and, in doing so, sought to negotiate the complex terrain of class, gender, sexual orientation, “race,” and nationality’ since the 1980s (Hill 1999: xii). It is a cinema that ‘deals with the evolution of a myriad of fluid, complex and sometimes conflicting identities,’ and is comprised of films that are ‘multilayered and complex films, not only in terms of narrative, but also in terms of genre, style, and film form’ (Malik 1996: 211-214). It is a cinema that ‘generates the pleasure of hybridisation in the cinematic form’ by filmmakers who have ‘refused to be bound by a rigid national boundary or a singular (cultural, ethnic or national) identity’ (Malik 1996: 212, 214). It is a cinema in which questions of identity are being played out in ‘the complex post-colonial hybridity of contemporary Britain’ (Brundson 2000: 168); and where those identities are ‘often complex, hybrid and contradictory,’ and the meanings generated tend ‘to be pluralistic, fragmentary and often contradictory rather than ideologically cohesive’ (Monk 2000: 156-157).

Madgwick and Rose write that to ‘understand the United Kingdom in its entirety we must therefore understand its parts – England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland’ (1982: 1), and a regional approach to the nature of identity in the UK has become particularly relevant over the past decade with the re-emergence of the regional agenda in British politics in the late-1980s and the commitment of New Labour to a programme of devolution and regionalization after 1997. The regional has been one of the hottest topics of British politics over the twenty years, and this has begun to be reflected in British cinema studies. A concern with the geography of the cinema in the UK can be seen in the increasing level of interest in the representation of different parts of the UK in British cinema (see, for example, Berry 1994, Dave 2006, Hill 2006, Petrie 2000); the representation of, and attachment to, specific places – the cities (Brundson 2007, Mazierska and Rascaroli 2003: 161-234, Redfern 2005) and landscapes (Redfern 2007a) of the UK; the social and cultural geography of cinema-going (Jancovich et al. 2003); and the regionalisation of film policy (Redfern 2007b). The hybrid figures in this work in the multiple representations of the UK, in the diverse experiences that these representations facilitate, and in the negotiation of multiple identities in British spaces so that the cinematic representation of the UK in contemporary British cinema offers both hybrid experiences of social space and experiences of hybrid social spaces (Malik 2009, Redfern 2006).

The multiple geographies of Northern Ireland

The history of the conflict in Northern Ireland has its roots in the long and complicated political relationship between the British and Irish and Protestants and Catholics, but has been redefined in recent decades by sociologists and psychologists in terms as a cultural conflict involving a clash of national and religious identities (see O’Dowd 2005). Sociological studies have identified a bewildering range of different identities, including (but not limited to) British/Northern Irish, British/Protestant, Catholic/Irish, Catholic/Northern Irish, Irish/Catholic, Irish/Nationalist, Irish/Northern Irish, Northern Irish/British, Northern Irish/Catholic, Northern Irish/Irish, Northern Irish/Protestant, Protestant/British, and Protestant/Northern Irish (Benson and Trew 1995). Such categories make self-identification possible (Lyon 1997), and serve to ‘simplify the environment’ and make it more ‘understandable’ (Bull 2006) – they serve to answer the questions ‘who am I?’ and ‘who are you?’ Equally, they function negatively and are explicitly used to reject a particular set of identities. It is as important for Catholics in Northern Ireland to view themselves as not British as it is to identify themselves as Irish and for Protestants to be British and not Irish (although there are exceptions for both groups).

Brian Graham writes that ‘this dissonance of identity – ultimately the principle impediment to political negotiations on the future of Ireland – reflects the plethora of places and utter lack of consensus that Northern Ireland has become’ (1997: 209). This ‘plethora of places’ is evident in the differing perspectives on the same place and the intensified parochialism of Northern Ireland in which ethnic differences are spatialised. Reid (2004: 103) writes that ‘although it exists on the island of Ireland and many of its landscapes conform to the Irish ideal … Northern Ireland’s place-identity is confused, fitting neatly into neither Britain nor Ireland, both of which find their own dominant place-identities increasingly challenged.’ The ‘authentic’ image of Ireland has been located in the rural west, distancing the people and their places from the industrialised cities of the British, and explicitly excluding the Protestant community from its image of and idealised Gaelic, Catholic Ireland. At a more local level this confusion produces a mosaic of social spaces that are culturally and physically separate from one another: for example, Derry/Londonderry as a single city experienced from multiple social viewpoints by largely segregated communities, within which smaller enclaves continue to exist (Kuusisto-Arponen 2003). This multiplicity is not limited to the distinction between Protestant and Catholic communities, and Graham (1998) has argued that Protestants in Northern Ireland lack an agreed representation of place and do, in fact, support a set of mutually conflicting set of such representations. Furthermore, this multiplicity is overlaid by Northern Ireland’s position in the European Union (in which it is a designated ‘region’) and the wider world.

The multiple geographies of Northern Ireland lack the framework of hybridity that has emerged in the rest of the UK. This is partly due to the fact that the concept of multiculturalism in the UK is premised on discourses of gender, sexuality, disability, and, primarily, race; and, while these forms of identity are not irrelevant to Northern Ireland, they have been of less significance than the historical ethnic division between Catholic and Protestant. Consequently, the multiple nature of identity in Northern Ireland has not been promoted as a positive attribute but has been, and remains, largely a source of fear and tension, so that while we may think of Northern Ireland as a ‘hybrid, borderland area,’ this has resulted in the fossilisation of ‘identity and difference’ rather than the promotion of the acceptance and celebration diversity (Reid 2004: 109).

Multiple identities in the cinema of Northern Ireland

It is these problems of multiple and confusing identities that are the key themes in two films set in Northern Ireland and written by Colin Bateman – Divorcing Jack (1998) and Wild About Harry (2000). Aaron Kelly writes that Bateman’s novels ‘serve as a reminder that Northern Ireland is always at least two places: a problematic, forestalling entity for both Irish and British Nationalist teleologies’ (2004: 80), and places Bateman’s novels in the genre of the thriller. It is perhaps more useful to place these films in the sub-genre of the noir thriller, as Bateman draws upon this genre to create a darkly comic world in which the identities of key characters are hidden and/or fragmentary and the past, thought to be long buried, erupts in the present day (see Pratt 2001). Bateman uses all of these strategies, but adapts them to his satirical exploration of the problems of multiple identities in late-1990s Northern Ireland.

Divorcing Jack

The narrative of Divorcing Jack follows the investigate-deconstructive pattern of the noir-thriller, as tabloid journalist Dan Starkey becomes entangled in a double murder that implicates politicians, loyalist paramilitaries, and nationalist terrorists, and that threatens to wreck the political process in Northern Ireland. The main thrust of the narrative follows the revelations about a politician, Michael Brinn, whose confession to a terrorist past as Micky O’Brinn, has been recorded on tape and threatens to derail his opportunity to become the first elected leader of a new, independent Northern Ireland.

Starkey is a hopeless investigator and his problems arise from the fact that he consistently fails to recognise anyone. This causes difficulties in the domestic sphere – answering the phone he cannot tell if he is speaking to Patricia, his wife, or Margaret, with whom he is having an affair, and this leads to his eviction from the marital home. More importantly it gets Starkey into trouble in the public sphere, and it is his inability to recognise to who he is speaking and what they are saying that is the driving force behind the narrative. He does not recognise Margaret as the daughter of a prominent political figure and the girlfriend of a well-known gangster, Keegan, he will later mistake for a waiter. Starkey’s misrecognition also has fatal consequences when he inadvertently kills Margaret’s mother in a darkened staircase – a murder he succeeds in getting away with. The macguffin on which the story depends is another example of Starkey’s misrecognition: he thinks Margaret’s dying words are ‘Divorce Jack’ rather than ‘Dvorak’ and so fails to understand the significance of a tape containing Brinn’s confession.

Misrecognition is a central theme of the plot, and is unavoidable given the multiplicity of identities with which we are presented. Where the narrative of film noir typically revolves around a single character whose identity is doubled and whose past re-emerges to disrupt the present, Divorcing Jack takes this to such extremes that every character is either misrecognised, in disguise, or has a second life. Lee, whose dramatic arrival rescues Starkey on two separate occasions from both Loyalists and Republicans, is the most perplexing. We first encounter her dressed as a nun but she turns out to be a stripper. The next time we encounter he she is dressed as a nurse. Like most of the characters she has multiple social roles, or as she phrases it ‘Nun-O-Gram by night, nurse by day.’ This is also true for the minor characters: Margaret’s friend, Jack, is both a civil servant and a stand-up comedian by the name of Giblet O’Gibber. Even Starkey himself puts on a wig in a (futile) attempt at a disguise. Brinn has attempted to forge a new identity as a politician and a man of the people, but his change of name is not an attempt to establish his identity – rather it is intended to obscure his identity but hiding the past. It is the eruption of this past, long thought hidden, that sets in motion the events of the narrative.

The representation of social space in Divorcing Jack shows includes a variety of social places. Donnelly (2005) has noted that the Belfast we see in this film does not exploit the traditional images of the city but displays a tourist version of the city that explicitly avoids references to sectarianism. Belfast is a city of open public spaces (the Botanic Gardens) and attractive and spacious apartments, of new public buildings (the Waterfront Concert Hall) and social spaces (the Crown Bar). It is Donnelly, writes, an image of the city as a tourist destination. In contrast to the modern space of urban Belfast, we have the rundown Catholic township of Cross-my-heart – a gray, monotonous place under the thumb of the local gangster where everyone lives in fear behind the bars on the windows. It is, in essence, a frontier town, and every bit as lawless as one in the Wild West. These two spaces are presented as false. The new modern Belfast is a vision of urban planners, and, as Starkey notes, depends upon the people of Northern Ireland giving up their heritage – it is a space unattached to any particular identity. Cross-my-heart was created as a response to the troubles, moving a community out of Belfast into its own officially-designated place – it is a space of a community in exile. In both cases the relationship between space and identity is compromised. We also find a rural Northern Ireland, and it is in the country that the climax of the film takes place. The image of an ‘authentic’ Ireland has been based upon the rural landscape, and it is in this environment that the truth is revealed at the film’s climax. Brinn reveals himself to be the former terrorist who has misled the public as a politician; Keegan reveals that he was responsible for framing Brinn; and both are killed.

The confusion of identities and space is also evident in the use of names as labels. The problem of multiple naming is explained by Starkey to Parker, the American journalist, when he outlines the many names for: where Parker uses Ireland in an indiscriminate manner, Starkey points to the use of Northern Ireland, Ulster (if you are a protestant), the six counties of the north of Ireland (if you are catholic), or the province (if you are the British government).

At the climax of the film, Starkey launches into a sustained verbal attack on all sides – Protestant and Catholic, Loyalist and Nationalist. This speech has criticised as striking a false note in the film’s darkly comic vision of Northern Ireland – a ‘sudden dive into sententiousness’ (Kemp 1998: 42) – but it is of direct relevance to the film’s exploration of the nature of identity in Northern Ireland. Starkey rejects the idea of a clash of national and religious identities for failing to recognise the people of Northern Ireland as people.  He accuses of Keegan and Brinn of ‘dehumanising’ Northern Ireland:

Starkey: I’m an individual. You’re an individual. Dougal off the Magic Roundabout’s a fucking individual. You’re both the same. We’re going straight back to the civil war here because you two don’t give a flying fuck about individuals …

Ultimately, the ending of the film leaves the political situation unresolved. There is no simple, happy ending for Northern Ireland – nothing in the film (beyond Starkey’s marriage) is resolved. Lee (in her role as nurse) tells Starkey that it is ‘chaos out there.’ Chaos is the natural state of affairs, and one that Starkey revels in. Divorcing Jack takes a comic view of the multiple nature of space and identity that are a source of terror; but at the same time it positively endorses the multiplicity of a community of individuals.

Wild About Harry

Like Divorcing Jack, Wild About Harry takes up the question of identity in contemporary Northern Ireland, but approaches it from a different angle. Where Divorcing Jack presented us with a world in which everyone had multiple identities and secret lives resulting from a labyrinthine political situation, Wild About Harry primarily deals with the confused identity of a single character – television presenter Harry McKee – and the manipulation of that identity. Following an assault at a late night garage, Harry has a breakdown live on air before collapsing into a coma at his divorce hearing. He awakes to find that the last twenty-five years of his memory missing and his must come to terms with celebrity, identity, and the present.

Multiple and confusing identities are evident in this film as they are in Divorcing Jack. As he breaks down live on air, Harry exposes Walter Adair, a local MP campaigning on a family values platform, as a bisexual. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Adair vows to get his revenge on Harry and at the film’s denouement, he arrives at the television studio to confront his tormentor dressed as a woman. In one clip we find an Irish identity pushed to an extreme, as Harry watches himself on a special St. Patrick’s Day broadcast from Downpatrick interviewing a man named Patrick Fitzpatrick, with a father and a son of the same name and a wife called Patricia Fitzpatrick. Of course, this might be dismissed as simple ‘paddywackery,’ but it does highlight the problems of naming and identity in an amusing way. Nonetheless, it is Harry and the curious nature of his identity that is the central focus of the narrative.

Harry’s situation is a curious one, as he occupies a unique position as a celebrity without an identity. On the one hand, Harry is the presenter of a popular television show with a dedicated audience of (mostly) elderly ladies; and a public disgrace who’s sexual and alcoholic proclivities are in the press on a seemingly daily basis. Even here there is a discrepancy between Harry as the housewives’ favourite of daytime television and the debauched Harry of the tabloids. At the same time, people repeatedly fail to recognise Harry. At the petrol station Harry tries to play on his celebrity as a guarantee for a cheque having forgotten his card – ‘My face is my cheque card’ – but the shop assistant simply stares back at him blankly, blissfully unaware of the celebrity before him. Similarly, Ronnie, the security guard at the television studio, has no idea who Harry is at all and insists on checking the identification of the biggest star at the studio. Celebrity and fame, then, do not equal recognition and Harry’s identity is fragile even before his loses his memory. Indeed, in one scene this lack of identity is exposed as a facet of celebrity, as we are presented with Harry’s replacement on ‘What’s Cooking,’ who, it turns out, is almost identical to Harry in every way. Harry, of course, has lost his memory and completely fails to recognise the stand-in as a version of him.

If other people are confused about his identity, then so is Harry. Seeing Ruth as a mature rather than a younger woman, Harry is forced to come to terms with the present and is shocked by the middle-aged man in his reflection, and the film presents us with numerous shots of Harry looking at his reflection or at his own image but unsure of the face that looks back at him. He is unsure what he food he likes, if he drinks and smokes, where he works, and in a near-fatal incident discovers he cannot swim. The film focuses on these day-to-day aspects of identity, the myriad little details that make us who we are, rather than the broad statements of political and social identity (e.g. race, class, sexuality) that are the common currency of contemporary hybrid British cinema. Leaving the hospital, Harry can be heard to gleefully declare, ‘I’m a new man.’ Later, whilst on a date with Ruth, Harry rejects the past twenty-five years of his life by deliberately separating his amnesiac-self from his debauched-self: he declares of the womanising and drinking that ‘That was someone else.’

Identity is not fixed, but is something malleable. Quite who Harry is in the present is hard for him to discover as he is being manipulated by those around him. This occurs most obviously after his has lost his memory: Harry’s lack of personal tastes is the result of Ruth’s intervention when she tells him that he does not smoke or drink, and that he eats healthily; while his near-death incident in the pool occurs when his son takes him swimming to test if his amnesia is just an act. On air he is constantly prompted to speak or act by his producer, who it turns out is also responsible for setting Harry on the path to celebrity and infamy that leads to his eventual downfall. The manipulation of Harry’s sense of self is a negative thing, resulting in Harry’s loss of his sense of self – ‘What did I become?,’ he reflects – and his inability to determine his own actions compromises his sense of self.

Wild About Harry does not address the politics of contemporary Northern Ireland directly, but the influence of recent history can still be felt. That Harry should lose his memory of the last quarter of the twentieth century takes him back to the early 1970s, before what are euphemistically called ‘the troubles’ began in earnest, and by investing him with a sense of youthful optimism removes the inevitability of recent political history. The ending of the film, which could be described as romantic and cautiously optimistic rather than happy, presents Harry and Ruth with a possible future if they are willing to work for it. The film does not see the past as determining future relationships, and, although the past can never be forgotten, it can be overcome. For Harry this requires a reassessment of his identity in his own eyes and a renegotiation of his relationship to the people in his life. Harry’s ability to re-create his own sense of self thus holds out the possibility of a happy ending – Harry will win Ruth’s heart a second time if he can be himself.

Conclusion

Kelly (2004: 80) describes Northern Ireland as a ‘lived, ambivalent contradiction,’ and he cites Hughes’s assessment of the relationship between culture and politics in Northern Ireland as a ‘richly ambiguous statement of the always-at-least-dual nature of the Northern Irish and their cultures’ (1991: 10, quoted in Kelly 2004: 81). Contemporary cinema in Northern Ireland is as concerned with the multiple nature of identity as the rest of the United Kingdom, and arguably more so. The dominant concept of a hybrid national cinema in the UK is dependent upon the relative stability of different forms of identity depicted in British films (race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, class, region), and represents an attempt to come to terms with those different forms of identity. This is not possible in films such as Divorcing Jack and Wild About Harry which lack precisely that stability that would make any attempt to contain the multiplicity of identities a realistic possibility. The multiple, mistaken, and confused identities of Bateman’s Northern Ireland are a source of chaos that cannot be contained.

Filmography

Divorcing Jack (Scala Productions, 1998) prod. Robert Cooper, dir. David Caffrey, wr. Colin Bateman, novel Colin Bateman, ph. James Welland, ed. Nick Moore, m. Adrian Johnston, Cast: David Thewlis (Dan Starkey), Rachel Griffiths (Lee Cooper), Jason Isaacs (Cow Pat Keegan), Laura Fraser (Margret), Richard Gant (Charles Parker), Laine Megaw (Patricia Starkey), Bronagh Gallagher (Taxi driver), Kitty Aldridge (Agnes Brinn), Robert Lindsay (Michael Brinn).

Wild About Harry (Scala Films, 2000) prod. Robert Cooper, Laurie Borg, dir. Declan Lowney, wr. Colin Bateman, ph. Ron Forunato, ed. Tim Waddell, m. Murray Gold, Cast: Brendan Gleeson (Harry McKee), Amanda Donahoe (Ruth McKee), James Nesbitt (Walter Adair), Adrain Dunbar (JJ MacMahon), Bronagh Gallagher (Miss Boyle), Doon Mackichan (Tara Adair), Paul Barber (Professor Simmington), George Wendt (Frankie), Henry Deazley (Billy McKee), Tara Lynn O’Neill (Claire McKee), Billy Donnelly (Brendan).

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3-D Cinema and the limits of behaviour

A recent article in The Guardian asked the question: Is James Cameron’s 3D movie Avatar the shape of cinema to come? This has been going around in head for a while – along with many other questions of the role of technology in cinema – and the conclusion I’ve come to is that the answer is no – but the answer does not lie in the technology.

The film and television industries are technology driven. Although film critics and scholars have spent much of the past century trying to establish cinema as an art (a feat still not yet achieved in the United Kingdom), it is first and foremost a machine, and innovation – from sound to colour to digital – is primarily technological. This is also the case foe consumer electronics: first we are sold a television set, then we are sold a colour television set, then a stereo one, then a widescreen one, then a digital high-definition television set. Without such new features we would not need to purchase a new TV for several years, and the bottom would fall out of the consumer elevtronics market.The next big thing is 3-D home cinema, with 3-D TV’s set to hit homes next year. Techradar has a really interesting post about the efforts of Panasonic and Sony in bringing us the next stage of home cinema entertainment. See also the introduction to the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision at bit-tech.net.

We should be sceptical of such claims for two reasons. First, 3-D home entertainment is all very well, but 3-D cinema is not yet firmly established – largely due to slower than expected roll-out of digital screens around the world. This is especially the case in Europe, and a presentation at the EDCF last year concluded that although it had not actually stalled, the uptake of digital screens was slowing in one of the world’s most important markets. James Cameron’s Avatar may thrust 3-D onto the evening news and the front page of newspapers for a short while, but at an estimated negative cost of $237 million hardly represents a long-term financial strategy for the film industry. Is there really going to be enough product to justify the cost of purchsing a new 3-D television when most films and all television are 2-D? Not at this early stage, and although it is a problem now the lack of content can be overcome in time. It is important ot remember that it took less than two years for the American film industry to convert to sound, and (once the slowdown in digital screens has been remedied) the change to 3-D will probably not be as rapid but will certaintly not be insurmountable in the long-term.

The second problem facing 3-D home entertainment is far more difficult to solve – and that problem is us, the home audience.Watching a film at the cinema and at home are two very different expereinces. There is an element of ceremony in going to the cinema – we get ready to go out, we queuing for a ticket, we buy food, if we are meeting friends or going on a date we may even get dressed up especially for the event. Such ceremony does not normally apply in watching television – we don’t get dressed up especially, we may watch with other people but we don’t socialise in the same way, we no longer even have to be in a particular place at a particular time to watch a programme. (Exceptions here may be major national or sporting events). Most importantly, the television – the box in the corner – is just one item in our homes competing for out attention amongst others. In our homes we have other people, books, magazines, newspapers, computers (it is now common to watch TV and use the internet at the same time), mobile phones, crosswords, food to be prepared. You wouldn’t read a newspaper in the cinema – and using a mobile phone in a cinema should be a capital offence. We do not simply watch television, andJeremy Tunstall (1983) distingusihed between three levels of attention in the relationship between viewer and television:

Primary: the viewer is focussed on the television to the exclusion of other stimuli.

Secondary: the viewer intermittenly attends to the television while also engaged in other activities.

Tertiary: the viewer is engaged in an another task and only momentarily attends to the television.

We typically only engage at a primary level for particular types of programmes – football matches, inaugurations, moon landings, etc. More often we will be watchin television and talking, cooking, reading, doing the Guardian crossword (badly), reading magazines, trying to work out the functions on a new digital camera, etc.

The assumption that 3-D home cinema makes is that the viewer will be engage with television at a primary level only, but this is rarely the case. This is a problem because although the old-style green-red 3-D glasses of the 1950s are no longer needed (they could not cope with the colours of modern films, TV programmes, videogames), some sort of glasses are required (e.g. liquid crystal shuttered glasses). This use of glasses – any glasses – seriously compromises 3-D home entertainment as they do not fit in whith human behaviour. You cannot do the Guardian crossword (badly) wearing liquid crystal shuttered glasses. You cannot keep an eye on the kids if you eyes are busy watching Avatar through 3-D glasses. 3-D glasses are incompatible with all those little private things we like to do when we are at home, and this is the major falling down point of 3-D home entertainment. The major problem is not the technological or economic limitations of 3-D, which can, with time and money, be overcome. The major problem is human behaviour, and if 3-D cannot fit seamlessly into the lives of human beings then human beings will not want 3-D. It does not matter how phenomenal 3-D cinema is if it cannot generate sales through ancillary markets (TV, DVD, Blu-Ray, the Internet), and if it does not fit into peoples’ lives then the limits of these markets will become very apparent.

Art and technology are human creations for human beings. If this is not kept as a first principle, we have art that is of no consequence and technology that is of no relevance.

References

Tunstall, J. (1983) The Media in Britain. London: Constable.