Shot scales in Hollywood and German cinema, 1910 to 1939

This week’s post presents a first draft of a piece on shot scales in Hollywood and German cinema from the 1910s to the 1930s. The methods applied have been discussed on this blog before, but this paper presents a more systematic use of a regression than has previously been the case. The file is available as a pdf here: Nick Redfern – Shot scales in Hollywood and German cinema, 1910 to 1939, and the abstract is presented below.

Shot scales in Hollywood and German cinema, 1910 to 1939

Statistical analysis is an important part of an inductive programme of research into film style enabling large groups of films to be analysed, identifying key trends, and identifying changes in film style between groups of films from different countries and time periods. In this paper, the use of shot scales in Hollywood and German cinema between 1910 and 1939 is analysed using linear regression of rank-frequency plots and nonparametric analysis of variance. The results show that Hollywood and German cinema underwent a similar change in the use of shot scales but that this change occurred at different times. The shift from a non-linear to a linear distribution of mean relative frequencies and the increased use of close-ups and medium close-ups for Hollywood cinema in the 1920s may be explained by formal and stylistic changes as the ‘classical’ Hollywood cinema superseded a more ‘primitive’ style, with the analysis of space through continuity editing replacing the distant framing and staging of an earlier film style. A similar change occurs in the style of German films but not until the 1930s, and this supports the argument that the development of film style in German cinema was influenced by that of Hollywood.

The results of this paper demonstrate what a simple and effective method the use of linear regression of rank-frequency plots can be: changes in film style over time and differences in nation style between Hollywood and German cinema were identified precisley where historical research said they should be.

I still haven’t solved the problem of the most consistent model from a nonlinear distribution of the mean relative frequencies of shot scales. One possibility suggested by the results presented here is that different models may work for different periods or groups of films.

One of the things I’m most concerned with here is analysing groups of films. Film scholars tend to focus on individual films (in the way literary scholars or art historians focus on individual paintings). This is fine but I think it is a limiting approach if not accompanied by the analysis of large groups of films, and statistics can make this process much quicker and easier by identifying patterns of film style. In the words of André Bazin from (‘La politique des auteurs’):

The American cinema is a classical art, but why not then admire in it what is most admirable, i.e. not only the talent of the this or that filmmaker, but the genius of the system, the richness of its ever-vigorous tradition, and its fertility when it comes into contact with new elements …

The same also goes for German cinema.

Feel free to point out any typing errors (I am the world’s worst typist).

Any suggestions on further research or where to get this published are also welcome.

Claude Hamilton Verity

This post introduces some facts and resources about the life and work of Claude Hamilton Verity, and engineer from Leeds, whose work on synchronous sound in the cinema deserves far greater mention that it gets (in histories of British cinema in particular). Included are some basic facts, some references to where Verity does appear in research on film, patents to Verity’s sound technologies, and some contemporary pieces that refer to Verity’s work.

Claude Hamilton Verity was born at Leeds in May 1880, the youngest child of Edwin and Ann Verity. Edwin Verity was an ironmonger with a workshop at . Edwin was one of the Verity Brothers who had a large premises on The Calls by Leeds Bridge. Edwin later took premises round the corner at 168 & 169 Briggate as a hardware merchant. It was these premises that Claude was later to use as his workshop, and are now Bar Fibre. These premises are also located approximately 200 metres from the building at Leeds Bridge, where Le Prince shot his footage of traffic at the Corner of Briggate, Swinegate, and The Calls.

Claude was brought up in Roundhay in the north of the city – an affluent part of Leeds that was also home to Louis le Prince and the Whitley family in the 1880s. The 1901 census has Verity listed as a student at a College of Agriculture and resident at Downton, Wiltshire. He also seems to crop up in Seacombe, nr. Liverpool, as an engineering draughtsman c.1910, and there is an engineer called Claude Hamilton Verity living in Scarborough in 1912, who is presumbaly the same person. He later moves to Harrogate (where his mother’s family were from), and then Harpenden, Hertfordshire.

Verity held many patents, including improvements to stoves, revolving doors, electric radiators, clouderising coal dust, low-temperature carbonisation, and ‘apparatus for the inhalation of medicated vapours.’ All of this suggests that he was a skilled engineer, who could turn his hand to many different things. There is also a book published in 1928, titled Industrial Prosperity, and authored by a Claude H. Verity, but I have not yet confirmed the identity of the author. It is Verity’s patents in the synchronising of sound and pictures that are of main interest to film scholars, and the following is a chronological list of the relevant patents:

• The synchronisation of machines for recording and reproducing sounds & movements. GB103407, Verity, C. H. May 11, 1916.
• Synchronization of Machines for Recording and Reproducing Sounds and Movements. Claude Hamilton Verity, of Leeds, England.  No execution date.  Filed May 23, 1917, Serial No. 170,531.  Classification 352/23. This is a US patent.
• Synchronisation of machines for recording and reproducing sounds and movements. GB165489, Verity, C. H. Jan. 28, 1920.
• Improvements in or relating to gramophones and like sound reproducing machines. GB207222, Verity, C. H. July 21, 1922
• Synchronisation of machines for recording sounds and movements and for reproducing such sounds and movements by phonograph and kinematograph. GB318847, Verity, C. H. June 5, 1928.
• Apparatus for reproducing synchronously recorded disk records and kinematograph films. GB318688, Verity, C. H. June 19, 1928.

Figure 1 Verity’s registration marks for resynchronising cut sound film (GB318688)

• Means for the synchronisation of broadcast wireless sounds and kinematograph films. GB320881, Verity, C. H. July 23, 1928.
• Improvements relating to the synchronous reproduction of picture films and disk sound records. GB321624, Verity, C. H. Aug. 13, 1928.
• Improvements relating to phonograph disc recording & reproducing machines and means for driving and synchronising same with kinematograph apparatus. GB322561, Verity, C. H. Sept. 24, 1928.
• Improvements relating to electric pick-up supports for gramophones and means for indicating the position of the needle in the record groove and to facilitate synchronous reproduction with picture projection. GB324411, Verity, C. H. Oct. 22, 1928.

Most of these patents relate to sound-on-disk systems, but Verity’s appears to have adopted an approach that is less dependent upon the technology and focuses more on the operator’s problem of keeping sound and image together. It’s a very human approach to a technological problem : for example, the 1920 patent for the  Synchronisation of machines for recording and reproducing sounds and movements uses two rows of lamps to indicate when the operator has achieved the union of sound and image by manipulating motors to bring the projector and the sound mechanism together, and which will tell the operator when they start to go out of synch.

Verity’s work attracted international attention: one newspaper report from 1922 talks about a German patent, but I haven’t been able to find this; while Verity was crossing the Atlantic to work with the Vitapgraph Company in New York. Altman (1992) mentions Verity’s arrival in New York and his demonstration of the synchronisation of music and talking pictures

Figure 2 The Ellis Island register shows Verity was met by the vice-president of the Vitagraph Co. as he disembarked from the Aquitania in 1923.

From reports in the local Yorkshire press, Verity’s system worked well and was popular. Verity apparently first demonstrated his talking pictures at the Royal Hall Theatre in Harrogate on 30 April 1921, before moving to London in June/July 1921, and then at the Albert Hall, Leeds in the first weeks of April, 1922.

A contemporary description gives an indication of how image, music, and dialogue were brought together.

Leeds Mercury, 27 June 1921

‘TALKING’ PICTURES

LEEDS MAN’S SYNCHRONISM INVENTION

The latest development in singing and talking pictures was explained at a demonstration on Saturday at the Philharmoinc Hall, London.

The inventor, Mr. Claude Verity, of Leeds, claimed to be able to synchronise perfectly the spoken word and the lip movements by the players shown on the screen.

By Mr. Verity’s system it is claimed to be possible to synchronise speeches, sounds, music, or anything that is at present being done at any of the London theatres – opera, drama, musical comedy, or revue. The inventor does not do away with the orchestra; his object is to synchronise the spoken word or song, the orchestra accompanying the gramophone while the movements are thrown on the screen.

The two productions shown on Saturday, ‘A Cup of Beef Tea’ and ‘The Playthings of Fate,’ proved that the invention has great possibilities.

The public interest in talking pictures can be gauged from this announcement of Verity’s 1922 shows in Leeds, which gives the size of the audience for the initial Harrogate run.

Yorkshire Evening Post, 3 April 1922

FILM AND GRAMPOHONE

PROGRAMME TO DEMONSTRATE A LEEDS MAN’S INVENTION

Mr. C.H. verity, the inventor of the apparatus which has made the synchronisation of film and gramophone a practical proposition, is the head of a Leeds firm of hardware manufacturers and merchants. He is presenting his talking and singing pictures at the Albert Hall, Leeds, this week. Entertainments will be given each evening, and on three afternoons. The programme consists of the first film productions under the Verity system of synchronisation.

Mr. Verity claims that the cost of these productions will be no greater than that of the majority of silent films, because it is cheaper to help out scenes and actions by words than by the multiplication of dumb show. There are interesting possibilities in the production of talking pictures in these days when the demand is all for novelty and originality in entertainment. Four performances recently given in Harrogate attracted over 5600 people.

As another report indicates, the road to the synchronisation of sound and image was long and expensive, and it is important to remember that Verity was not a research scientist for a large corporation but ran a hardware manufacturers in the centre of Leeds.

Yorkshire Evening News, 1 April 1922

SPEAKING FILMS

LEEDS MAN’S SYSTEM PATENTED IN GERMANY

SYNCHRONISATION ACHIEVED

Mr. Claude H. Verity, the Leeds inventor, is making a bold bid to enlist the sympathies of the public in his talking and singing pictures. He claims that he has definitely and absolutely solved the problem of the synchronisation of the voice with the picture on the screen.

For over three years he has been perfecting his idea, and so fa it has entailed a cost of £7000, but now to quote his own words: ‘With my system of synchronisation I can guarantee to keep this relation of sound and lip movement under synchronous control to within one-twenty-fourth of a second for any length of time.’

Next week at the Albert Hall, Leeds, the local public will have its first opportunity of judging the merit of the invention.

The solving of the problem of synchronisation was proved and admitted by the critics at Mr. Verity’s first trade show in Harrogate. There was criticism, Mr. Verity says, not in regard to the question of synchronisation, but in regard to the sound productions of the gramophone used.

CLAIM ADMITTED

Mr. Verity has given many trade shows in various parts of the country, and never once has his claim to have solved the synchronisation problem been doubted. The only thing he needs he points out, is what might be termed a super-gramophone, and in this connection it may be stated, Mr. Verity has gone some way to meet this need.

By the means of electric amplification and a new design of gramophone horn, the inventor ensures that the spoken word is clear and easily distinguishable.

Very shortly a company is to be formed, and with the necessary financial backing the invention should not fail to succeed.

Mr. Verity claims that everything in the way of singing or speaking can be synchronised by means of his method. He also wishes to make it clear that he does not intend to work on the lines of a monopoly in regard to his invention.

PATENTED IN GERMANY

Mr. Verity does not suggest that the whole programme in all the countless picture-houses should be entirely devoted to ‘talking pictures;’ he introduces the idea with a view to an enjoyable variation in the programme.

The ‘Yorkshire Evening News’ is able to add that Mr. Verity has now had his ‘talking-picture’ idea patented in Germany. This is itself proof that he has not encroached on any previous idea on this point. The German system of granting patents is different to the British system.

Here a patent is granted after a search through British patents only; in Germany the patents of all nationalities are first scrutinised.

For all this effort, Verity does not get much of a mention in histories of British cinema, but he is mentioned on occasion. As noted above, Altman (1992) mentions Verity’s visit to the US and he features in The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film (1984),  which suggests that there are references in the New York press to the demonstrations of the Verity system. There is also a reference to Verity’s trip to New York in Gramophone in October 1926, albeit a reference that is inconclusive (I haven’t found the original report):

The problem of synchronizing films and records has been solved if we are to believe the reports of the demonstration of the Vitaphone in New York. There is an excellent and full account of the problem and of the solution in the Wireless World for September 15th. Three years ago we reported the departure of Mr. Claude Verity, who was experimenting in the subject, for America ; but it is not said whether he is at the bottom of the Vitaphone. It is the Western Electric Co.’s patents which have made the synchronization possible, worked in conjunction with Warner Brothers’ Pictures Inc (22).

Verity is also mention by M. Jackson Wrigley (1922: 115-116), who refers to the ‘invention of a synchronizer by Mr. Claude H. Verity, a Harrogate engineer, enables the operator, by simply sliding a knob, quite independently of observing the screen, to work synchronization to 1-24th of a second.’

References

Altman, D. (1992) Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System. New York: Carol Publishing Group.

Jackson Wrigley, M. (1922) The Film: Its Use In Popular Education. London: Grafton.

The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film, edited by Gene Brown New York: New York Times Books, 1984

Improvements relating to electric pick-up supports for gramophones and means for indicating the position of the needle in the record groove and to facilitate synchronousreproduction with picture projection

United Kingdom GB324411, Published 1930-01-22, Claude Hamilton Verity
324,411. Verity, C. H. Oct. 22, 1928.

Consensus, hybridity, and the national in British Cinema

In a month’s time I will be presenting a paper at the Manchester Centre for Regional History’s conference on Place and Identity, where I will be talking about why the hybridity thesis in British cinema studies does not work for Northern Ireland. Whilst I have been writing this piece, I’ve been reflecting on the relationship between consensus and hybridity in British cinema and this is a first attempt to outline some thoughts on that subject.

The concept of the ‘national’ has been highly influential in film studies. As an emerging academic discipline in the 1960s, film studies looked to national labels as a simple way of developing a curriculum, and (along with genre) this is still the dominant path taken today. Publishers and distributors of films have followed suit, releasing series of books dealing with the nation in film (e.g. Routledge’s national cinema series, Manchester University Press’s series on French and British directors) or films under national banners (e.g. VCI Entertainment have released a series of British films on DVD in America that place the nation at the fore of their marketing).

However, the concept of the national has been criticised for relying on an image of a homogeneous, unified nation that does not match the reality of living in a complex world. The nation overrides difference, and as a critical label, it blinds us to the diversity of identities in the modern world. The concept of ‘hybridity’ has been used to overcome this objection (see Hill 1992, 1999, Redfern 2006). 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). Nations are no longer simply pure – they are hybrid. An individual’s identity is not pure, but is multidimensional and the nature of this identity is dependent upon the circumstances in which the individual finds him/herself.

Here I wish to explore two aspects of the relationship between national identity and other forms of identity in the case of British cinema.

Consensus is a means of coping with difference

Andrew Higson describes the decline of a national consensus and consensual images in the 1960s, but rejects the concept of the national specificity of a hybrid cinema and instead proposes a variety of cinemas that have no recourse to nationality. In Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain, Higson argues that, ‘representations of the nation in British films are not reflections of the actual formation of the nation-state, but rather ideological constructions of “the nation,” a publicly imagined sense of community and cultural space’ (1995: 1). Analysing British films from the 1920s (Comin’ Thro the Rye [Cecil Hepworth, 1924]), the 1930s (Sing As We Go and Evergreen [Victor Saville, 1934]), and the 1940s (Millions Like Us and This Happy Breed [David Lean, 1944]), the industry that produced them, and the culture that consumed them, Higson identifies a set of recurring characteristics that allows for the imagining of the nation as a ‘knowable organic community’ characterised by a ‘unity-in-diversity.’ This community is expressed through a series of distinctive stylistic traits. The British cinema is characterised by a number of filmic traditions (the heritage film, the popular musical-comedy, the documentary-realist film) that, ‘typically refuse the rigours of classical narrative integration in favour of what seems a more “primitive” narrational form,’ distinguished by episodicism, multiple and interweaving narrative lines, and a diegesis that is ‘narratively excessive’ (1995: 276). The British cinema, Higson argues, is ‘a national cinema, then, which displays the multiple attractions of the nation,’ and displays these attractions from ‘a distanced and objective viewpoint’ that encourages the viewer to reflect on the nation, and through an exhibitionist use of space in order to construct ‘a public space, a social space, and a national space, rather than the private space of the classical romantic hero’ (1995: 276-277). These aesthetic strategies are based on pre-existing cultural traditions that are identified as British, and are motivated in an attempt to reflect the nation to itself and to differentiate an indigenous product from Hollywood. As such, Comin’ thro the Rye, ‘should thus be seen as a historically specific response to the increasing domination of British cinema by American films and American standards;’ while Sing As We Go is ‘addressed to an audience familiar with the conventions of both music-hall and cinema,’ and to ‘a mass audience on a national basis;’ and Millions Like Us and This Happy Breed represent the British  ‘metaphorically as a small, self-contained tight-knit community, a unity-in-diversity, but one which is structured like a family’ (1995: 96, 166, 179).

The traditions of British cinema Higson identifies were most influential between the 1930s and 1960s. However, since the 1960s the inclusive, all-embracing nation these films construct has ‘been displaced by an attempt to articulate various different social identities, to represent the ethnic, sexual, regional, gender, and class differences around which community and identity have been formed in contemporary Britain’ (1995: 273). This shift towards hybridity is a function of ‘powerful international forces’ that move in the direction of ‘global markets and cultures,’ and a move towards the ‘construction and recognition of many public spheres, rather than a single, universal public sphere,’ at least on behalf of the independent sector of British film production. For Higson,

This raises the question of whether such [recent] films can still be usefully be understood as the products of a national cinema, or whether the national in national cinema always invokes the myth of consensus – which such films as My Beautiful Laundrette show precisely as myth. What is important about such films is that they refuse over-arching visions of national identity and stress these other senses of identity and belonging which have always criss-crossed the body of the nation, and which often cross national boundaries too (1995: 273).

Thus, the project of a national cinema in the United Kingdom is at an end, and as the role of the nation-state has been challenged over the last three decades Higson states that in this new climate, ‘I would rather call for a socialist cinema, or a green cinema, or a feminist cinema than for the renewal of British cinema’ (1995: 279).

But why should consensus override difference? It is important here to understand the rather unusual way in which the United Kingdom came into existence.

Richard Rose argues that the creation of the United Kingdom was ‘certainly not the product of any logical plan, nor is it the product of a particular ideology’ (Rose 1982: 4). Britishness came into being with the Act of Union of 1707 that formally created England, Wales, and Scotland as ‘one United Kingdom by the name of Great Britain,’ with Ireland added to the Union in 1801. This act established a single political authority under the sovereignty of the monarch, and in doing so superimposed a state-based identity over the existing categories of English, Welsh, Scottish, and, later, Irish. The new identity of British did not eradicate the pre-Union identities of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Rather, Britishness permitted these older forms of identification to co-exist alongside it. As a political superstructure resting lightly on a diversity of identities, David McCrone suggests that the United Kingdom is ‘a state-nation masquerading as a nation-state:’

By referring to Britain as a ‘state-nation’ we are alluding to this fact that it was a state first, and only later (if it all) a nation. At no times can one seriously consider Britain a ‘nation-state,’ that is a homogeneous cultural grouping which mobilised that homogeneity to become a state. The British state was quite unlike later state formations which sought to align political, cultural, and economic structures in the classical form of the ‘nation state’ (2001: 97-98).

Britishness, then, is an identity founded upon what Tom Nairn (1997) describes as an ‘occluded multi-nationalism,’ and which Ben Wellings argues is an ideology that ‘developed post facto in order to legitimise the new state in the face of possible threats from social and nationalist sources’ (2002: 96). These commonalities have  been explored in fascinating detail by Linda Colley in Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Colley argues that warfare and protestantism were the uniting factors as the newly-formed United Kingdom engaged in a sustained period of conflict with France, the Catholic enemy to the South. They [the British] came to define themselves as a single people not because of any political or cultural consensus at home, but rather in reaction to the Other beyond their shores.’ Britain, she writes,

was an invention forged above all by war. Time and time again, war with France brought Britons, whether they hailed from Wales or Scotland or England, into confrontation with an obvious hostile other and encouraged them to define themselves collectively against it. They defined themselves as Protestants struggling for survival against the world’s foremost Catholic power. They defined themselves against the French as they imagined them to be, superstitious, militarist, decadent and unfree (2003: 5-6).

From this perspective Britain is, and always has been, hybrid. The national consensus and the identity that rested upon this (‘Britishness’) was a way of uniting diverse peoples but did not eradicate older forms of identity (Scottishness, Englishness, etc.). Consensus was a way of coping with difference in the nation, but does not necessarily require the elimination of difference.

We can see examples of this in British films from World War Two – This Happy Breed (1944), In Which We Serve (1942), San Demtrio-London (1943), Went the Day Well (1942), The Way Ahead (1944), The Way to the Stars (1945), and Millions Like Us (1943). All of these films bring together groups of men and women from different parts of the UK, and different social classes and show them in sympathetic relationships to one another.The Manchester Guardian review of Millions Like Us noted that,

Nothing more clearly marks the coming-of-age of the British cinema than its treatment of ordinary working people, especially as minor characters or in the mass. The clowns of ten years ago first became lay figures of sociological drama and then, with the war, patriotic heroes. In Millions Like Us they are real human beings, and the British film has reached adult maturity (quoted in Chapman 1998: 44).

The film tells the story of a young woman Celia Crowson (played by Patricia Roc), who is called up for war service as a machine worker in an aircraft factory, and is sent to a government hostel, where she encounters women from a diverse range of social backgrounds: Gwen Price – a Welsh, working class graduate of the University of Wales; Annie Earnshaw – a down-to-earth Lancashire lass; and Jennifer Knowles – a snobbish society girl. In Millions Like Us, then, a small community of people are united in a common cause in which collective social responsibility outweighs individual desires, regardless of class, regional identity, and traditional gender roles. It presents a vision of a society that depends not on competition but on co-operation, offering a vision of Britain as a nation that Higson (1995) as:

• includes people of a variety of class positions;
• includes people of a variety of regional types and accents;
• includes people of a variety of ages and experiences;
• depends on reasonable, democratic, and co-operative forms of authority;
• has the appearance of organic unity; and,
• is structured like a family.

The film ends on an image of stability and unity, but it is one where the individual (Figure 1) is enveloped within an all-embracing community (Figure 2). It is a community in which each individual proves his or her worth to the team, and so by implication to the nation and the war effort.

Figure 1 Celia Crowson: the individual …

Figure 2 … and the collective in Millions Like Us.

What’s class/race/ethnicity/sexuality/gender/region go to do with it?

Perhaps the problem we have with these films is that they are naive in their optimism for the possibility in creating a consensual and supporting nation. The UK (like everywhere else) has a long history of racial intolerance, homophobia, sexism and so on. Perhaps the image of a consensual nation is simply too unrealistic for the post-war world, where we need to recognise the importance of other forms of identity (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, region).

However, there is no reason why the national should in any way disappear. To the external observer the apparent boundedness, continuity, and homogeneity of the nation may appear unstable, vague, and permeable. However, Handler (1998) notes that the ‘fuzzy boundaries’ evident to such an observer do not fundamentally challenge the identity of a national entity, and that a ‘subjective boundedness’ – the sense that group members themselves form a distinct and homogeneous community – may be sufficient to overcome large objective differences to achieve a national self-awareness. Difference is only relevant to those who think it is relevant, and there may be many who do not think that it is (or have not even asked themselves the question). Furthermore, an individual’s expression of their identity tends to contingent on the circumstances in which they function. Pat Hudson suggests that ‘it is likely that people have different concepts of the self simultaneously which are switched on or off by particular situations and contexts,’ and sees the region as just such a heuristic device for the analysis of territory and identity (1999: 14, 8). It is the ability to switch identities on and off according to context that allows individuals to assume a number of seemingly contradictory group memberships.

An oft cited example is how other forms of identity leads us away from the national is a comment by Virginia Woolf:

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.

This is, I think, a fascinating statement that begs numerous questions about the relationship between gender and geography – what is it to be a woman in a nation? What is it to be a woman in the world? But if you found yourself at a party talking to someone you had just met; and, having asked them where they were from, they replied ‘I am a woman,’ how would you respond? Naturally, you would be confused, because this is a non sequitur: gender identities and geographical identities may influence one another, but they are not substitutable. You cannot be gay or German – the distinction does not have any meaning. You cannot give up a national cinema for a feminist cinema, a socialist cinema, or a green cinema because this would also be meaningless as the one cannot be substituted for the other. Alternative forms of cinema may have nothing to do with the nation – there is no reason why they should. But the non sequitur holds for cinema as it does for the party-goer.

In the context of British cinema, we have come to the hybrid as a means of relating different types of identity. In British Cinema in the 1980s, John Hill describes the emergence of such a national cinema in the UK, reflecting ‘a much more fluid, hybrid, and plural sense of ‘Britishness’ than earlier British cinema generally did. In this respect, while the British cinema of the 1980s failed to assert the myths of the ‘nation’ with its earlier confidence it was nevertheless a cinema that could be regarded as representing the complexities of ‘national’ life more fully than before’ (1999: 241). This hybridity is derived from 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’ in the 1980s (Hill 1999: xii). Like Higson, Hill points to the Stephen Frears/Hanif Kureshi films My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) as exemplars of the cultural hybridity he seeks to identify as the defining aspect of British cinema in the 1980s. For example, he writes that:

Characters’ identities are constructed across different axes – black/white, male/female, gay/straight – which also place them in ‘different’ and complicated ‘positionalities’ to others. Thus, in the case of the Asian lesbian, Rani (Meera Syal) in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, her identity is not simply Asian, female, or lesbian but one which is ‘overdetermined’ and shifting… (Hill 1999: 208).

Hill argues that in presenting the shift towards hybridity in 1980s British cinema films such as Sammy and Rosie Get Laid represent the multiple and complex axes of identity (class, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity) that are characteristic of modern Britain. This conception of British national cinema as a historical, impure, hybrid, and complex cinema has become the dominant model in British cinema studies, and this reflected in writing on class (Gillett 2003), race and ethnicity (Malik 1996, Bourne 1998, Alexander 2000), gender (Geraghty 2000, Harper 2000, Monk 2000) and sexuality (Bourne 1996), and regional identity (Redfern 2007) in contemporary British cinema.

Conclusion

The concept of hybridity has become an important crititcal reference point in British cinema studies, and has been primarily used as a way of dealing with the multitude of contemporary identities in the UK. The emergence of hybridity has taken place in the context of the rejection of consensual images of the nation. However, if we view the UK as a nation that emerged as a hybrid, in which a British national identity emerged through the commonalties of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish (however complicated this last might be) and did not replace older identities, then we can also view consensus in British cinema as a strategy for coping with the diversity of identities. A research programme for British studies is to trace this shift from consensus to hybridity.

References

Alexander, K. (2000) Black British cinema in the 90s: going going gone, in R. Murphry (ed.) British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI: 109-114.

Bourne, S. (1996) Brief Encounters: Lesbians and Gays in British Cinema, 1930-1977. London: Cassell.

Bourne, S. (1998) Black in the British Frame: Black People in British Film and Television, 1896-1996. London: Cassell.

Colley, L. (2003) Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, third edition. London: Pimlico.

Geraghty, C. (2000) British Cinema in the Fifties: Gender, Genre, and the ‘New Look.’ London and New York: Routledge.

Gillett, P. (2003) The British Working Class in Postwar Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Harper, S. (2000) Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know. London: Continuum.

Handler, R. (1998) Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Higson, A. (1995) Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hill, J. (1992) The issue of national cinema and national film production, in D. Petrie (ed.) New Questions of British Cinema. London: BFI: 10-21.

Hill, J. (1999) British Cinema in the 1980s: Issues and Themes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hudson, P. (1999) Regional and local history: globalisation, postmodernism and the future, The Journal of Regional and Local Studies 20 (1): 5-24.

Malik, S. (1996) Beyond “The Cinema of Duty?” The pleasures of identity: black British films of the 1980s and 1990s, in A. Higson (ed.) Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema. London: Cassell: 202-215.

McCrone, D. (2001) Scotland and the Union: changing identities in the British State, in D. Morley and K. Robbins (eds.) British Cultural Studies: Geography, Nationality, and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 97-108.

Mitchell K. (2005) Hybridity, in D. Atkinson, D. Sibley, P. Jackson, and N. Washbourne (eds.) Cultural Geography: A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts. London: IB Tauris: 188-193.

Monk, C. (2000) Men in the 90s, R. Murphry (ed.) British Cinema of the 90s. London: BFI: 156-166.

Nairn, T. (1997) Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited. London: Verso.

Redfern, N. (2006) Space and hybridity in contemporary British cinema, International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 2 (1): 97-103.

Redfern, N. (2007) Making Wales possible: regional identity and the geographical imagination in The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain, Cyfrwng: Media Wales Journal 4 2007: 57-70.

Rose, R. (1982) Understanding the United Kingdom: The Territorial Dimension in Government. London: Longman.

Wellings, B. (2002) Empire-nation: national and imperial discourses in England, Nations and Nationalism 8 (1): 95-109.

Four things you cannot say in a job interview …

My contract at the University of Central Lancashire ended in July 2008, and since then I have been looking for another full-time teaching post at a British university. I have been very successful at getting interviews at a whole range of different institutions, but not at actually landing the job itself. On the one hand, this is frustrating. At the same time it has been enlightening, as I have spent the past year traveling around the country talking to different people at different types of institutions about film and media studies. This post is a series of observations I have made about film studies in the UK, but which I have not yet shared with anyone – largely because what I have to say is critical of the current state of affairs and these are the types of thing that prospective employers do not want to hear in a job interview. (I will not, however, name names).

A growing subject

Although still not entirely accepted as an academic discipline film studies and media studies has shown prodigous growth in the number of institutions offering some type of film studies and/or media studies degree, or offer these subjects as paths to joint honours, or includes some provision of film as part of other degrees (e.g. modern languages, English literature, art history, American/Canadian studies, etc). The number of students enrolled on these degrees has expanded enormously (see Figure 1), and there are reported to be some 30,000 students studying film and media at A-Level in the UK. As I have shown elsewhere, film studies has been successful in attracting a substantial amount of research funding from the AHRC over the past five years (read the analysis here).

Figure 1 Undergraduates enrolled in Cinematics and Photography and Media Studies degrees at UK universities, 1998-1999 to 2007-2008 (Source: HESA)

Things, it would seem, are looking up – but I’m not so sure.

What is Film Studies?

This is a question that goes to the very heart of the problem. The expansion of film studies/media studies has advanced at pace, but in an uncoordinated manner. Universities have been falling over themselves to set up these degrees because there is at present a market for them, but there is very little consensus on what the answer to this question should be. The benchmarking guidance produced by the QAA for Communication, Media, Film and Cultural Studies is so vague as to be meaningless, while SEFT ceased to function long ago, and the BFI has no real educational purpose other than being a publisher of books about film and television and a distributor of DVDs. There is, then, a lack of sensible framework for defining the subject.

This is how I answer the question: What is Film Studies? [1]

Film Studies is broadly comprised of four types of analysis:

• Industrial analysis: the political economy of film industries; the organisation of film industries; technologies of film production, distribution, and exhibition; practices of film production, distribution, and exhibition; government policies.
• Textual analysis: representation and the symbolic meanings of film; film form; film style.
• Ethnographic analysis: the composition of audiences; rituals of cinema-going and film experiences; cultural meanings and issues of identity.
• Cognitive-psychological analysis: the viewer’s perception of a film; communication and information in the cinema; psychological processes of meaning-making in the cinema; the psychological basis of the viewer’s response to a film.

Films can be analysed as institutionally produced commercial commodities that function as cultural artifacts inscribed with meanings which are then consumed and interpreted by audiences, whose experience of the cinema is predicated cognitive-psychological processes of perception and comprehension. Film Studies is a research programme analysing films in institutional, textual, ethnographic, and cognitive-psychological terms. These different forms of analysis cannot be separated: for example, a question of film style (the dominance of continuity editing) may require an answer that draws on the cognitive-psychological processes of the viewer (the perception of the spatial organisation of a scene) and the production practices of the industry (the division of labour in classical Hollywood cinema).

It is the highly inter-disciplinary nature of the subject that makes it so challenging and so rewarding. For me, this is what is so exciting about the subject. I also trained as a historian – which I enjoyed immensely – but I could never shake off the feeling that I was learning more and more about less and less. Film Studies is so open and requires such a range of different skills that I never lack for some new area to explore. In 2007, I had three papers published: one on UK film policy, one on the representation of the Welsh landscape in film, and one on motion perception. What other subject requires its students to be (at the very least) competent in art history, economics, psychology, sociology, politics, neuroscience, etc. How exciting it is to be a film student!

This definition does not reflect what is being taught at most UK universities under the title of film studies. Most film degrees are limited to textual and ethnographic analysis (and then mostly the former), with little emphasis on industry (if any). There are very few courses in cognition and perception at all. At the risk of alienating film lecturers everywhere, I venture to suggest that you cannot properly consider yourself to be academically qualified in film studies unless you have covered all four of these areas. Too many film studies degrees in the UK do not meet this requirement and too many students are being awarded degrees with only a superficial knowledge of some of these areas and none at all in some cases.

Unfortunately, it is those aspects of film studies that lend themselves to empirical investigation that are least covered. I recently had an interview at a university in the north of England. During the interview I talked about my work on British film policy and the statistical analysis of film style, but it was clear that they were not interested in this. The interviewers seemed to think this was beyond the limits of film studies and that the work on film policy, for example, belonged in the field of economic/cultural geography (which it does but it is film studies as well). The most depressing moment came when one person said that they were quite surprised that I took such an empirical approach to the subject, because he thought that film studies was all Freud and Lacan. Now, to be fair, this person was not a film studies lecturer, and had been invited onto the interview panel as the outsider to the department (he was a sociologist), but I have to say that this is the most depressing thing I have ever heard. That someone should be surprised by an empirical approach in higher education should set alarm bells ringing – at best the subject has an image problem that needs to be addressed; at worst, the empirical basis of film studies is in serious doubt.

Film Studies and NOT Media Studies

As you can see from the definition of film studies above, it is a broad and wide-ranging subject that requires a great deal of students – and, if done well, offers great rewards. Film studies is a large subject. Howver, it is typically delivered as part of a joint honours degree with another subject or in conjunction with either Television Studies or Media Studies. There are only about 20 degrees in the UK for which the title is simply ‘film studies.’ Given the size of the subject, this is clearly a problem as students are compromised in terms of the attention they can devote to the subject.  Expecting them to do media studies as well as film studies puts too much of a burden onto the student as they have to cover such a broad range of topics (film, television, radio, print media, digital media) that they cannot get to grips with any of them in a meaningful way.

Film studies and media studies are very different subjects. Film studies has emerged from a humanities background, from English and Art departments, and this explains the focus on textual analysis – we study the work in great depth as we would a novel or painting. Media studies, by contast, emerged from sociology and is not interested in the work itself, but in the social relations between the institutions of the media and its audiences. This is why semiotics persists in media studies in a way that it does not in film studies: media studies is not interested in the work itself per se but the work is necessary as this is how institution and audience communicate. Therefore, there must be a system of communication and the theory of the sign provides a simple mechanism that can be invoked to explain this communicative relationship. But there is not the same level of detailed analysis of the work that we find film studies.

A further problem is that is not really clear what we mean by ‘media’ when we say .media studies.’ Do we use media as a plural, and expect students to study lots of different mediums (if you’ll excuse the syntax)? Or do we mean something more abstract, that is best captured by some sociological theory, but which cannot be reduced to a single specific object such as film or television? It seems to me that ‘media’ in the first sense asks too much of students and can only cover so many different media in a superficial way, while the latter risks becoming so nebulous that we lose sight of the subject itself. Media studies degrees in the UK use the term media in both ways depending on where you choose to study – so much for benchmarking.

Television studies wants to have it both ways and fails to combine film studies and media studies in anything that could be called a satisfactory manner.

Film studies is a large subject, but by having a limited focus on film, this can be overcome as students have the same object of inquiry throughout their studies rather than jumping from TV to radio to digital to photography to whatever.

For these reasons – different approaches, unclear meanings, and the sheer quantity of work required by students to become even modestly proficient in there chosen subject – I do not think that film studies should be taught with media studies.Of course, I have said this in job interviews where it is clear that the university has already made up its mind that there exists some sort of natural link between film and media, and openly disagreeing with the head of department about the development of the degree subjects is not an advisable interview strategy. I still think I was right.

Care should also be given to students study film as part of a joint honours programme, which can be rewarding, but also runs the risk of failing to provide a proper basis in the subject. (Most students, I assume, are not quite so wilfully interdisciplinary as me – I felt that doing joint honours actually helped me to do both subjects well – and this is why I keep going off on tangents).

Film students are not necessarily learning about film

With the rapid growth of film studies degrees, there is obviously a need for people to teach these courses. Too many of these have been drafted in from other areas. This places a great deal of stress on academics whichthey could well do without, but it also creates problems for the delivery of the degrees themselves. Too much of film studies in the UK is just semiotics taught from a text book by tutors who do not have a sufficient level of specialist subject knowledge. Clearly not the academics fault (given the standard of management in higher education in the UK), but a serious problem. I have seen modules, taught at UK universities by academics whose background is not in film, which claim to be film studies but are, in fact, not. What they tend to be are courses in critical theory that use films as their texts for study. Now I am sure that the tutor genuinely believes that what they are doing is film studies – they seemed pretty damned convinced when I spoke to them; but is clear that the focus of the module is the theory and not the films. Were students enrolled on a critical theory degree this would be great – but if they are enrolled on  film studies degree then the primary object of study should be the cinema in one of the forms of analysis listed above. (Here discretion was the better part of valour, and I refrained from pointing this out). Critical theory might be useful on doing this (you never know), but is not a substitute for it. There are too many students enrolled on film studies in the UK who are not studying film.

I am aware that criticising academics who are under pressure is not fair – but the future of the subject depends on its reputation. This is something that needs to change.

It’s not uniqueness – it’s solipsism

Everywhere you go you find a world class university. (Maybe universities are like spaceships – coming soon, the new galaxy class!) And everywhere you go, there are universities that are delivering high quality degrees in a unique way.

Yeah, right.

First, a job interview at a higher education institution is not simple an interview – it’s a ‘process.’ Typically, this involves giving a presentation – and what is the requested topic du jour? Well, its ‘How does  your research relate to your teaching?’ I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have been asked this question, but evidently all these ‘unique’ universities are thinking the same thing.

What’s worse is that it is a load of nonsense. Check out the Teaching-Research Nexus (TRN) website from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. This really is funny: under What is the TRN? they declare,

Despite the faith in the teaching-research nexus (TRN) and the espoused belief in its benefits, the precise character of the relationship between teaching and research is not well understood. In fact, the empirical evidence for a correlation between research performance and the quality of teaching is not strong.

Shortly to be followed by:

This project takes as its starting point the view that teaching and research offer mutual benefit and that ‘research-led’ or ‘research-infused’ teaching and learning can benefit student learning. The TRN is one means of enhancing teaching and learning in higher education and improving graduate attributes.

So, theres no evidence for it but we’re sure it is of benefit. Genius! Welcome to higher education.

They go on to outline the benefits of the TRN:

• Benefit 1: Deepen students’ understanding of the knowledge bases of disciplines and professions, including their research methods and contemporary research challenges and issues
• Benefit 2: Build students’ higher-order intellectual capabilities and enhance their skills for employment and lifelong learning
• Benefit 3: Develop students’ capacity to conduct research and enquiry
• Benefit 4: Enhance students’ engagement and develop their capacity for independent learning

Now maybe it’s just me but this seems to be the definition of a higher education degree, and I would venture to suggest that if you degree programme does not ‘build students higher-order intellectual capabilities’ or ‘develop their capacity for independent learning’ then you should not be calling your self a university.

This is banal nonsense, but it is being pushed by the HEA and it is what every university wants to hear about.

This is one example of how universities are not unique – the seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that I’ve already done presentations on this. Hell, I’ve even read the website of Australian Learning and Teaching Council!

Another example that is of particular concern for film studies is the limited variability of module choice for students across film studies degrees across the UK. Everywhere I go I find the same choices being offered to students: a course on Hitchcock (usually with the word ‘auteur’ in the title), a course of documentary (with ‘real/reality/realism’ in the title), New Hollywood, Horror film (teaching horror cinema is the fourth largest sector contributing to the UK’s economy), a course in British national identity (but not British cinema, becasue that would involve some sort of focus on the film industry), and adaptation. The same films are taught in the same way at every university – and yet they all insist on their uniqueness.

Well, it’s not uniqueness – it’s solipsism.

There is so much that could be taught that isn’t – why is it always Hitchcock and not Hawks or Lang or Ray or Ford (which I did at Kent, but was then apparently dropped for Scorsese) or Varda or Herzog or Mizoguchi or anyone else? Universities could position themselves in the market place to attract students and build up their reputations yb doing somehting different, but at present this is not happening. Now, there are some very good film studies degrees out there – Kent, Warwick, and, in particular, UEA have been very successful. But for the rest? It really doesn’t matter where the student goes as they will get pretty much the same thing everywhere. This will, in the long term, harm the subject because it will compromise an institutions competitiveness. Look at the websites of the universities offering film studies degrees in the UK and you’ll find most of them list their choice of modules. See how many modules in New Hollywood cinema you can find.

The only regret I have from the various job interviews (apart from my conintuing unemployment) is that I have not spoken up about this homogeneity when I had the chance.

Conclusion

These, then, are the four problems that I think the teaching of film studies in the UK has to face [2]:

• We need a clear and useful definition of the subject.
• We need to establish what we expect students should be doing when they study film.
• We need to make sure that students get a fully rounded education in film, and not just watch horror/New Hollywood films.
• We need to create a little originality and diversity in the teaching of film studies in the UK.

The numbers game of higher education presents film studies as being successful, but this reflects students enrolling before tuition fees were (or are going to be) raised and increases in students enrolling during a time of contraction for the UK economy, and is masking real problems for the subject. But where can you raise these issues – you certainly can’t say any of this stuff in job interviews.

Notes

1. This definition draws on Andrew Herman, Thomas Swiss, and John Sloop, ‘Mapping the Beat: Spaces of Noise and Places of Music,’ in Thomas Swiss, John Sloop, and Andrew Herman (eds.) Mapping the Beat: Popualr Music and Contemporary Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998:3-29.
2. Reader should also check out my earlier post on research funding for film studies in the UK.