James Jones (University of Sussex) Emotional communities in the cinema: tracing emotion in mass observation cinema records, 1937-1950, email: This paper uses the records of Mass Observation, a social research organisation founded in the 1930s, to explore the ways in which cinemas acted as sites of public emotion between 1937 and 1950. It uses the history of emotions as a framework to uncover the ways in which cinemas acted as institutions which affected cinema-goers’ sense of emotional selfhood and, in doing so, it explores the tensions between public and private feeling which were contested and developed over the mid-twentieth century. The cinema occupied a privileged position in both the leisure practices and emotional narratives of millions of Britons. The records in the Mass Observation archive reveal how, as an institution, the cinema provided a permissive space in which emotional experiences were set against broader emotional regimes such as the much-quoted British “stiff-upper-lip”. This created an emotional threshold around the cinema auditorium, an imagined boundary across which people were reluctant to carry their affective reactions to films into the street outside. Ostensibly a public leisure venue, the cinema became a locus of private emotion for many people, and an extension of the privacy which was found in domestic settings. Many Mass Observation viewed their cinematic feelings as rather atypical in their lives, and this paper argues that examining mid-century cinema-going through an emotional lens offers a nuanced and perceptive way of investigating the mass cultural medium of cinema. Martin Smith (Northumbria University) Remembering ‘The Scariest Movie of all time’: The Exorcist in the 1970s, email: The Exorcist was released in Christmas of 1973 amid accusations of blasphemy and obscenity with a reputation of provoking extreme audience reactions, ranging from fainting and vomiting to miscarriages and suicide. This talk is based on cinema-goers’ memories of seeing The Exorcist in Britain and the United States upon its release in the context of this widely publicised controversy and subsequent censorship campaigns. It draws upon a body of original interviews to examine the nature of cinema memory as it relates to what has been consistently voted “the scariest movie of all time”. Despite being one of the most famous audience stories in cinema history, The Exorcist has only been discussed so far in terms of its production and exhibition, with audiences described only through re-tellings of the most extreme stories of trauma reported in the press. This research seeks to create goers
A weaker, more unstable division of roles in the cinema space is characteristic of volunteer-led and DIY exhibition practices, especially those that take place in unconventional screening venues, as compared to commercial exhibition in permanent cinemas. This paper traces genealogies of audience work in cinema spaces with a focus on film societies and cine-clubs in mid- and late-twentieth century Scotland. It explores how roles were demarcated within the cinema space and throughout the production of the cinema event, intersecting with discourses of professionalization and with the concealment or foregrounding of the projection apparatus. The historical research is discussed alongside contemporary fieldwork and interviews with exhibitors in the community cinema and DIY sectors. From setting up the chairs to baking cakes to fixing a dodgy audio jack, the material contribution of audiences to the production of the cinema event is part of the appeal for those getting involved in such initiatives. In this context, the transitions between roles before, during, and after the screening are important elements in understanding the potential of non-theatrical cinema to constitute parallel or para-institutional modes of spectatorship. Panel 6 – Methodological challenges and approaches in historical audience research Sarah Neely (University of Stirling) ‘Reel to Rattling Reel’: Telling stories about rural cinemagoing in Scotland, email: As Annette Kuhn explains in relation to her pioneering research on cinema culture in 1930s Britain, ‘how people remember is as a much a text to be deciphered as what they remember (2002: 6). This paper, drawing from research conducted as part of a three-year AHRC-funded project looking at the history of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild (University of Glasgow and University of Stirling), will examine the ways in which cinema memories are narrativised. Through an analysis of the project’s oral history interviews, but also correspondence with respondents, respondents’ diaries and other written accounts, including poems, short stories and other forms of creative writing, the paper will focus in particular on the relationship between the sensory stimulation of the cinema-going experience and creativity. It will also make comparison with material drawn from Kuhn’s Cinema and Culture in 1930s Britain Archive (Lancaster University), giving particular consideration to the ways in which cinema memories are narrativised across the various forms, but also the ways in which cinema memory (as a very particular form of cultural