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A cultural studies approach to the social history of film: A case study of moviegoing in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1926-1932
Abstract
Historical investigation of film audiences and conditions of reception is an underdeveloped area of inquiry, limited by models of spectatorship and mass culture that construct audiences in passive and abstract terms. Current research addressing this problem remains restricted to the years prior to normalization of vertical integration during the mid 1920s, when studio control over exhibition is seen to flatten the contexts of reception and cultural differences between audiences. This dissertation picks up the history of audiences and contexts of reception where current research leaves off by analyzing moviegoing in Springfield, Massachusetts for the period 1926-1932. Starting from the material, social, and discursive contexts within which meanings for moviegoing were constituted, this dissertation locates the historical analysis of film audiences within the framework of cultural studies, which conceptualizes the audience as a nonreductive feature of cultural production. Focusing on the 1926-1932 period, the study recognizes the political economic impact studio integration had on the moviegoing experience throughout America, and assesses the degree to which moviegoing became standardized on the local level. This assessment is made by examining every theater operating in Springfield between 1926 and 1932. Correlating seat capacity with ownership patterns, the study concretely measures the changing proportion of studio dominance over local exhibition. Through an analysis of primary documents and oral histories, the study reconstructs the cultural appeals of each theater, the social geography of the neighborhoods surrounding each theater, and the discourses through which each theater's audiences were constituted and the experience of moviegoing made meaningful. The results indicate significant differences in the social meanings of moviegoing as practiced at different exhibition sites, and suggest the continuing cultural and ideological significance of class and ethnic distinctions in marking out the terrain of exhibition, patterns of attendance, and modes of moviegoing during the early era of vertical integration.
Subject Area
Motion Pictures|Mass media|American history
Recommended Citation
Klenotic, Jeffrey Francis, "A cultural studies approach to the social history of film: A case study of moviegoing in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1926-1932" (1996). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9638984.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9638984