The Cinema and Cinema-Going in Scotland, 1896–1950
The Cinema and Cinema-Going in Scotland, 1896–1950
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苏格兰的电影和电影院，1896 年至 1950 年
DOI：
10.1080/01439685.2013.793008
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. James
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. James
从世纪开始，一直到后期的固定和专用场所--“跳蚤坑”和“图片宫殿”。格里菲思承认，去电影院和更早的“传统”娱乐形式，如音乐厅和综艺节目之间的连续性。事实上，他揭示了综艺节目如何仍然是苏格兰电影院体验的一部分，直到“新”休闲媒体首次出现二十年后。格里菲斯不仅指出了电影设法“将自己嵌入现有的休闲形式”的方式（第44页），还赞赏电影带来的许多变化，特别是从20世纪20年代起，电影鼓励工人阶级，特别是工人阶级妇女和儿童参与的方式。这本书的真实的优点之一是作者对消费者代理的密切关注。格里菲斯仍然敏锐地意识到电影院顾客的歧视性力量。格里菲思说，听众是由“各种兴趣和品味的混合物[......]组成的，成功的经理人需要特别注意他们的需要”（第317页）。去电影院可能是一种习惯，但这种习惯“绝大多数时候都受制于选择”（第198页）。格里菲思记录了电影院的经理们是如何了解顾客的需求，预订符合他们社会和文化需求的电影的。的确，格里菲思断言：“去看电影是一种习惯，与其说是出于例行公事，不如说是出于辨别和选择主题的能力，这些主题从字面上和比喻上“表达”了个人的兴趣和品味“（第208页）。因此，格里菲思成功地描绘了消费者选择背后的“推动”和“拉动”因素恶劣的天气条件;个人电影预订，以构建一个令人信服的案例，避免去电影院是一种简单的“逃避主义”。正如格里菲思所说，逃避现实可以“采取多种形式”（第317页）。因此，当一位女性电影观众在当地的电影院“寻求休息，休息和燃料消耗的经济”时，其他人去电影院是因为电影“提供了现实的放大而不是释放”（第317页）。简而言之，这些电影观众是积极的消费者。
20th century, through to the fixed and dedicated sites—the ‘flea-pits’ as well as the ‘picture palaces’—of the later period. Griffiths acknowledges the continuity between going to the cinema and earlier,‘traditional’forms of entertainment, such as the music hall and variety shows. In fact, he reveals how variety acts remained a part of the cinema-going experience in Scotland until two decades after the ‘new’leisure medium’s first appearance. As well as identifying the ways in which the cinema managed to ‘embed itself within existing leisure forms’(p. 44), Griffiths also appreciates the many changes the cinema brought about, in particular the ways in which it encouraged the participation of the working classes, especially workingclass women and children, from the 1920s onwards. One of the real strengths of this book is the author’s close attention to consumer agency. Griffiths remains acutely aware of the discriminatory powers of the cinema’s patrons. Audiences were made up, Griffiths states, of ‘an amalgam of varied interests and tastes […] to whose needs the successful manager was required to pay particular attention’(p. 317). Cinema-going may have been a habit, but it was a habit that was ‘overwhelmingly subject to the exercise of choice’(p. 198). Griffiths thus records how cinema managers, aware of their patrons’ desires, booked films that answered their social and cultural needs. Indeed, Griffiths asserts that ‘[c] inema-going was a habit driven less by routine than by the ability to discriminate and to select subjects that “spoke”, both literally and figuratively, to individual interests and tastes’(p. 208). Griffiths therefore succeeds in charting the ‘push’and ‘pull’factors behind consumers’ choices—adverse weather conditions; individual film bookings—to construct a convincing case for eschewing the notion that going to the cinema was a simple form of ‘escapism’. As Griffiths states, escapism can ‘assume many forms’(p. 317). So while one female cinema-goer ‘sought rest, repose and economies of fuel consumption’at her local picture house, others went to the cinema because films ‘offered an amplification of rather than a release from reality’(p. 317). These cinema-goers were, in short, active consumers.