Table Of Content

Convergence Media History Convergence Media History explores the ways that digital convergence has radically changed the field of media history. Writing media history is no longer a matter of charting the historical development of an individual medium such as film or televi sion. Instead, now that various media from blockbuster films to everyday com puter use intersect regularly via convergence, scholars must find new ways to write media history across multiple media formats. This collection of eighteen new essays by leading media historians and scholars examines the issues today in writing media history and histories. Each essay addresses a single medium— including film, television, advertising, sound recording, new media, and more—and connects that specific medium’s history to larger issues for the field in writing multimedia or convergent histories. Among the volume’s topics are new media technologies and their impact on tradi- tional approaches to media history; alternative accounts of film production and exhibition, with a special emphasis on film across multiple media platforms; the changing relationships between audiences, fans, and consum ers within media culture; and the globalization of our media culture. Contributors: Megan Sapnar Ankerson Harper Cossar Hamid Naficy Kyle S. Barnett Ken Feil Alisa Perren Richard Butsch Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley Karl Schoonover Chris Cagle Derek Johnson Laura Isabel Serna Marsha F. Cassidy Dan Leopard Mark Williams Sue Collins Elana Levine Pamela Wilson Janet Staiger is William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Communication in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. The author of many books, her most recent include Media Reception Studies, Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era, and Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. Sabine Hake is Professor and Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Topographies of Class: Urban Architecture and Mass Utopia in Weimar Berlin, German National Cinema, and Popular Cinema of the Third Reich, and is currently working on a book on the fascist imaginary in postfascist cinema. Convergence Media History Edited by Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Staiger, Janet. Convergence, media, history/Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake.— 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mass media–Social aspects. I. Hake, Sabine, 1956– II. Title. HM1206.S72 2009 302.23–dc22 2008046079 ISBN 0-203-88343-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-99661-9 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-99662-7 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-88343-8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-99661-7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-99662-4 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-88343-3 (ebk) Contents List of Figures viii Preface ix Acknowledgments xii ParT I New Methods 1 1 From Accented Cinema to Multiplex Cinema 3 HAMID NAFICy 2 Franchise Histories: Marvel, X-Men, and the Negotiated Process of Expansion 14 DEREK JoHNSoN 3 When Pierre Bourdieu Meets the Political Economists: RKO and the Leftists-in-Hollywood Problematic 24 CHRIS CAGLE 4 Touch, Taste, Breath: Synaesthesia, Sense Memory, and the Selling of Cigarettes on Television, 1948–1971 34 MARSHA F. CASSIDy 5 Rewiring Media History: Intermedial Borders 46 MARK WILLIAMS ParT II New Subjects 57 6 Provincial Modernity? Film Exhibition at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition 59 KATHRyN H. FULLER-SEELEy vi Contents 7 Exhibition in Mexico During the Early 1920s: Nationalist Discourse and Transnational Capital 69 LAURA ISABEL SERNA 8 The Recording Industry’s Role in Media History 81 KyLE S. BARNETT 9 Forging a Citizen Audience: Broadcasting from the 1920s through the 1940s 92 RICHARD BUTSCH 10 Bobby Jones, Warner Bros., and the Short Instructional Film 102 HARPER CoSSAR ParT III New approaches 115 11 Bonding with the Crowd: Silent Film Stars, Liveness, and the Public Sphere 117 SUE CoLLINS 12 The Comfort of Carnage: Neorealism and America’s World Understanding 127 KARL SCHooNovER 13 “Talk About Bad Taste”: Camp, Cult, and the Reception of What’s New Pussycat? 139 KEN FEIL 14 Selling Out, Buying In: Brakhage, Warhol, and BAVC 151 DAN LEoPARD 15 Whatever Happened to the Movie-of-the-Week? [The Shocking True Story of How Made-For-TV Movies Disappeared from the Broadcast Networks] 161 ALISA PERREN ParT IV research Issues 171 16 Doing Soap Opera History: Challenges and Triumphs 173 ELANA LEvINE Contents vii 17 Stalking the Wild Evidence: Capturing Media History Through Elusive and Ephemeral Archives 182 PAMELA WILSoN 18 Historicizing Web Design: Software, Style, and the Look of the Web 192 MEGAN SAPNAR ANKERSoN Bibliography on Media Historiography 204 List of Contributors 208 Figures 3.1 Frontality as didactic address in Crossfire 25 4.1 Touching Kent cigarettes with hands and lips was a gendered act 39 4.2 Water skiing in the great outdoors evoked the taste of “mildness” and nicotine’s stimulation effect 42 4.3 With BelAir cigarettes, smokers could “breathe easy” and experience the satisfying release of dopamine in the body 43 5.1 The Fiscus rescue attempt: arrow shows the location of the well 49 5.2 A radio technician lowers a microphone into the well; watching are the girl’s parents, the Sheriff, and the first members of a growing crowd 51 5.3 Tatum announces Leo’s death to the “circus” crowd below 54 7.1 The Cine odeón, Mexico City, Fototeca INAH Pachuca 71 7.2 Advertisement, Excélsior, 10 July 1923 72 7.3 Number of cinema seats per 1,000 inhabitants 77 10.1 Jones and director Marshall use optical printer techniques in the short The Driver 107 10.2 and 10.3. Jones and Marshall use slow-motion cinematography and creative mise-en-scène to fetishize Jones’s body movement by isolating the moving parts of his golf swing 108 11.1 Chaplin and Fairbanks on Wall Street, 1918 123 12.1 Illustration and title for an article appearing in Life (20 october 1952) 128 13.1 Poster of What’s New Pussycat? 140 13.2 Italian poster: Ciao Pussycat 144 18.1 David Gary Studio’s website, “Full Throttle,” was built entirely in Flash and generated quite a stir among web designers when it was launched in 1999 198 18.2 yacco vijn’s parody of Flash introductory sequences became a viral sensation after the dot-com bubble burst 199 Preface Twenty-first century analysis of the production and reception of media recog- nizes the convergence of both media and approaches to studying the history of media. While likely print, movies, radio, television, and new media should never have been thought of as separate histories, the insistence of context now forces media historians to note relations among and between the various sites of information and entertainment. In a conference held at the University of Texas, october 11–13, 2007, established and emerging media historians were asked to tackle the issues of convergence: Where are we now? What are the issues today in writing media history and histories? What have we accom- plished? Where might we go? For whom and why? The essays in this collection offer some initial answers to these questions based on reflections over those conversations. Some of these essays deal with cross-media situations, with information showing up on multiple platforms for viewers. other essays address lessons to be learned from other media to apply to new situations. Some reflect on the problems of finding evidence or considering texts not initially realized as worthy of study. More significantly, “convergence media history” attacks the assumption that people can be solely a “film” or “television” scholar; competency across the media is beneficial in understanding the breadth of media influencing the par- ticular object of study. People may watch a theatrically released film on the comfort of their home entertainment system. Is that a “film” or “television”? When a serial television program’s clues to resolving the plot appear in television ads or via freeze-frame analysis and discussion on fan web pages, is that a television program, print, or new media? In accordance with the anthology’s critical agenda, we have organized the individual chapters into four parts: New Methods, New Subjects, New Approaches, and Research Issues. “Part I: New Methods” brings together five case studies that offer new models for doing film and media history. Hamid Nacify traces the contribution, as both spectators and producers of movies, of