Introduction
Aims
Timetable
Recommended and Further Reading
Key British Films: 1930-1995
Assessment
File Last updated: 30th October, 1996
The aim of this double module is to critically examine the relationship between film and television and British society and culture in the period from 1939 to the present. The unit focuses on the representation of versions of Britishness (or, more frequently, Englishness), and looks at the role played by the media in furnishing images of, and directing attitudes towards, British society and culture over the last 60 sixty years. Film, and later television, have had a massive impact in directing or reflecting images of the nation and of a "national culture", and of what it means to be British or English. Drawing on culturally pre-existing repositories of images of 'Englishness' - Cricket, the countryside, the British national character, institutions such as the Monarchy and Parliament - both film and television have sought to define, recirculate and legitimate images of a coherent, cohesive and organic national community, particularly at times of political or ideological crisis: World War II, Suez, attitudes towards America and Europe in the 1970s, or the Falklands War of 1982. But British film and television have also offered alternative, dissenting and even oppositional visions of the nation and of a national culture, questioning 'Establishment' values, or responding sympathetically to the socially disadvantaged and disenfranchised. It is, therefore, part of the task of this unit to explore these issues of ideology and representation, focusing on the various ways in which Britain has, or has not been projected in the period.
British film and television also have had, however, their own
particular and individual histories - institutional, artistic,
economic. They have not simply developed as agencies, but have
had a very particular history, driven partly by the determining
effects of patterns of ownership, production and distribution,
but also by the impact of key individuals, groups and organisations.
Behind both British film and television has lurked the shadow
of American influence, whether in terms of money or prestige,
and the consequent need to compete with Hollywood on its own terms.
More recently, with the emergence of the new media, and the trans-national
media conglomerates, British film and television have had to respond
to new challenges, to reach British audiences, but also to remain
commercially viable, let alone successful, within an increasingly
aggressive market for both films and programmes. Part of the task
of this course is to review that history, and to see how it has
affected what we have watched, what we have been allowed to watch,
and what we have wanted to watch.
This double module is taught in two halves, with Semester 1 introducing
predominantly literary and cultural approaches to the study of
film and television in Britain.
(i) Semester 1 - Representation in context.
The 'English' part of the course (50%) will be concerned with the ways in which media texts (film, popular literature and later television) represent and mediate images of the Nation, and of subsidiary issues such as class, gender and race. Consideration will be given to general questions of ideology and determination, and the ways in which media texts mediate historical and social contexts. The main thrust of this part of the course will, however, be given over to texts which are less directly and immediately concerned with historical events, i.e. within the relatively autonomous sphere of film and cultural production. This might help to distinguish this part of the course from the HISTORY component, which might be concerned more directly with immediate forms of mediation (such as News, Newspapers and Journalism) and their relation to actual events and circumstances.
At the end of the course the student should be able to:
(ed.) Aulich, J, Framing the Falklands War: Nationhood, Culture and Identity, (Open University Press, 1992).
(eds.) Baker, F., Holme, P., and Ivesson, M., Confronting the Crisis: War, Politics and Culture in the Eighties, (University of Essex, 1984).
ed. Ban, C, All Our Yesterdays: 90 Years of British Cinema, (BFI, 1986)
Bennet, T., U203: Popular Culture, (Open University, 1981). [Course Units]
(eds. Bennet, T., Mercer, C., and Woollacott, J., Popular Culture and Social Relations, (Open University Press, 1986).
Dickinson, M. and Street, S., Cinema and State: the Film Industry and the British Government 1927-1984, (BFI, 1985)
Durgnat, A Mirror For England, (Faber, 1977).
Goldie, G.W., Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 19361976, (The Bodley Head, 1977).
ed. Hurd, G., National Fictions: World War Two in British Films and Television, (BFI, 1984).
Murphy, R., Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939-1949, (RKP, 1989).
Perry, George, Forever Ealing, (Pavilion/Michael Joseph, 1981).
Richards, J., and Aldgate, A., Best of British: Cinema and Society 1930-1970, (Blackwell, 1983).
Richards, J., The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain 1930-1939, (RKP, 1984).
Robertson, J.C., The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action: 1913-1972, (RKP, 1988).
Stead, P., Film and the Working Class: The Feature Film in British and American Society, (RKP, 1989).
(eds.) Thorpe, F., and Pronay, N., British Official Films in the Second World War, (Clio, Oxford, 1980).
Wright, P, On Living in an Old Country, Verso, 1985).