On the compatibility of 'cinema' and 'Britain'

As I write, the Edinburgh International Film Festival is in full swing. EIFF has long championed the best and brightest of our national cinema, and this year’s British Gala strand, from which the annual Michael Powell Award-winner will be drawn, offers up a gratifyingly eclectic mix. EIFF also publishes the indispensable Film UK Guide to British Film, listing key details of all British fiction feature and short films completed in the last year (the 2009 edition can be downloaded here.)

And either by happy chance or design the UK Film Council has just launched a major new report on the cultural impact of British cinema. The research, Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film 1946-2006, was conducted by a research team drawn from Birkbeck University (led by Professor Ian Christie), Media Consulting Group and NARVAL Media. It marks the first concerted effort to measure, analyse and describe the impact of our national cinema on the wider culture at home and abroad. In the terms of a classic British understatement, this is no mean feat.

In recognition of the scale of the challenge, the foreword, from UKFC CEO John Woodward, indicates the report's preliminary status as a starting point for further enquiry and debate (scholarly or otherwise), rather than being the last, definitive word on the subject. The report can be filed under 'Pending further attention', and I look forward to reading what others make of it. My own view is that this is a thoughtful and stimulating beginning to what deserves to become a fecund arena of future study.

The researchers examined two samples of films drawn from a database of all UK feature-length films known to have been released over the reference period 1946-2006. The first comprised an 'intuitive list' of 200 such films that are widely regarded as 'significant and of lasting value' (ranging from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [1943] to This is England [2006]; the full list is available in the report appendices). The second sample was drawn randomly from the database, and 'devised as a check against the unavoidable subjectivity of the intuitive list'. The two samples overlap; Lawrence of Arabia (1962), for example, crops up in both.

In broad terms the researchers found that the films in the random sample tend to reinforce mainstream British values, whereas those in the intuitive sample 'tended to challenge or satirise those values.'

The research team also examined 30 'culturally significant films' in detail, using three indices to gauge their impact: 'original impact (box office, awards)', 'extended impact (DVD re-issues, restorations)', and 'wider impact (citations in other media, evidence of esteem etc.)'.

In addition, the researchers identified four main categories of cultural impact: 'censorship and notoriety' (e.g. A Clockwork Orange), 'quotations in other media such as songs, TV shows' etc., 'Zeitgeist moments' and 'cumulative impact where films have [...] contributed to long-term changes in social and cultural attitudes.'

But the report offers much more than an assessment of impact. It also re-examines the complexion of British cinema over the reference period, challenging some of the more pervasive assumptions about it (like the idea that World War II is one of the most common settings for British films in the postwar period; turns out that films set in the 'long 19th century' (1800-1914) are more abundant). The study also highlights the role of national and regional representation in British film, and looks at how the representation of ethnicity manifests itself. There's also a section on how Britishness in films is perceived outside the UK, and the contribution that public policy has made to cultural impact.  

A number of things struck me while reading the report, a few of which I feel confident to share (the rest require further thought). The first is a slight sense of unease about the very idea of cultural impact. I can't quite get my head around the notion. Film doesn't sit askance from culture, and as such I wonder about the nature of 'impact'. As presented there is a sense of 'A' doing something to 'B', when in reality 'A' and 'B' are intertwined and likely to share a reciprocal relationship. What's missing in this account is how British film has been influenced by other cultural practices and artefacts.

This extends to the influence of other national cinemas on our own, because film travels widely. I did a little exercise a few months back where I looked at the film titles cited by over 40 successful British filmmakers as their key influence or all time favourite. The information came from profiles compiled and published on the Telegraph Film page, and the table of filmmakers and titles can be downloaded here.

Of the 43 directors, writers and producers quizzed, seven gave a British film as their key inspiration. Nearly as many (six) cited a French film. And, unsurprisingly, the majority (22 in total) offered up a US movie, including recent Academy Award winner Danny Boyle (who listed John Carpenter's The Thing [1983]).

Finally, the absence of audience reception analysis is also an issue, which the authors acknowledge. As culture is lived experience, and not simply the sum of all that is recorded either on the page, canvas, music sheet, celluloid/hard drive etc., any account of impact has to examine how we make meaning out of sensory stimulation. How does our sense of 'Britishness' inflect our reading of film, and vice versa? As this is likely to be grounded in our everyday experience of living in Britain (or as outsiders spectating from afar) we should be looking to cultural anthropologists for such insights. As the UK Film Council is unlikely to fund such research, will the academic community step up to the plate? I hope so.

Comments

[JC]

First of all, this is a fascinating attempt and the first one I have seen focusing on British Cinema's cultural contribution.

It would be interesting to see a contingent value estimation on British Cinema's cultural "contribution" similar to the BBC study done in 2006 (Horner, Mahdon and Bevan) or the Papandrea study of Australian television (Papandrea, F. “Willingness to pay for domestic television programming.” Journal of Cultural Economics, Vol. 23, No 3, p 146-166, 1999). This would clearly augment the work done in this paper and might give a more quantitative assessment.

The upcoming seminar (27 November at the Clore Mgmt Centre, London) should be interesting.