The Anthropology Of Ourselves Flashcards
What could we potentially call the aristocracy the face of in 20s 30s?
The face of mass culture
What does mass culture make the aristocracy into?
Celebrities
What does Lord Monomark control in Vile Bodies?
Controls what is published from behind the scenes - satirizes the large media owner
What is their a blurring of lines between after the war and why?
Because a lot of heirs have died out and aristocracy suffering during the war moneywise, they began to blur the lines between upper classes and aristocracy and let new money people in
What is a perfect example on the Northfield Ordnance Survey which reveals the struggles of the upper classes?
Manor house became a hotel
Who were generally the protagonists of Hollywood films?
Rich upper class people
What challenged the political power of the aristocracy?
Mass democracy of Britain and the politicians shift to focus on everyone not just the rich
What does Patrick Balfour in Society Racket suggest Society is?
Superficial, he calls it ‘a fiction’
What does the newsreel showing the spectacle of debutants reveal?
The importance of Society, seen as the pinacle
If the aristocracy hadn’t eroded what had it done?
Transformed
What two things could the advertising on the Bystander Magazines 1938 jacket reveal?
Either that the magazine needed more advertising because it wasn’t selling enough magazines, or that more people were wanting to advertise with the magazine because it was popular
What quality did readers who read gossip columns like The Bystander have?
Aspirational
What was the private lives of the aristocracy up for in 1920s 30s?
Consumption
What does Voyeurism mean?
It is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature
What gets blurred in depictions of the aristocracy in Society magazines?
Public and private - public advertising of really private parts of people’s lives - somebody’s daughter died in one extract
What does showing the private lives of the aristocracy do to their status?
Brings them down to the level of everyone else
What happens to the figure of the gossip columnist in the 20s 30s?
Increases in popularity and comes to stand in for society racket - a way of satirising Society
Who is hovering behind the dominance of our idea of the Bright Young Things in 20s 30s?
Gossip columnists, they are creating this image
What critiques and fear arise after Vile Bodies is produced?
Fear around gossip columnists and critiques of the aristocracy and Society
What other notorious figure does the popular press make accessible through their sensationalised stories?
Criminal lives
Why are Josephine O’Dare’s second accounts of 20s 30s Society likely to be truthful?
She has nothing to lose, not bound by loyalty because she is of the working classes, fresh out of prison and needing money
What did Josephie O’Dare threaten specifically?
Heirarchy of the aristocracy/their power to differentiate themselves from other classes
What did Vile Bodies and Society Racket’s publications open the door for Josephine O’Dare to do?
Criticise the aristocracy
Who does Josephine O’Dare sue?
Every newspaper that prints a story of her in 1926 and 1927 for libel
What is an ongoing concern with interwar journalism?
Private law, right to a private life
What do readers of newspapers and interwar journalists suddenly become more interested in?
Human interest stories
What do readers of newspapers feel they have the right to?
The right to know, the right to the truth
What does Josephine O’Dare become a metaphor for?
Modern, dangerous women
What kind of narration is valued in 20s 30s news stories?
First person testimony, focus on personal experiences
How did O’Dare go from Hereford farm to front cover of Bystander?
Easier to cross boundaries, appearing to be self made like others in Society, less focus on lineage post-war
What did O’Dare emulate in order to social climb? What does this show?
The style, front surface of the aristocracy she wears the correct clothes, correct manner - shows it is all surface
What does Sarah Newman in ‘Gentleman, Journalist, Gentleman-Journalist’ (2013) use to offer new insights into professionalisation of popular journalism in post war Britain?
Diaries and private and professional correspondence of interwar gossip columnists
What kind of time was it for newspaper readership and content in 1920s?
Time of rapid change
How many of the population over 16 years old read a national newspaper every day in 1939?
69%
Why does Dan LeMahieu in Culture for Democracy (1988) say new features in newspapers were designed?
To appeal to readers on a personal level and incorporate a world they recognised
Also what does Dan LeMahieu in Culture for Democracy (1988) argue ordinary stories became in 20s 30s journalism?
dignified, and turned into mystery and adventure romance
What did gossip columnists receive that reveals their popular celebrity status?
Hundreds of fan letters from ordinary fans expressing admiration
What were critics such as Queenie Leavis concerned with in the popular press in 1930s?
Americanisation and levelling down of the content
What did critics such as Tracey deem the gossip columns as?
Temporary, calling them a “stunt” and “a circulation raising device” contrasting them to more respectable forms of journalism
According to her memoirs, how did gossip columnist Lady Eleanor Smith’s colleagues treat her at the office?
Unwelcoming and standoffish
What did people often say gossip columnists were doing?
“Playing at a newspaper career”
What two things did Dan LeMahieu in Culture for Democracy (1988) credit for allowing a more visually appealing newspaper?
New editing techniques and faster, cheaper printing technologies
What had the newspapers experienced growth during?
WW1
From the mid 1920s how did columnists like Castlerosse and Lady Eleanor Smith place increasing emphasis on their upper class status, placing them on a level with the subjects they talked about?
Used their full titles, presented a lifestyle equivalent to their subjects dominated by wealth, leisure and luxury
Where did Patrick Balfour go to lunch?
The Ritz (of course!)
What does Sarah Newman in ‘Gentleman, Journalist, Gentleman-Journalist’ (2013) argue Balfour avoided any direct reference to in his gossip column? What did this achieve?
Avoided any direct reference to his employment by the press or daily structures of his working life, and it meant the reader had a direct insight into a gentleman rather than a journalist’s lifestyle
Other than gossip columns, what kinds of articles were becoming a more persistent feature of the national press?
Opinionated and emotive articles on society, culture and politics
Who was Patrick Balfour’s father?
Scottish judge and Earl of Kinross
What was Patrick Balfour’s fathers two main concerns in late 1920s?
That his son’s work as a gossip columnist might have an effect on his developing profession as a journalist, but also that it might impact on his own and his family’s reputation amongst elites
What did Patrick Balfour’s father say when Patrick became “Mr Gossip” in the Daily Sketch in 1931?
“Surely your mother and I have suffered enough”
What was Patrick Balfour’s father concerned there was no clear boundary between?
His son’s public, working and private life
Would Patrick Balfour literally write anything and everything in his column though?
No there were things he urged in private correspondence people to keep quiet about - selective
How did Patrick Balfour change in late 1930s?
He began to think he was to good for most newspaper gossip columns and wrote cultural pieces instead.
What does Sarah Newman in ‘Gentleman, Journalist, Gentleman-Journalist’ (2013) argue Balfour’s change of heart about gossip columns reflects?
A broader shift in attitudes towards Society and their social life in the 1930s
When was Josephine O’Dare convicted? When was she released?
Convicted 1927, Released 1930
What does Matt Houlbrook in ‘Commodifying the Self Within’ argue accounts of O’Dare’s life can be read as?
The dangers of an Americanised popular press
What does Matt Houlbrook in ‘Commodifying the Self Within’ argue Josephine O’Dare’s life stories echo?
The rags to riches narratives of romantic fiction
What does Matt Houlbrook in ‘Commodifying the Self Within’ argue Josephine O’Dare’s iconic image was defined by?
Studio portraits through which she claimed society status
What concerns surrounded the use of ghost writing?
To do with Americanisation, threatened integrity of British journalism
Associated with fantasy and deception what does Matt Houlbrook in ‘Commodifying the Self Within’ argue the ghostwriters role was assumed to be?
To generate vast quantities of ‘trashy and inauthentic writing’
What resulted in newspapers’ relentless search for sensational material and disregard for importance of viable facts?
Threat of bad publicity and expense prevented the ordinary citizen from using libel to protect their reputations, there was nothing people could do about it
When did Patrick Balfour write Society Racket?
1933
What does Patrick Balfour show that was described by Waugh in Vile Bodies as being common among gossip columnists and writers?
“Black Misanthropy”
What does Patrick Balfour term the 20s as in relation to feeling that after the war people needed freedom?
‘Final Fling’
What does Patrick Balfour refer to world war one as in Society Racket?
‘Four years of Slavery’
When was Vile Bodies written? By who?
1930 and Evelyn Waugh
What does Vile Bodies satirise?
The bright young things - decadent young London Society between ww1 and ww2
What does Waugh’s title Vile Bodies mean?
A literal translation of latin phrase ‘corpus vilia’ which means a people fit only to be the object of experimentation
Why did Waugh not call the book Bright Young Things?
Thought the term had become too cliche
What does Vile Bodies say about libel cases that isn’t picked up on so much in the readings?
“Younger generation allowed their cases to be settled in court then threw a party with the proceeds”
What does Vile Bodies say gossip columnists have?
A black list of people their not allowed to talk about so have to talk about the non-entities
What does Mr Chattybox create in Vile Bodies?
People to talk about, invents people
What is funny about Mr Chattybox inventing people in Vile Bodies?
People then pretend to know them, say they have been seen with the not real person
Who ultimately controls what goes into the gossip columns in Vile Bodies?
Lord Monomark, the newspaper editor
What divide does Vile Bodies also play out interestingly?
Generational divide
What does the film The First Court of the Season show?
A gathering of debutants to enter Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen, many people gather to see these debutants enter the palace even though it is bitterly cold.
What does Josephine O’Dare say she could have had hundreds of?
“husbands with never a query about my forebears had I so desired”
When did the issues of Reynolds sell out? What story was in it?
Josephine O’Dare’s “story”
What was coming to the fore particularly in the 30s and spreading paranoia in the rest of the world? Clue: economic crisis
Radical new political ideals like Socialism, Fascism
What did the conservative government try to do to stop the rise of socialism?
Address the needs of the people
What book did George Orwell write that reveals the extent of poverty in industrial Britain?
The Road to Wigan Pier
What is Orwell trying to shift in The Road to Wigan Pier?
Perceptions of the people
Why does Orwell choose to go to Wigan and Barnsley to write The Road to Wigan Pier?
It is the problem area of the 1920s - An industrial area after an era of economic hardship, most affected by the recession, wanting to shock people tell a particular story, it has the biggest contrast to his own life
What did George Orwell want to make visible in The Road to Wigan Pier?
A social world that most of his peers wouldn’t be familiar with, immerses himself and the reader in the community, giving real detail about the story.
Why couldn’t the people of Wigan and Barnsley make their own lives visible?
They didn’t think it was hat bad, assumed it was ordinary, takes someone coming in from the outside to see how bad it was, also appeals to other well off socialists, Orwell writes from a position of power
What line from The Road to Wigan Pier suggests Orwell is writing for a well off audience?
“You will know from when your working in your garden”
Is Orwell an ‘understanding outsider’ or voyeuristic?
Complex in between - Does understand its not about ‘moral failings’ but economics, but does show middle class privilege quite a lot
What is the name of the Victorian form that proceeds The Road to Wigan Pier?
‘Slumming literature’
What is the way Orwell describes the poor similar to?
Descriptions of Africa, anthropology of Africans and ‘primitive peoples’
What does the two part book structure mean Orwell can achieve?
First part mobilizes sympathy, the second gives the solution
What does Orwell give in The Road to Wigan Pier that makes you feel you are there with him?
Intricate detail
What does Orwell not give to the people of Wigan and Barnsley?
A sense of self or an individual voice, no individual identity, just one set of people
How does Orwell understand class in The Road to Wigan Pier?
Flexible notion of class which is socio economically controlled BUT is also about social and cultural patterns of life ie. a man can act and speak like a gentleman but may not be able to afford servants etc.
What sense does Orwell associate with class?
Smell - comes down to bodily functions - thinks class is that engrained that it is in who you are
How does Orwell envision the working class mans body?
Romanticises and idealises it, strong and masculine a bit homo-erotic
What does David Thackeray argue The Road to Wigan Pier is?
“A haunting vision of Britain during the depression”
Who commissioned Orwell to write The Road to Wigan Pier? And what publishing firm did the work for?
Victor Gollancz and he works for the ‘The Left Book Club’
What happened in 1936, the year Orwell was asked to write the book?
Election victory of the conservative, nominated naional government
Which half did Victor Gollancz want Orwell not to publish? What did he then denounce this half as in the introduction?
Didn’t want him to publish the second half, wrote an intro denouncing the second half as repugnant
What is the point of Orwell’s second half to The Road to Wigan Pier?
It says if everyone thinks the first part is intolerable, and socialism is capable of improving on the first part, why is everyone not socialists?
Name 2 of Orwell’s 5 reasons people dismiss Socialism?
Class prejudice, Machine worship - socialists love machines, Socialists seen as cranky, bad image, Turgid language, and failure to concentrate on the basics - too philosophical
What is Victor Gollancz’s concern about Orwell’s depiction of socialism in the second part of the book?
Gollancz says Orwell doesn’t define what he means by socialism and raises concern that he has a poorly defined and emotional concept of it
What does Orwell fear is coming, if we do not sort out class prejudice?
“Fascism is coming” - “there is no change of saving England from Fascism unless we can bring an effective Socialist party into existence”
What was the Jarrow March?
Protest in October 1936 against unemployment and suffering in the northeast Tyneside town of Jarrow, during the 1930s
How many men marched to London in the Jarrow March?
200
What were the Jarrow Marchers requesting?
Re-establishment of industry in the town following the closure of its main employer, Palmer’s Shipyard.
What did the government do about the Jarrow Marchers?
Recieved the petition but did not debate it, the Marchers went home feeling they’d failed
What does the painting The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers show the rich and poor as?
The aristocracy are in the forefront of the picture so they are the face of the age but outside the window we see the marchers showing the injustice and inequality really happening
Why is the woman watching the Jarrow Marchers in the painting The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers, while her husband appears disinterested interesting?
Interesting because shows weakness of women and emotional nature of them, misunderstanding the political significance
What does the paining The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers juxtapose in terms of materiality?
Juxtaposes the high fashion, wealth and opulence of the couple and their room, with the people in the background fighting for corporal necessities
Why was Orwell a conflicted political figure according to Robert Colls’ George Orwell: English Rebel (2013)?
Some attitudes that were Socialist, some that were Tory - he said he was a Socialist, friends said he was a Tory
Was Orwell rich?
Defined as “upper class without the money” went to Eton
What does Robert Colls in George Orwell: English Rebel (2013) argue Orwell found in 1936 when he went North for the first time?
An England he could believe in, pondered why their labour was most valuable but not most valued
What is a great quote from Robert Colls in George Orwell: English Rebel (2013) about Orwell’s confusing nature?
“Almost all general statements about who or what he was can be matched by equal and opposite statements”
What crucial way does Robert Colls in George Orwell: English Rebel (2013) define Orwell’s Englishness?
“Somewhere between what had been lived and breathed in the past and what might be lived and breathed in the future”
What state was the mining industry in when Orwell went down them in 1936?
A bad state, depression had hit hard
What does Robert Colls in ‘The People’s Orwell’ (2011) argue Orwell was only able to see of the poor people he described?
The surface, couldn’t understand them deeply and their motivations
What incident does Robert Colls in ‘The People’s Orwell’ (2011) describe that really changed Orwell’s life and was ‘more important than a thousand political meetings’?
When he went down the mine, couldn’t stand up straight and could barely walk for 4 days
Who does Robert Colls in ‘The People’s Orwell’ (2011) argue Orwell was not convinced by?
The British left, part 2 a polemic about their problems, loathed his left book club colleagues
What does Robert Colls in ‘The People’s Orwell’ (2011) argue Orwell’s experiences in Wigan had shown him about the English working class?
That they had an identity, they believed that England belonged to them
What does Laura Mayhall in ‘The Prince of Wales Versus Clark Gable’ (2007) argue Americans avidly consumed news of?
Edward Prince of Wales
What was the Prince of Wales acknowledged as at the end of his reign?
‘heartbreaker of the world’
When did the Prince of Wales emerge as a sensation of Hollywood?
1931
What was Queen Victoria considered the first of? Who argues this?
‘Media Monarch’ and John Plunkett
Whose attitudes towards the press transformed in 1920s/30s?
Monarchy’s attitudes to the press
What did David Sinclair say Edward, Prince of Wales had?
“All the necessary attributes for stardom”
What new type of technology influenced the development of the press and played a role in shaping political institutions, social organisation and the distribution of power in the Empire?
Communications techology
What does Charles Leonard call the ‘master plot’ of celebrity journalism around the Prince?
Celebrated him as ordinary, affable, willing to work hard to succeed
What does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) argue letters written to the King and other key players during the abdication crisis provide evidence of?
The disputed nature of media-influenced public opinion in the 1930s
What does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) situate his argument about the disputed nature of public opinion into?
Wider cultural conflict between contemporary values and an established ethical code that governed the monarchy and high politics
What did Woolf wish to find out in her analysis of people’s feelings towards the abdication?
She wished to find out the opinions of the ordinary people
What was central to Woolf’s account of the abdication crisis?
The idea of a media sensitized mass society
What did Woolf conclude about the King’s affair with Wallis Simpson?
It was part of a wider shift in social mores, emotional expressiveness with human sympathy now in open conflict with the 19th century views of social hierarchy and imperial power
Where does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) argue that many people analysed events of 1936 abdication crisis?
Diaries and letters
What does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) say intense interest in the King’s affair has been seen to exemplify?
Obsession with the personal and private life, part of the media fueled emotional character of the laye 1930s
Why does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) argue letters are not direct links to what people thought?
Individual and collective views are shaped by social practises
What does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) argue women writing to the King often wrote expansively about?
Their own lives as part of an intimate and imagined relationship with him
What had human interest journalism produced the King as in 1920s onwards?
International celebrity
What did people desire to do with the monarchy in this period?
Get up close, know about their personal lives
What was the King’s image a result of rapidly changing nature of according to Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014)?
Changing nature of royal communications
What did people particularly celebrate in positive letters about the Prince of Wales and Simpson’s affair?
The hetero social vision of future based on companionate marriage idea of mutually enriching and democratic union
What did a more conservative outlook towards the abdication crisis mean also taking a sand against?
Attacks on Victorianism
What does Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) conclude the letters reveal?
A wide spectrum of competing political opinions and fluid emotional responses
What did the monarchy become after the abdication crisis, according to Frank Mort in ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ (2014) ?
Increasingly centered on nuclear family, restrictions on King/Queen’s political authority
What does Evelyn Graham display the Queen Mary as doing in ‘First Lady of the Land’?
Whistling in the corridor
What does Evelyn Graham say in ‘Why the Prince does not marry?’
“The country would never allow” him to “marry a woman with no claims of family or distinction”
What two examples of the royal family’s depiction can draw them into ideas of domesticity in England?
The coronation mug has the King and his family on it, as father rather than just a King
And Christmas speech equates idea of family with the nation
What collapsed between the poor and the monarchy in 20s 30s?
The distance of heirarchy
What uses did moblisisng the monarchy to seem like the poor have?
Mobilising idea of comfortable security in anxieties after war, Necessity due to the political sphere of Socialism
What were the monarchy beginning to accept and understand the need of in the period?
Beginning to understand technology and modernising
Due to the nature of the country as struggling in the 30s, what did the monarchy do?
Emphasis on their philanthropic tasks - visiting unemployment camps
Why might the Royal family have been concerned about their position as monarch?
Many royal families were being deposed in the period, causing pressure on them (1917 Russia) also these Kings/Queens are often related to our King
What was the Irish revolution a direct challenge to?
The Monarchy
Why could the abdication crisis be conceived of as a success?
The aristocracy become normalised, leads to recognition of its special status
What do the aristocracy suddenly become concerned about the use of?
The use of royal imagery and iconography, has to be authorised and approved - become careful about how their image will be used
What are lots of social commentators and mass observers often confused about where the royal family are concerned?
How they manage to remain so popular
What do the British monarchy perhaps remind us of?
Our history, hark back to an archaic image of Britain, provide stability through fears about modernity
What did presenting the monarchy as normal cut across?
Class lines that were beginning to seem like they could clash
What does the King thank the people for in his Christmas broadcast of 1932?
their confidence and loyalty
Where does the King in his Christmas broadcast of 1932 say he speaks from?
“I speak from my home and my heart to you all, to men and women so cut off by the snow desert and seas.”
What do Scott Anthony and James G Mansell say in ‘The Documentary Film Movement’ (2012) argue deserves increased attention from historians? And why?
The British documentary film movement because it contributed to the British national imagination and the idea of multiple British identities
What kind of social and political ethos did the documentary movement get associated with?
Progressive middle opinion - middle brow - left wing
What did Grierson argue a British national cinema should reflect?
A nation in its totality
How do Scott Anthony and James G Mansell say in ‘The Documentary Film Movement’ (2012) argue Documentaries presented Britishness?
Not as a homogenous whole but of varied different parts making up a whole
What does the film Industrial Britain (1931) give to the people on it?
Gives them a name and some job history - personalises them and gives them a face
What was the 30s a decade of in literature and the arts in general?
Realism
What do Baxendale and Pawling say in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) ordinary people started to invade in the 30s?
Started to invade the spheres of politics and culture
What do Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) say in recent years a number of critics have questioned?
The assumptions that lie behind the construction of the people in these documentaries
What do Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) say we have to remember about the motive behind documentary films?
Documentary film makers choose to record them and make their images available - it is the motivations behind them that require our attention as much as the images themselves
What do Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) argue the ‘documentary impulse’ should be seen as?
a discursive relationship between one social grouping and another
How had the national ‘intelligentsia’ changed by the 1930s?
Become more numerous, more spread out in social origin and occupation
What do Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) argue mass observation and the documentary film movement cannot be understood in isolation from?
The demand for market research and surveys of public opinion
Who did Grierson persuade to be in his films?
Internationally known directors such as Cavalcanti, and got W H Auden to be on Night Mail
What is the line in Coal Face that reveals the dependence of the miner’s lives on the coal pit?
“The miner’s life is bound up with the pit. His home is often owned by the pit. The life of the village depends on the pit.”
What did Grierson argue was dead in the First Principles of Documentary?
Argues individualism is dead and in its place is collectivism
What did Coalface imply about coal miners?
That they were so vital to the nation’s interests that they demanded greater public concern and state involvement
What did Night Mail show about Britishness?
The collective and interdependent nature of the nation at a number of levels
Although he was not part of any political parties what did Grierson think documentaries would act as a forum for?
Enlightened debate
Although documentaries were cheaper to produce, what other production problem did they have according to Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996)?
Hard to get them shown in commercial exhibitions, had to distribute them to film clubs, women’s organisations, schools and other educational establishments
What did Grierson call documentary films?
Documentary is “the drama of the doorstep”
What did Grierson believes documentary films were capturing?
Life in the raw
What did Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) think would happen as a subsequence of Britain coming to know itself better?
Class barriers would become seen as unnatural inhibitions to effective, rational action
What did the working class become seen as once they were depicted in documentary films?
Presented as a subject of interest or concern, became a spectacle.
What does Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) say miners are celebrated for in Coal Face?
Labouring power but camera tends to efface their individuality so that they become primitive sculpted objects
Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) think the documentary should not be seen as ‘a window on the world’ but what instead?
A prism refracting the medium of reality through an observers gaze
What were the pictures of ‘the people’ largely the products of according to Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996)?
Middle class presuppositions and preoccupations
If they were unable to break with all their inbuilt assumptions, what do Baxendale and Pawling in ‘Representing the People’ (1996) argue documentary film makers were able to do?
Re-educate the sector of British society by shifting its gaze from the metropolitan heartland and suburban villas to other parts of the British Isles
Why was there still an uncertainty around the documentary film movement?
Documentary film new to Britain, exciting
What do documentary films specifically have in 20s 30s?
Sense of social/political purpose
What do the films Coalface and Night Mail have in common in the way they depict people?
People as process and a mass, there is no element of human interest but instead individual is absorbed into a machine/industrial army
What did the integrity of labour give Britain that it so desperately needed?
A success story, people suffering everywhere from economic depression, failures all around, trying to find something to be proud of
What does Coal Face show that most would never have seen before?
What a mine actually looks like, people never been down there
Who commissioned Coal Face?
The Empire Marketing Board
Does what is considered as realistic and realism change during different time periods?
Yes changes in modern technology and changes in attitudes towards the camera
Where were some of the sorting scenes for Night Mail shot?
In a studio
What kind of shapes does Cavalcanti constantly make in Coal Face and what does the chant symbolise?
Constantly makes geometric shapes with light, and chant is like a modernist collage
What are documentaries also shaped by artistically?
Aesthetic preferences
What is St Kilda another example of?
Britain’s civilising mission and promotion of British modernity through peripheries
What does John Grierson criticise in First Principles in 1932 and 34?
Mass consumerism - condemns peacetime newsreels aimed at ‘vast and speedy audiences’ - complains that it only takes 50 minutes to see around the world
What does John Grierson say in First Principles in 1932 using real scenes and real people gives documentary films a power of?
‘Give it a power over a million and one images’ beyond what our mind can conjure up
What gesture does Grierson celebrate in First Principles in 1932?
The spontaneous gesture
What does Grierson say we can get from documentaries in First Principles in 1932?
An intimacy of knowledge
What does Grierson argue the documentary movement is doing for the first time?
Making poetry where no poet has gone before it
Why does Grierson criticise new modern forms of recounting things such as Dadaism and expressionism?
They fail to present new persuasions, are just reshaping but not going far enough
What does Auden say people are doing while the Night Mail railway workers deliver their letters?
Thousands are still asleep
When were the people of St Kilda evacuated?
1930
What was St Kilda by the 1920s?
A fashionable destination for travelling middle class town dwellers
Why did St Kilda become a popular destination?
Films made of it, advertised and scheduled steamer sailings in the summer
What was Mass Observation the largest investigation into in Britain in the twentieth century?
Popular culture
When was Mass Observation set up?
1937
What does David Hall in Worktown (2015) suggest the MO undertook the ambitious task of creating?
Creating a “new science of ourselves”
Who led the Mass Observation in Bolton?
Tom Harrison
What did Tom Harrisson suggest he had come to observe working class northerners as after Mass Observation in Bolton?
‘A race apart’
Who commissioned the books on Worktown?
Victor Gollancz
What did Tom Harrisson think he could use to check the accuracy of written observations?
Humphrey Spender’s photographs
What common belief were the Mass Observation founders united by? What did they see Britain as?
That there was a gap in any real knowledge of the lives of ordinary working people, saw Britain as divided nation
What had the working class never had done to them before?
Never been studied or asked their views on issues before
What does David Hall in Worktown (2015) argue was implicit in the search for an anthropology of ourselves?
A search for identity
What did motivations for joining the Mass Observation movement range from?
Guilt born from a sense of privilege, to excitement of venturing into the unknown, from a desire to make the world a better place, to the desire to have a good time
Although usually the 1960s was the time thought to be when class barriers broke down, when does David Hall in Worktown (2015) argue this process began?
1930s, with the MO movement, it first crossed the class barriers
Why were surrealists attracted to the MO movement?
They sought art in popular culture, saw poetry in the everyday and mundane
What does David Hall in Worktown (2015) say was bad about the MO movement?
There were major personality clashes in the group who were disorganised from the start, also middle class adventure at the expense of the working class, he says Harrisson especially was ‘just popping up north for an adventure with the natives.’
What did Joe Moran in ‘The Science of Ourselves’ say Mass Observation produced too much of? And what was the consequence?
Produced too much data and couldn’t collate or interpret it, therefore could never live up to their political ambitions
What did Harrisson rally against in the methods of collecting Mass Observation in comparison to Market research?
Market research asking yes/no questions, ignoring the don’t knows, therefore ignore his idea that politics about participating in or feeling excluded from political culture as a whole
What is voter apathy and voter cynicism assumed to be and what does David Hall in Worktown (2015) argue it actually is?
Assumed to be a new phenomenon but Hall says its not because MO conducting studies of public distrust in 1930s
What does Peter Gurney in “Intersex” and “Dirty Girls” (1997) argue MO interpretations reveal as much about as they do about working culture?
Reveals as much about middle class expectations and identities as it does about working class culture
What does Peter Gurney in “Intersex” and “Dirty Girls” (1997) argue the MO misunderstood?
The sexual activities and rituals they mapped out
What does Peter Gurney in “Intersex” and “Dirty Girls” (1997) argue MO manipulated their evidence to fit?
A simplistic theory of regression - too simplistic
What does Peter Gurney in “Intersex” and “Dirty Girls” (1997) say the logic of MO confined the working classes to?
A cocooned world of their own
What did Mass Observation want to distance itself from?
The traditional field of academia
What do Tom Harrisson and the Mass Observation team not have at their disposal which may have helped with the ethics of MO?
A language for describing the poorer classes, a PC way of describing things - totally new
What did MO look at specifically?
The minutae of detail, things like hats, clohing, smoking, looking for patterns and habits
Why does the Spitoon get mentioned in all MO reports?
An oddity and spectacle for the middle classes, not something they have, seen as telling and clearly a symbol for something - a pattern. Also shows the sense of space of the pubs
What do we lose in a still photograph like Spender’s?
The characteristics, language, discussion of the moment
How does Spender take photos inconspicuously?
Has a small kodak camera in his open jacket
What is ironic in MO celebrating that their work has been recognised by men of the highest eminence
They said they are independent from academia, newspapers etc….
What does the Mass Observation in Bolton introduction say Tom Harrisson has now gone after doing his work in Bolton?
To look into ‘the problem of racial prejudice’ not finished one job, trying to be a hero
What does Mass Observation in Bolton introduction suggest may well happen without an increased scientific knowledge of human life?
“Our vastly complex modern world may well continue to founder, even to cause its own destruction”
