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E-book Cinemas and Cinema-Going in the United Kingdom : Decades of Decline, 1945–65

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Penilaian

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Post-war social scientists and subsequent historians have debated the relative importance of the factors that led to cinema’s decline. In the early 1960s, a group of exhibitors, distributors and producers asked economist John Spraos to examine the problems facing the industry. In 1962, he published a statistical report analysing cinema’s demise, the industry’s response and implications for future policy. He cited the growth in working-class television ownership, the closure of neighbourhood cinemas, increased travel distances, less frequent public transport and higher admission prices as key factors in cinema’s decline.12 The Broadcasting Research Unit’s 1987 report downplayed a monocausal relationship between television and cinema, arguing that ‘television was framed; the real culprits were Elvis Presley, expresso [sic] coffee, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 and the sclerosis of the British film industry’.13 Stuart Hanson also de-emphasized the causal relationship between cinema and television, placing the built environment and the spaces of film exhibition shaped patterns of post-war cinema attendance. The regional approach taken in this book allows us to go beyond the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of a single location. It is a response to Richard Maltby’s assertion that new cinema history ‘requires its practitioners to work out how to undertake small-scale practicable projects that, whatever their local explanatory aims, also have the capacity for comparison, aggregation and scaling’.19 It also addresses the suggestion of Kuhn et al.that a positive step towards understanding cinema-going habits is comparative work between cities and regions within a single country.20There are several excellent national studies, such as Trevor Griffiths’s book on Scottish cinema-going in the first half of the twentieth century and Peter Miskell’s social history of cinema in Wales.21 The national scope of these studies, however, means that they are often unable to pay close attention to the local context required to compare particular communities. Meanwhile, local studies often fail to place their conclusions in a broader context and to connect their findings to those in other localities. The focus on two medium-sized industrial cities in different parts of the United Kingdom closes this lacuna. It follows the example of Robert James, who emphasized local sources to investigate cinema-going in interwar Portsmouth, Derby and South Wales.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

791.43 MAN c

Penerbit

London : University of London Press., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

252 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781912702367

Klasifikasi

791.43

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Motion Pictures, Movies

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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