2024
Abstract: Predicated upon a corpus of 4,200 films, this article documents, analyses, and interprets the international film industry’s rhetorical disavowal of the comic book medium as a source for adaptation within advertising and promotional rhetoric for the cinematic adaptation of comic book texts. By analysing the statistical trends and patterns for comic book adaptations between 2000 and 2020, examining the language used within promotional trailers to conceptualise or promote the feature adaptation in relation to their comic book source material, and by comparing the type and scope of this rhetoric with other adapted texts of the same period, this article evidences and interrogates the overwhelming disavowal of the comic book medium despite the persistent and widely perceived ubiquity of comic book adaptation franchises. Above all, this article utilises statistical evidence and analysis to evidence clear patterns and trends within the perceived hierarchies of cultural taste or artistic value.
2019
Abstract: This article examines the British POW’s experiences of cinemagoing in captivity during the First World War. Predicated upon archival evidence sourced from the Committee on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, it showcases how the medium of cinema functioned as both a therapeutic and ‘escapist’ mode of entertainment for POWs whilst simultaneously acting as a site of tension and potential negotiation between captor and captive. By underlining how the medium offered both practical and psychological benefits for British POWs living behind barbed wire, this article ultimately highlights the value of the cinemagoing experience within the extraordinary historical circumstances of wartime internment.
Abstract: During the First World War, thousands of wounded and/or disabled soldiers were sent to hospitals and convalescent institutions across Britain to recover from both physical and psychological traumas endured whilst serving on the front. This article examines the role of the cinema within the context of soldier recovery and rehabilitation during the First World War, examining the practice of free/charity screenings for the returning wounded held in commercial cinemas, as well as the presence of non-theatrical exhibition in convalescent camps and hospitals. Drawing upon a wealth of contemporary historical evidence, this article outlines the many ways in which the medium intersected with the lives of those who returned from the front lines, demonstrating the cinema’s ability to offer escapism and comfort for those in attendance. Attention is drawn towards the perspectives of both the military and medical authorities which implemented the cinema as a form of entertainment for wounded men, as well as the first-hand experiences of the soldier spectators themselves. By analysing these views and experiences, this article highlights the ways in which the cinema was utilised beyond the commercial interests of conventional theatrical venues for the benefit of the British war effort during the nation’s time of crisis.
2018
Abstract: Utilizing a variety of historical sources, including new evidence pertaining to the faking of scenes in The Battle of the Somme (1916), this essay examines how British soldiers of World War I responded to topical films purporting to document the realities of the war and their lives as soldiers. As this essay documents, such soldiers, primed by their firsthand experience of the conflict, became a demographic of wartime filmgoers positioned to interrogate, negotiate, and ultimately deconstruct the artifice of cinematic imagery that had been primarily constructed for a comparatively naïve civilian audience.
Abstract: Due in part to the visual iconography associated with Charlie Chaplin (his hat, moustache, baggy trousers and floppy shoes), as well as the repetitious nature of slapstick comedy and its ‘endless recycling of gags and scenarios,’ many scholars have grounded their analysis of the character upon its elements of continuity. Charlie’s personality is often cited as another marker of continuity, as Bazin notes that aside from the ‘physical “markings”’ of the Tramp, it is the ‘inter constants that are the true constituents of the character.’ However, this essay argues that more attention should be allocated to the importance of discontinuity as a constitutive element of the character and one that arguably enabled the image of Charlie to become as widespread as it did during Chaplin’s meteoric rise to fame. Indeed, the significance of the character’s fundamental trait of discontinuity is a notion which has arguably only ever been engaged with implicitly or in passing by Chaplin scholarship, and never fully articulated or realised critically.
2017
Abstract: Writing in the closing year of centenary commemorations for the First World War, this short article considers the ways in which Charlie Chaplin’s iconic film persona intersected with the worldwide conflict one-hundred years ago, using contemporary archival material owned by the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, Exeter.
Notes from the Multiplex 