Brunsdon, Charlotte. (2012) 'It's a film' : medium specificity as textual gesture in Red road and The unloved. Journal of British Cinema and Television, Vol.9 (No.3). pp. 457-479. ISSN 1743-4521

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Abstract

British cinema has long been intertwined with television. The buzzwords of the transition to digital media, 'convergence' and 'multi-platform delivery', have particular histories in the British context which can be grasped only through an understanding of the cultural, historical and institutional peculiarities of the British film and television industries. Central to this understanding must be two comparisons: first, the relative stability of television in the duopoly period (at its core, the licence-funded BBC) in contrast to the repeated boom and bust of the many different financial/industrial combinations which have comprised the film industry; and second, the cultural and historical connotations of 'film' and 'television'. All readers of this journal will be familiar – possibly over-familiar – with the notion that 'British cinema is alive and well and living on television'. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when 'the end of medium specificity' is much trumpeted, it might be useful to return to the historical imbrication of British film and television, to explore both the possibility that medium specificity may be more nationally specific than much contemporary theorisation suggests, and to consider some of the relationships between film and television manifest at a textual level in two recent films, Red Road (2006) and The Unloved (2009).

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > Film and Television Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Motion pictures and television, Television broadcasting of films, Red road (Motion picture), Unloved (Motion picture)
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of British Cinema and Television
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
ISSN:	1743-4521
Date:	2012
Volume:	Vol.9
Number:	No.3
Page Range:	pp. 457-479
Identification Number:	10.3366/jbctv.2012.0100
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
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URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/48908

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