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'We shall really have to do something about your equipment' : the projectionist’s negotiation of obsolescence in the Smallest Show on Earth and Coming Up Roses
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Jesson, Claire (2017) 'We shall really have to do something about your equipment' : the projectionist’s negotiation of obsolescence in the Smallest Show on Earth and Coming Up Roses. Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15 (1). pp. 115-130. ISSN 1743-4521.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2018.0405
Abstract
This article analyses two British film comedies, The Smallest Show on Earth (1957) and the Welsh-language film Coming Up Roses (Rhosyn a Rhith) (1986), both of which feature projectionists as significant characters. It focuses on the implications of the projectionist as a hero within the narratives, on his portrayal and on the dramatisation of his labour. I examine the paradox of his inhabiting a central narrative role when his professional one requires his isolation and invisibility; when his own attention is funnelled towards the on-screen diegesis he is concerned to project and, moreover, when his obsolescence is mandated by cinema closure. The films’ promotion of exhibition itself as object and comedic spectacle is interrogated. Within this, I attend closely to diegetic films: to how the fictive screen relates to the wider text and to how it figures or expresses its concerns and enlarges its meanings. A related area of enquiry is how institutions of cinema mirror and ‘project’ wider social issues and how cinema shapes, and is shaped by, its audiences. How does the restoration of the projectionist’s libido, and his rehabilitation through marriage, relate to cinema’s place within social, cultural and political life?
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | 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 picture projectionists--Great Britain., Motion pictures and television, Television broadcasting of films -- Great Britain., Motion picture industry -- Great Britain. | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of British Cinema and Television | ||||||
Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 1743-4521 | ||||||
Official Date: | November 2017 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 15 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 115-130 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 31 May 2017 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 31 May 2017 | ||||||
Funder: | Arts & Humanities Research Council (Great Britain) (AHRC) | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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