The Cultural Impact of British Film - BFI

The Cultural Impact
of British Film
1946 - 2006
by Narval/Birkbeck
College/MCG
1

What do we mean by culture?
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz
defined culture as ‘stories we tell
ourselves about ourselves’. Often
they tell not so much how we are, but
how we’d like to be – and also how
we would not like to be…

But what is British cinema? We created the first outline
comprehensive database of all UK features 1946-2006
Then we analysed two large samples – an intuitive ‘best of
British’ and a random selection
Looking at new ways of measuring impact

From our samples and case studies, we show how
films have different phases of impact, from release
to the ‘long tail’
Now – a multiplication of outlets for films and for
Cultural ‘conversation’ about films – fan sites, social
networking, online databases, Twitter, etc
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How do films create lasting cultural impact?
Notoriety and Censorship
‘A Clockwork Orange was in the mind
of a boy aged 16 who beat an
elderly tramp to death, it was alleged
at Oxford Crown Court yesterday’
The Times, 4 July 1973
In 1996, the Glasgow Herald
shared the moral outrage
provoked by Trainspotting ,
describing it as ‘asinine’ and
‘juvenile’.
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Films can catch the national mood and
become time capsules – ‘zeitgeist moments’
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Key impact findings
• Film has been a key arena for projecting
and debating British values and identity –
at home and globally
• This is the case both incrementally and in
standout films like Chariots of Fire, Henry
V, Full Monty, Bend It Like Beckham, etc
• Sample analysis shows a majority of
critically approved British films challenge
traditional British values
• However, random sample reveal a majority
of films which reinforce those values

Cultural impact of regional films
Late 50s-early 60s: a small number of ‘New
Wave’ films destroyed old stereotypes of
Northern English cultures
The films had considerable commercial and
cultural impact (Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning, Taste of Honey etc)
Cultural impact reinforced by print media –
films became vehicles for cultural debate
New Wave films revitalised British social
realist genre – continuing cultural success of
the genre in 80s, 90s and 00s (e.g. Alan Clarke,
Shane Meadows, Andrea Arnold)

Cultural impact of films from UK nations
• Cultural impact of films from the UK nations is intimately
linked to issues of political control, access and representation
– a long march to ‘devolved cinemas’
• Films from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have had
very different pathways towards cultural impact
• Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ overshadowed local cinema but
controversial hits (In The Name of The Father ,The Crying
Game) drew episodic world attention to N. Ireland
• Scotland’s road to self-representation reaches a peak in mid-
1990s but struggles to maintain cultural momentum
• And Wales?

Wales in the picture

Post-war Wales’s cinematic
representation caught
between the social/industrial
documentary…
… and the popular stereotypes
of the London or Hollywood
industries
But Wales’s
relationship with film
more complex than
mere cultural
colonialism…

Considerable presence of
Welsh talent at the forefront
of UK and international
cinema…

And world class writers...
‘adopted’ and native

As China, in Inn of
the Sixth Happiness;
and as the evil
Malagant’s lair, in
First Knight
And landscapes, though
often ‘standing in’ for
more exotic locations

Acorns of cinematic self expression
From Paul Dickson (David, 1951) …
to Karl Francis -
Above Us The Earth (1977). Not the first film about Industrial
Wales, but the first unsentimental and Welsh-authored one…

A long slow road to cultural
devolution
Turning point was the launch of The Welsh Fourth Channel
(1982). But cinema not S4C’s initial priority
Arts Council, BBC Wales , Sgrin Cymru… progressive widening
of the the arc of Welsh cultural representation through film over
the past 20 years
But what of cultural impact?

And how can we measure impact? IMDb offers one source
IMDb profile of Welsh cinema’s ‘appreciation’
Rating Votes
How Green Was My Valley 7.9 7,273
On The Black Hill 7.0 51
A Run For Your Money 6.6 172
House of America 6.2 83
Hedd Wyn 7.1 201
Twin Town 6.2 2,864
Tiger Bay 7.6 872
Solomon And Gaenor 6.6 716
Boy Soldier 6.4 33

Cultural impact is complex and long-lasting –
as the message board thread for Twin Town
reveals

Wales in the Picture - some discussion points
• Wales as a “cenedl schizophrenig”?
Does duality of Welsh identity inhibit
a national cinema?
•Does Welsh language policy conflict
with achieving wider cultural impact?
• New directors struggling to stay local
and make more films (Paul Turner, Kevin
Allen, etc.)
•The role of public policy: continuity/
discontinuity in film policy in Wales?

Cultural impact abroad
• Upscale audiences in Europe identify ‘British film’
with social realist dramas and rueful comedies – a
steady audience for these
• Enduring success of the British auteurs – Loach,
Leigh, Frears, Greenaway, Chadha, now joined by
Ramsay, Arnold? A British ‘branding’ effect…?

In the US, a common language both dilutes
and enhances cultural impact –
But
Mainstream hits often not
perceived as ‘British’….
… while films with strong
UK regional identity often
considered ‘difficult’
(yes, those accents…)

Film policy and cultural impact
• From the 1980s broadcasting policy has played a major role in
maintaining an economic and cultural engine for British
cinema
• Broadcasters – especially Channel 4 – became the film
industry’s new domestic partner after theatrical decline had
brought traditional film financing into free fall
• Deliberate policy of empowering a cinema of, and about,
Britain and its social/cultural mutations
• Cultural impact amplified through use of both theatrical
release and broadcast TV premieres
• Impact of devolved Lottery funds on the cinema of the
Nations – Wales’s continuity challenge

British film and
cultural impact – going digital
British cinema’s cultural
impact now has multiple
pathways through multiplication
of media outlets and platforms
Digital access enables democratised
discourses on film (fan sites,
social networking, Twitter, etc)
are a vital contemporary dimension
for the extension of cultural impact
New media, DVD re-issues, digital
re-mastering and newsgroup/blog
communities also a key factor in
revitalizing interest in UK film heritage

British film and future cultural impact
Will these new modes
of access/exchange and de-centralised
discourses extend the
long tail of cultural impact?

Enhancing British film’s cultural impact?
In particular, public policy
could help popularise UK film
heritage through measures
aimed at archival access and
education
Opportunity for public policy
to plan for and incentivise
these effects through
education, training and new
forms of ‘distribution’ funding

‘It may be in the cultural particularities of
people — in their oddities — that some
of the most instructive revelations of
what it is to be generically human are to
be found.’
Clifford Geertz