ffrTr" i 'Al* (hc ■*« wn Jocucfy bfffl on Uwte ZA'ti'Aflc^ ad ísrif been iwá rtc a tetpmnte ptey by Charte? I-» * 10QTU n T.ť .i rt e Fiart « Pad FA, Pwnsytaria State A kind of recreative school f0r fh whole family: making cinema 6 respectable, WQ7-09 LEE GRIEVESON The New York Board of Censorship was set up in New York City in early 1909 in the midst of a series of intense debates about the social function of cinema. It met lor the lirst time in March of that year, and amongst the films reviewed was A Drunkard's Reformation (Biograph, 1909), which tells the story of the reformation of a male 'drunkard' brought about by attending a temperance drama at the theatre.' The New York Herald commented: Until the noble young man with the high forehead and the bow lie resolved that rum should never be his master and began life anew in a beautiful apartment papered with wandering rose bushes it seemed that the new Board of Censorship for Moving Picture films, in session at 80 5 Avenue yesterday, would have reason to object to the fust films which were spread before them. But the reformation in the case of (he young man, whose life was depu* by the screen, was so sudden and so complete that Professor n,„_I_- r. . -I in lili" lit ill) -- ,uu, sweei story ot the young man > - j0nť which showed the transition from wickedness to goodness V session 1 CharieS7p7a''JUc ?uSUMen a™ «> complete mat n—--offices of th m • • • and the other censors gathered in the fi ,C PictUres Patents Company found no f" whi,h BWeet «°ry of the young man's life. Tr fault The Iilm ***l0a W held it "Z S Ref°''»««o„ took the lead early in * younB man as hc who "1e c,ose- It seemed a pity that such a nice Se n,SIory was the subject or the pkw* ®4 Screen «? ■ «. of recreate school for the whole family Mnv York Herald. 26 March 1909. p 4 Charles Spnague Smith was tho founder and managing drroclor of Now York City's People's Institute, a progressive reform organization winch aimed lo encourage civic activism, participatory democracy and cultural pluralism The Institute was instrumental in establishing the New York Board of Censorship \jnU\1ed, unpaginaied newspaper amde in Box I IG, National Board of Review of Motion pKiutes Collodion Bare Books and MjiuKcripts Division. New York Public Library {hereafter NBA) Ibid for more recent readings of Itus film see Tom Gunning, 0 W Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film the Early Years at Biograph (Urhana. IL University of moots Press. I99U pp 162-7T, Roberta hatson Eloquent Gestures the Transformation of Performance Style m the Griffith Biograph /^(Berkeley CA Unrversity of tehloma Pmss. 199?), tn mtcularpo 140-43 Richard Butsch Bowery b'hoys and matinee ladies the re* gendering of nineteenth century American theater audiences American Quarterly, vol 46, no. 3 (1994). p. 375 Mary P Ryan, Cradle of the Kiddie Class, the Family in Oneida County, New York 1790-1865 (Cambridge Cambndge University Press. 19B1I Stuart Blumin. The fmerpence of the Middle Class Social Experience m the American City, 1770-1920 (Cambndge Cambridge University ftwi. 1981}. Ryan, Cradle of me Middle Class. P 15 See also Richard Ohman, Selling Culture Maga2ines, Markets, and Class at the Tom of the Century (London Verso. 19961, p 221 should have ever vieldpH tu~ —-e, c^^-:thc brain Pin, flask and took . new noId on ^^J>> "pone" ttXttZZ? TS ^ — been threatened by the effects of alcohol on the fathe re ted Ref0rm T; ab°Ul m W3y' ,he CCnsor -nnnued, II was prevailed upon to accompany the little child to the theatre and there he saw enacted on the stage the story of his own life. When the curiam fell on the last act, he was a reformed nuuC (emphasis mine). The closing image made this process of reformation clear 'Last scene: Good husband, seated at home, smiling wife at his side and girl on his knee'.' The conjunction of censorship, moral education and images of reformed men and happy domesticity is the focus of this essay, which is premissed on a rather simple question: how did the film industry make cinema respectable? Scholars have previously sought to answer this question by focusing principally on class, suggesting that the cinema was made respectable through an appeal to middle-class audiences based on a turn to the forms and names of bourgeois culture in order to uplift cinema's cultural status (and to make more money). Such efforts were reflected in the location of nickelodeons and in the emergence of new textual forms (principally a new configuration of narrative discourse). Though this focus on class is certainly important, its exclusivity has led scholars to ignore both the gendered nature of this process of making cinema respectable and the complex imbrication of class and gender in the self-definition of the middle class. 'Respectability*, Richard Butsch has argued, 'was at its core a gendered concept,' and thus entertainment spaces such as theatre in the mid nineteenth century and \ audeville in the late nineteenth century became respectable (and increasingly profitable, through a process of 'rendering' - a conscious effort middle-class women who, 'particularly as ™™^J^£? designations of respectab.ity" Furthermore, social ~^ve shown how the self-definition of the middle class* the USA throughout the nineteenth century was predated on nows> domesticity and gentility winch were notions of femininity as moral f^T^^'Z^ around class', Mary Ryan observes. MM « ^^hofars have domestic values and family f****?^^ books, improving -ced through the M^gg^* s— tracts, magazines such as Ladies horn fiction.7 femininity as moral guardianship Conceptions and PractiC«,^entieth century from the private shifted in the late nineteenth/early twent.etn 55 Screon 42 I Spring Wt IM Gneww 10 ůw PmNi Siting cmtm« uncnu in th -in I o| n\ an*! lint o< h.»t U 1* rTFulattfirv "*c led \o K[K nam reform pro ' and a physical kick* i meetmf JO < In ^ m the leathfrap . IIUpUtMl of the minds of c instances actual crime il and moral order.11 Thoae b\ suctteMinc that indo'*1 d function and ih.it and H nickelodeon wis a safe, respectable r , -nrucd «« the cmerm was '« t*rn«,lar. ^ Roger.. Uwyer for the him .mere*, a,Ts/!L^- GmUv« industry hy claiming thai on Sunda 8' dcfend«l the .pen. that day m m-h ^ w„h £ """>' • drunkard now supcrv.snr of the Juvcn.lc League, reitcra JthTov« SynWn that do you ftnd him now? Side bv «d, u r"d"y n]pht *•»« moving pK,«re .how. - ^ lhc ■ retormer,. puWic an^v ahoUt cinema c<^ al.pn.ng enema vs„h ^km, ^ m . of the saloon («d. .mphcitlv of other mT . homo**ul *P*e chean vaneiv rn™i . . 6 cn,cnainm^ »uch as J2i3r gambl,n>: ha,lv ^ ^ «■ This stance can be identified from mid 1908 onwards, and ,t ftW»nea central irope in the film industry", efforts to present useJf as respectable lhc journal The Wmm* Picture World, for example, noted in mid 1908 that 'moving picture shows arc doing temperance work quietly' and. furthermore. Men who formerly were rarely seen on the street* in company with their wives and children have come to the practice of taking their family for an hour almost mghil. u> tunc was widespread, and was cm. reformers and. at times, even by i of i menu 1 or example, in late 1909 of the I'olii i Censorship Board in Chicago staled' kJer the moving picture theatre properly conducted a boon to mmunily. It affords entertainment for young and old and my atton has been that it has had a tendency to bnng together i and children who spend the evening in the neighbourhood • house: there the father can not only entertain himself and nily with the pnee of a few dnnks. which might otherwise nt in the saloon, but he has the double enjoyment of being th x T1 ■ v. 13 ikh ri in lhc rcg I í in parent his far be *pe "A if h h Other examples are my » find. An anonymous poem entitled 'A around 1910. described how i \ newsboy witnessed the t seeing a film about the < just what a burn I'd gon went an1 showed myself National Board of Cense their women and tamilie formerly they went alon< similarly suggested tnai could take his famth » the i jretting a much bigger k his wife, lhan he would g up dnnk after ' 7-iZj3iI mnfessme *1 never knowed i eot to be/until those movin pitchers m\* Frederick Howe - Chainnan of the ip - asserted in 1914 that men now take if an evening at the nw ie t _ i/vin1 and M the nearhy saioon , ^ cad 4 amnk the » an theatre an nwnj or ture ihow', ftclf Gftntfun AMI* 17 Janoaiy W$ T II Tha ftoanJ conduced a qutjtiorvuw is aatV a* 191' to iscfitam anetnai mUtvj mvhp dowy db*n tocauM of nciatofeoiu Bui 147. NBft In 1918, i krm from if* foard was iťfli nul to nok'* rNfK \Vi j/o making in inquiry concttffltng the r Met ion hi tha iwtm of wfcwi httMM nportad m savaraf stales ar*j wit pittculaiV miwwtad m tne tiuth of tna mtltiori ihjf vrtws an lassantno in iwjmtff toeausa of lha motw pcture' letter Irani the N^urul Board of Censorship. » May I91& fa 73, NBA 11 SpKial fkjJIann řaonia/y 1917, Otu Q NWt 9 Vfchei lindsay, the Art pt tha *■ On ponefBi campetgns for taaipaianca and th> t\ w LJTnonc kSV i tbsafc ftjfttf :^ ■ 21 nmaa no: ^ m annum i m i woman and Amencan uik«« the 'saloon is anti-social in its effects on the fiimily rlZrehip moving pictures 'hold together the whole htnWy^ Nllly lUurJ of CVnsorship actually concluded nnoMlgminns * c ,o,0s to try to prove that saloons .ore closing down ^ nickel iheaWS,M and took action to stop the film rep,^n,ution' ,i:„,„. ^M, a Spcci.lBul.eUn in .915 ».*„ fc^* , l( >,n vic* ol the growing sentiment throughout the country I'm, the theme of drunkeness in slapstick comedies, lho B 2 Led in a position where it must take action .., THE BOARD vS NOT PASS "DRUNK" COMEDIES'" |h, lhd0rical positioning ol cinema as what Vuchel l,1Uk,v „, 1915 turned a substitute for the saloon' clearly drew on the broader cultural struggle over drink which had been reanimated in the late mncicenth century by the contests over cultural authority that iccompanied industrialization * Concerns about saloons emerged from both Protestant clues and female evangelist traditions, focused respectively on the cultural practices and 'styles of living' or the increasingly Catholic working classes and, in the feminist campaign for temperance, on practices of masculinity (and their effect on domesnciiYl.M As a number of historians of women have suggested, traditions of female evangelism were transformed in the late nineteenth century into a broader social morality centred on the defence of "home values*. Thus organizations such as the Women's Christian temperance Union (WCTU) became focused on reshaping masculinity in line with the Memini/atioiV of middle-class culture (the suppression ol roughness, increased restraint, emotional self-control and so on)n No doubt this was in part based on a nineteenth-centur) ideology of separate spheres and the 'cult of domesticity\ but female evangelism went beyond these ideological formations by enlarging what was considered the * women's sphere and, indeed, the boundaries of the 'public*. Groups of women began to use the language of motherhood and domesticity to include in political discourse areas of social and family life that until then had been considered the domain of voluntary work,23 The WCTU s 'politics ol domesticity', in particular, led to campaigns against the saloon as a working-class and immigrant space that was effectively dosed to women" The aim was to 'curb the self-assertive, boisierous masculinity of the saloon, to support and protect the family, and to return the husband the immigrant working man In particular - to the home1.15 In its attempts lo counter the condemnation ol cinema as a 'ninu sinkhole1 the lihn industry drew on these arguments. This was an important moment in the siting of cinema in 'rcgulaioiy spatv. ^ broader process ol deciding him enema should be aligned withiP* existing recreational activities such as the theatre and made siibjec public decisions and governmental intervention.11 In the siwgple to 68 Saw 42 I Spi,n<| 2001 U» Gnovaion A tmrt of mcnatm school for the ivfioto tamitf' -I On lho wclusion oí Women irom jaloont aan jmtaa*nls.W 16-71 * Norman H Clait Det*w Us ft™ M an kit*pr*tattm of YvvV Noftoa Ifl'fil. P 13 n fni llw cnncepl ol muiiltilOfy sp.Tca',lw Gnovoson, ■\qhm Mrm molality, and ,|lf, i I'll ill.I I9lř-19l5'. Onems Journal. 2) Sea VVilfw"! Uricchio and floLoda urtieNX compotma dlKOtms of inoialily orx) mimnoli/aiion during the nicknlodpori iwriofl', ktx na17 {hiimn 1994} jt On andmffreoe films, soo Shollay Sinmn, Kbvw-Stnick Cmft \Yvmn mi Motm ftctun ft/fojn* Atttf the NicktítodMi) jPimcotofl. NJ Princnlon University Pran. 20001, in luilhul ii \% Cll 29 lucy Ff«vKo Pkwto, World Today, Oclnhoi I'JB) p MM M Vnws mt fffins ttxtox, 11 May 1907 anotod in llichaii! Atwl, Ihe Red Roostot Sew Mikity Cinema Amenun. 190Q-19I0 {ihuiHoi. CA University of California Praia, 1999). p 67, Jho MoňQ fat™ Waft 13 Apnl 1907, n. 89t The Nickelodeon irtbiuory 13001. p. 34 31 for a roviaw of recru.iiion wrvoys in tfia 1910s, s#o Alan •WJQt "iha cornrnorcial d'nusprnonl iiinliťnrii iti duly twwiiieih cooiury Ammican crtieť, Journal of Ameiican wi fL no ) (I9JI?) » Saa, for owmpla, Katfiryn If fotoi. tho hcture Show Small Town Audiences and the IWajhington. uc &nlihsonl«i tnintutu husa. iu%), m Particular pt> i.y (m "i ° oapiaiTiiHJi 14 8ao Mir lam Mantan, Aim ^ »rwfj ř^n (CiinitirHliifl. MA llArvard Univaititv ft* Witt r •n v.. i \y\ \>, 11Ui wornQN Ul Jill ;U little , ulign cincmn with the lmmc ^ on . the industry drew on fcmin.M U> V'llHm- dele»^«i of ca.npa.gn lor temperance bec^e ,h,v JTIT** ^ ^ general condemnoium of the cmcrccm J bypws deiiy'i Sue., „ nnil.at.on w.th fcminiM so fur - later there would be a slew 0f nnZZ onl> B« «.len.pt lo present cu.en,.....^ ^ .he ol gender. Simply put, the .ndustry presented l m c'cwl\ h (crm, ^i,v h,,u„...... : .....* 7^'......;.......*....., of roercutive school for the whole family » k,ml Tim strategy was further mfonned by ,'he Bin, mdustr/s growma reah/a„on ol the tmportance of women spectators and £ £ mu k,kv. \s early as May 1407. the trade .ounul I ,,h, suggest that theatre imagers not only understood, but also exploited, the fact that an look a prominent role in family decision-making. The managers of one theatre confessed to women: 'We want and need your patronage, for where you attend, so will folio* tl* ImA** ;IIU, sons'." Ii is also the case that the female cinema audience was v.cued w.th consumable uncase by those elite reform groups steeped —: :rrr^ z«.........r2r ^lally to.he ^^*££«to-w*s** , esFc.nlly tedl«s and childan . « ^.....lK1 w children's icsor,|s| m «u.um An. m ||w |oll(! rnll- Eugene Clinc were assorting ^ k|„ldien'* The would come to theatres ,utiom/* ' • vu.|(1 M,,,, » .nopuc.......i -Ik Sua,,,. '^'^''V,;^ ,o „sseri that 'The policy of Hk „a, mmirc of any r the crcftt hictor in dOtonmnin* ul ^ Icnmune as the greni 0111ls.ng that the P1 u'° w mnusemen. enterprise . < » ' o| k,lMlls the Imho ulwavs carelull) selected «iih tin m womc 69 rtom A ť •it i k I I' janel Sui^r ^ figgubW SexuatttY *» 4^*ic<*i Oieffw (Minneapolis, MN Un*efsny of Minnesota Press, 19951 Lauren ftafonowrz, for me love of Pleasure Women. Atov** *^ m Bmrtswid, P4J ButDCfs University Press. 1999L Stamp. Mcv*-StrvckGtrts 35 Dippings Book. Prwdence. HI NicJceI Theatre and Biiou TMpi 1906. Volume 1. quoted in David Nasaw, Gomg Out the Rise and fait ol Public Amusements (Cambndge. MA. Harvard Unrveisiry Press 1993» P 1& press release from Worcester Nickel Theatre, quoted in Rosenwejg. Eight Wows for mat We Will p 138. fts Mowies Asyfjrfe/ arrf loader 23 July 1907, quoted in Abel Hw Red Booster Scam, n 67 36 Eugene dine, quoted in Abel ftie fatf Rooster Scars, p 67 37 Chailes F Moms. A beautilul pttiure theater The Nickelodeon. I March 1909 p 66 38 See Eileen Bowser, The T(&nrfntmstuv) nf Cinema ;S07-W5iBeikeley. CA. University of California Press. 1990). pp 45-6 39 On Hie morality of lighted thaatres. see, for example, The ftitra Writ 5 March 1910, p 331. on the irrtrodoctitjn ol roslrooms and nurseries see Bowser, The Tfansloimatvn of 40 On (he relationship between movie theatre design and department siora mtenora. see Charlotte Hfnrjg. The movie palace and the theatrical sources of its architectural style' Cine™ Journal vol 20 no 211981). and The archaeology of cinema erchrtecture the origins ol the "Ww 0^^, Qwnerty Hevrew of htm Studies mm 1984| 41 See tall Mtmti. Nicketooeon theatre* 1905-1914 bu>lding an audience for the movies' in Tino MJL UK American film Musty, second edition {Madison, Wl Unrvwaity Qf Wwonsin Press, 1966). p. 96, Do°e1« Gomerv Shand Female theatre-owners were also frequently singled out ror the trade press for the air ol rcspcciahil.lv ihey brought to ^ C|>> business. The discursive production and promotion of cinema as a s r heterosocial space had a series of material effects, including^ innovation of lighted theatres (to counter the possibility of j e behaviour and, in particular, harassment by men) and the intn^ of restrooms and nurseries.39 This tatter development, along yS*** improved ventilation, perfumed deodorizers, mirrored common luxurious decoration and uniformed attendants, was borrowed h^' department store interiors, themselves carefully designed to appu female consumers." Exhibitors initiated matinee showings t0 ajt ,0 female audiences (often half-priced), competitions such as bab/'^ photograph contests, free gifts of teddy-bears and perfume, space f baby carriages and, more generally, made a conscious effort to * transform the rowdy space of nickelodeons to polite standards of decorum." Such changes signalled a clear attempt to cater to wome as decision-makers in the new culture of consumption, while simultaneously assuaging reform and governmental anxiety about cinema by creating a public space that was homely, blurring the boundaries between public and private space and reconciling the seemingly contradictory cultural formations of respectability and consumption. Given this context, we might profitably re-examine the location of nickelodeons. Were theatres located (like department stores) along what historian Stuart Blum in calls an *axis of respectability', in thoroughfares, for example, that were well lit?42 Tempering movies fheatrical temperance dramas proliferated in the mid nineteenth century in conjunction with a reformation of the cultural status of theatre that was. historians Richard Butsch and Bruce McConachie suggest, aligned with ideals of education and with appeals to women and family audiences as signifiers of respectability.43 The creation of museum theatres in the 1840s was an important development within this reformation process. Such theatres featured lectures on a variety of educational and moral topics but could also be used for the presentation of 'moral dramas', beginning significantly with the temperance drama The Drunkard: Or the Fallen Saved (1843), which was described at the time as a 'moral domestic drama'.44 The ploy ran lor more than one hundred performances at a lime when theatres typically changed their bills every night, and was chosen by PX Hamum to open the American Museum in New York in I «48. Museum theatres and moral dramas cut across class formations by using .deals of entertainment and 'instruction', and set In process C accePUln<* of theatre as a source of education and morality and- 70 Scieen 42 \ Sorinn 7f¥ii i n ^ ■y'uui LwGneveson 'A kind of recreative school tor the wtwle family 47 ^es a History of Mom ^h** the United States ^.scons-n Press. 1992). p 31; Stamp, tf**S*w* Glfis' P n Mj55er The Imergence of Cinema. P ®2 Ooug1as GwnflTV' S&B amusement enterprises the movies come to Milwaukee'. Milwaukee History, vol 2. no 1 iSpnog 19791 P 23. Rosenzwerg, Eight Hours for What We W,!f, pp 204-15, Hansen, Babel and ftabftod PP 76-89 Blumtn, The Emergence of the Mtddle Ctass, p 238, 43 Butsch, Bowery n'hoys and mairnee ladies' 44 Quoted m Rahill The Wortd of Melodrama p 242 45 On this see Porker R Zellers, The cradle of variety the concert saloon, Educational Theatre journal, vol 20 IDecembor 19661 46 There were films with drunkenness and temperance as themes prior to 1908, such as Jhe Drunken Acrobat (Biograph, 1B9C). Came Nation Smashing a Saloon IBiograpli, 1901), Drunkard and Statue (Palhe. 1904]. and The Moon finer (Pathe, 1906), but these were principally comic The transformation of the theme of drunkenness Irom comedy to melodrama speaks to a larger transformation from a risque and polenlrally immoral cinema to a cinema closely inlncaled with moral discourse See Tom Gunning From the opium den to the theatre of morality moral discourse and the film process in early American cinema'. Art and Text, no 30 [September November 1988) 47 [fleeting a Cure, for example, was advertised as 'A Losson 1o Ihe Wives ol H......ml Huhbies and the bulletin accompany mi] it Med This Biograph subject will afford many a wife an opportunity to profit by Us 'Won' See Bowser led), & o» sailor ret« his >ln,„Un, P.„„N,nf ' The «>n Is M » *m J »*" ^ ™" ,s tlmm « roughly aside. He runs to gel his moUiu the saloon, but hut on then return Ik MlN into a n ver. Thc faihcr sees his son stroiiglv li-lv* and he saves the ..............i, iind the witnesses «1 the clnlil. 'The last scene show near tragedy galhcrcd round a ti smnshes the liquor bottle and .... . re|(,nnatioii Thc family is reconstituted through k . ^ ^ w sccnc drunkard to father, as it were - .n.uateu y hMttlino for lite 'the man in him pla; battltng tor int. ^ ^ ,md t(]L. Wl, able, where the now sober lather ,v Vl,ws never more to drink limn 71 Sewn 42 1 Spnng ?0D1 L*t -won wnpvtnet lesson *rnrit son* patrons of pen** hewes may proft byl Sw Kay Skua ft» Loud Si&n Qngnsotthe Lh«««rtv o* firms Pttss. 1*81. p 97. 771* Ativw Actor* IVtrtf 9 October 19091 p 505. tone* 9 footer f90a np HfWflrwi Ddww delated as a powerful mewf lesson and 4 £hot^rf5 frfamtm as "ihe most powerful temperance lesson ever popounrJW and a masterful povwrfuf sermon on tne evils of the cfrr* hattf The Mo*&g Pkttn World 29 May 190a p 703: Bowser (ed t Bagraph BL4BMSL Jhe Moving Picture Mbrtt 31 July 1909 p T5S 40 See the renew m 77» Moving Ptt*e World I] January 1908 pi 28 49 fed p.28. » See Gunning 0 W GnfSth and the fagns of American Narrative p. T4Z and for a 1st of SJms. p. 149 r 51 concept ui allegiW *aw on the wort of Murray Smrth See Smith Engaging Characters. > t and Onema (Oxiort fttford UnivFTT,^ Press, 1995] m particular pp. 186—227 * v**f*F\ awetm tor Wnj/ 0# 'n8 53 The Moving Picture World, 5 June lw p ":'; 54 On the play see the details in Rafut! Jhe Worid of Melodrama, pp 244-6 On the film see the Variety 19 June 1909 55 I have come across rust one film n wncn the drunkard was a woman. Corrarreti distnbuied by lOeine Optical Company, was released m January 1908 11« him was reviewed m The Moving Picture Wortd. 9 January 1909, p. 43 and 13 Match 1909 p 30? 56 See the reviews m Jhe Moving ftefure World. 20 February 1909 p 212, and 6 March 1909, p 2tt a ic US cinema from iw°----------^ scCnii , lldng to initiate a similar reconciliation in the space of the * ■ilk iioriuni. mi | | ' H/w, /),/«* /W k'"s M,11,lar s,ory rhc 1,1,11 °Pcns with a hann fnmilv seated around the breakfast table. The father plays with his L daughters and, when leaving for work, hugs both them and j, wife At~ work kettles of beer arc brought in at lunchlime and he « coaxed into taking a drink. After work he is pressured to g0 f0r drink by Ins colleagues and. though reluctant, joins them. Scenes of him drinking are intercut with scenes of his wife and children at home, with the wife clearly becoming increasingly concerned. This contrast edit intervenes to comment on events, making clear to t|lc audience the effects of drinking on the family and setting in p|ace. structure of 'allegiance' with the moral position of the mother." Thi contrast attendant upon the man's drinking becomes clearer after the father returns home, when the family rush to greet him but are brushed aside, and further the following morning when the father ignores his daughters in a clear contrast with the opening of the film. 'The blight of rum', the bulletin notes, 'changes the stamp of nature, turning the heretofore good-tempered man into a veritable demon',51 Following work the next day he initiates the drinking, and one of the daughters is sent to look for him. The father brushes her away twice and when she returns again pushes her over. At this, the barman gels angry and in a scuffle is hit by the father; the barman gets a gun and shoots but accidentally kills the daughter. The father, at the front of the frame, cradles her in his arms; in his distress he attacks his friends. The close of the film moves forward in time. The man leaves work and is asked if he will go for a drink. He declines and arrives home, where the wife and remaining child are now dressed in grey - in contrast to the white at the opening of the film - and the family hug one another. The man kneels, cries and holds his child. This sombre conclusion, carried through the mise-en-scene and in the contrast with the opening of the film, makes plain the dangerous effects of drinking and, in turn. 'how men should be\ The Moving Picture World review noted that 4 A moral lesson is taught in this excellent Biograph film', and, further, that The film could be used to advantage by religious and temperance organisations*.53 The Essanay version of the classic temperance drama. Ten Night* in a Bar-room, tells a similar story, with the drunkard's child fatally hit by a missile thrown at the drunkard, who subsequently reforms. The reformation scene was critical to most of these films, which suggested that a certain type of masculinity was problematic and needed to be brought into line through the dictates of domestic ideology,55 The New Minister; ort the Drunkard's Daughter ends with the drunkard 'now a reformed man1, restored to his estranged daughter« In The Honor of the Slums, the 'hero' spends his time at 72 Sot* « 1 Spnf* not Lee Gnevejon 'A kind of recreate school for tha whole family' 57 Ihe Movfffff PrctutB World noted that the film was unusually strong ttom o whgious standpoint' and could mil bo used by religious organisations in illustrating the saving Qrace of what they preach The Moving PrCturv World, 20 February 1909 p. m 5S Biograph Bulletin for A Change of Heart in Bowser fed J, Biograph Buffern p 133 59 Biograph Bulletin for A Drunkards Reformation in Bowser (ed I Biograph Bulletins. P 7? 60 Gunning 0IV Gnffith and the Origins ot American Narrative film, pp 162-71, Pearson. Eloquent Gestures, pp 140-43 the saloon while his wife joins the SalVatlQn A families do not end up like hers After a h Y * Cnsuit oth" reforms and also joins the Salvation An^'Tr, ^ thc hero the story of a son of 'indulgent parents' L, ! °f Hea" ^ wrong crowd. 'Drinking is always the fea„ " T*l "P W,Ul ** bulletin intones, 'and the head and heartL? ,he alcohol are never norma, and the being -ottumes tailing into a morass of irreparable country girl into going through a pretend marriage cereZv TT ' after speaking to his mother he real.es the errof of h^ ^ persuades the girl to marry him for real. A Drunkard's Reformation is in many ways the most self conscious of these films in respect of the broader regulatory and commercial context. The film opens with the wife and daughter at home and contrasts this with a shot of the father at the saloon. The two spaces are contrasted through parallel editing, which suggests a temporal simultaneity but spatial differentiation, and sets up a structure of allegiance with the moral position of the suffering mother. The father returns home and disrupts the domestic space, frightening the wife and daughter with his drunken violence. He is. however, persuaded to take his daughter to the theatre to see a temperance drama, repents and returns home, in the words of the Biograph Bulletin, 'a changed man' as a result of the psychological influence' of the play on the audience.58 The film's final shot shows the family together, bathed in the light from the hearth. The space of the saloon and the theatre thus pivot around the domestic space, with the saloon threatening it and the theatre upholding it. The theatrical space is one where fathers and children can be together safely. This is a moment when cinema was clearly drawing on an association with theatre and its shift into the realms of respectability. This representation of the positive 'psychological influence of drama responds to criticism of the social and^ —£ moving pictures, utilising film, discourse - P^J^ of point of view, shot/reverse-shot I,M-d film as an educational and -dings of A Roberta Pearson, both of whom f«™* ^ of Drunkard's ***** ?J^£Z£* ^ , character and to the use some characters and sorts of audiences are effectively R^on shows behaviour as opposed to others ^ process of this in process, with the ^^^y-sho. sequence cutting the theatre in an ,n U. forming a proto- alignmenl at the theatre in an between the play and the drunkard's reaction to it fomung aproto point-of-view/reaction-shot pattern and a perceptual posiuon j* - ..... .„ (he character's emotions. This is tur^' .-...nrrU ihe psychological allows a form of access to the character s enwuw* — enabled by an acting style thai leans towards the psychological delineation of character. The film is, then, as Gunning asserts, no. -m* _ a . j fj ro-vfufrtfl school for the rtvb iamfr /J Screen 42 1 Spring 2001 Lw Gnevwon A ktndotncrm™ m — jim * So ■ fed .ft 32 ^plv a film with a moral lesson, 'but a film one of whose ^ I 1 1L *im can be moral; thai watching an edifying drama caT^ js that film a** a transfonning effect on the spectator In addition, given the context outlined here, I would arg^ . f can be more precise about the rhetorical parameters of this ^formative effect: it is a male spectator who is represented as being reformed by edifying drama - becoming, commentators ^ a changed man\ a reformed man*: because it is, insistently ^ male drunkard in these temperance dramas who must be refom^* Masculinity is the problem and the * moral orientation' of the ^ positions the spectator in a structure of allegiance with the suffers women and children, Male spectatorship in A Drunkards ^ Reformation, we may say, involves the man opening himself to the instruction of women (and children) and this mirrors the position of the industry itself at this moment in cinema history. The more general historical emergence of a moral structure in ife narrative process is central to Gunning's influential reading of the emergence around 1908 to 1909 of what he terms the 'narrator system', for Gunning a critical precursor to the slightly later emergence of classical narrative conventions.63 Gunning argues thai the transformation of American cinema from a "cinema of attractions* to a cinema of 'narrative integration' involved a 'conscious movement into a realm of moral discourse'.64 The particular narrative configuration of American cinema emerged in close conjunction with issues of morality and respectability linked by Gunning to the (here rather amorphous) middle class, and this was reinforced with the emergence of censorship institutions (principally from 1909) which channelled film 'towards an imbrication of narrative development and moral discourse', standardizing formulas of acceptable content and narrative development.15 For Gunning, the interweaving of formal and institutional factors at this moment set in play the conditions which led to classical Hollywood cinema. If the above outline of the importance of gender to conceptions of respectability is factored into this argument, we can understand the importance of gendered discourses to the moral discourse of the _ unema of narrative integration. In ihe examples above, narrative s and drew on deeply rooted and essenlialist conceptions of gender roles (as, of course, did notions of women's innate morality) Women were addressed as consumers in ways mat played on entrenched cultural constructions of gender. If amusements such as the cinema solicited the female gaze, they also confirmed »wnan*s status as object of the gaze, both on and off screen, m what Lauren Rabinowitz describes as a -double-edged process of subject.fa at.on and object.fica.ion'.- Similarly, Shelley *™P^n'^ . , . * . £ .1 A^iic tho mncems wtiouh ed in trie mi* Sinn k Chrh mMghtlu.lv details the conW - rf about both women's pre^nce at the cinema ntion Also to the control rvvtator and the actual female spectatorship & between the idealization interest of women in si of the moral female spe ILll action-adventutv, ami temmisi agii h subject mailer like sexu; ft! scholars have aim iv-iii""" -r— an of ihe twentieth noted how cnlics ol mass culture in ^ cllats. century used fem.mmiN to "5™^ wnters launched cultural passivity and ik ^ Xmen 75 7! Am ftwgtet r«mWf |Np»lfBll^SW|nd pnom ßoc^L l*U «** 73 Sn lee Snwescn. totarg Aioenan Omto (Berteiev. CA Uhncntfy of Cattma Ptos. fcrttoning*. •an explosive protest against maternal suffocation and inhniihzalion*;" there was a backlash against women authors , female patrons of the theatre and a correspomlmg 'remasculinj"" 'he of various cultural practices, including the cinema ,n Richar(] ^ account. Clearly, the process described in this article is but one elemcni the more complex and shitting trends that saw the production of °f cinema as respectable and profitable, and we need to think (un|lL,r about the shifting positions of class, gender and the economy and' particular, about the friction between laissez faire capitalism and " patriarchal ideology. It may also be necessary to pay more attention to the broader reform context lor understandings of masculinity j„ this period and to examine discourses about not only temperance bui also sexuality. On the evidence so far I would argue that it was the regulation of masculinities even more than femininities that shaped cinema's move to classicism." lata vmKf$ of Bio paper were delivered at the Screen Studies Conference and the Society for Cinema Studies Coifennce My lhanta (or help with it go to Vanessa Marin Roberta Pearson Murray Smith Shelley Stamp fate Wassori and espKally to Relet Kramer and Knslen Mussel If looks could kill: image wars in Maria Candelaria ANDREA NOBLE 1 Carlos Moosrviis AH the people «me and did not fit onto the notes on the ctnema aatence in Me*ico\ hi Paulo Aniwio Paranagu* led), Mexican (London Bnltsh Film tatiute. 1995). p 151, 76 Sc™ 42 1 Spnm Avil of recreative scitool for the whole (amity' In his wittily titled essay 'All the people came and did not fit onto the screen , Mexican cultural critic Carlos Monsivais outlines the impact that the enema had upon Mexican society. In particular. Monsivals is concerned with cinema's role in the modernizing * processes at work in the first half of the twentieth century, as the State sought to redefine national identity and make the transition from a predominantly rural to urban, Catholic to secular, and pre-modern to modem cultural/political entity. In the face of the uneven social, cultural and economic effects of these processes, the role of cinema was crucial: 'With hindsight, we can see the basic function of the electronic media at their first important moment of power they mediate between the shock of industrialization and the rural and urban experience which has not been prepared in any way for this giant change, a process that from the 1940s modifies the idea of the nation'.' The suggestive title of Monsivais's essay obliquely signals the importance of the cinema's role as cultural mediator one that was, moreover, predicated on a screen-spectator relationship. 'All the people came and did not fit onto the screen" indicates a screen-spectator relationship that promoted spectators identihcutioo with a repertoire of new and traditional images associated with 'Mexicanness' (lo meccano) that wete played out onscreea G ven that spectators is clearly a key issue J J* intersection between the ™^^Z< * Mexican in the twentieth century and the parallel aevei v cinematic industry, how might we offer an account oi specificities of Mexican spec tat orship? u wo* wit** til wwe A3fy ^ 77 Screen «I Spring M01 A™**^