Filmgoers’ Fingerprints

This chapter focuses on fingerprinting stations, which, from the early 1920s until the late 1950s, were often located in the lobbies of movie theaters and used both in conjunction with crime films and as part of a broader push to collect Americans’ personal biometric information. An increasingly popular component of efforts to normalize civil identification, fingerprinting stations routinely functioned to promote both crime films and local police departments. They also raised alarming questions about the scope of police power in the United States. Fingerprinting stations were naturalized aspects of a cinematic assemblage that served police power, smuggling law enforcement into the local movie theater and making the collection of patrons’ personal biometric information seem continuous both with screen representations and with the wider work of advertising and publicity departments.

Cinema, colonialism, and contact zone: the movie theater and city governance in early-twentieth-century Shanghai

Moving away from the text-centered paradigm in film studies, the present research explores the relationship between the growing popularity of the film in Shanghai during the first two decades of the twentieth century and city governance in the International Settlement. It argues that the rise of movie halls contributed to creating a new kind of crowd that blended Chinese moviegoers with non-Chinese viewers. The emergence of the cinema as a space where people of different racial and ethnic origins encountered impelled the Shanghai Municipal Council – the governing body of the International Settlement in Shanghai – to respond by implementing new measures of public safety and altering its decades-long unspoken rules of segregation in the realm of everyday life. For Chinese enlightenment intellectuals and government officials, meanwhile, anxiety over their fellow Chinese's lack of basic decorum in public spaces arose with the intense intermingling of Chinese and non-Chinese filmgoers under the same roof. Thus, the cinema became a “contact zone” – a space of asymmetrical relations resulting not necessarily from colonists' exercise of colonial power but from the Chinese elite's wrapping of the discussion of movie theater etiquette reform within a political and ideological framework of modernization, patriotism, and anti-imperialism.

Transfiguring Theaters for Disrespectable Leisure: An Ethnography on Black Womxn’s Ratchet Performances in Movie Showings of Girls Trip

This ethnographic study considers how Black womxn audiences collectively negotiated the politics of respectability in the movie theater, anecdotally referred to as cinema etiquette, in showings of the film Girls Trip. Data were collected in two local theaters in a Northeastern city using field interviews, follow-up telephone interviews, and participant observation. Findings revealed that Black womxn audiences (from various age groups) embodied an intersectional resistance discourse of disrespectability (Cooper, 2012, 2017, 2018) through their (non)verbal behaviors and an ecology of the senses (i.e., sight and sound) that were situated at the intersection of ratchetness, playfulness, and informality. In doing so, they created a “homeplace,” making an otherwise uncomfortable and highly regulated public space suitable for their collective spectatorship of the film. We argue that Black womxn’s embodiment of ratchetness is not necessarily a unidimensional endeavor, but rather an ever-evolving, multifaceted resource that enables Black womxn to reach political and pleasurable ends.

O uso dos filmes de ficção científica para o ensino de ciências com enfoque ciência, tecnologia e sociedade: uma revisão sistemática da literatura

Resumo: Esta revisão sistemática da literatura teve como objetivo identificar a forma que os filmes de ficção científica (FC) abordam questões do ensino das Ciências e o enfoque Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade (CTS). A pesquisa utilizou bancos de dados com os seguintes descritores: “Ensino de Ciências, CTS, Ficção Científica e Cinema”. Os resultados evidenciaram que desde a década de 1980, os filmes de FC são utilizados como recurso metodológico no ensino de Ciências, mas ainda são escassos os estudos que relacionam o CTS com os filmes de FC. Nas quatro pesquisas encontradas, entre 2012 e 2019, a articulação dos três componentes da tríade CTS, raramente ocorre de forma coerente com os referenciais, prevalecendo o realce na ciência, ou em tecnologia e, majoritariamente, na sociedade, sobrelevando as questões socioambientais.Palavras-chave: Ensino de Ciências; Enfoque CTS; Arte e Ciência; Cinema; Filmes de Ficção Científica. The use of scientific fiction films for teaching sciences with a focus on science, technology and society: a systematic review of literatureAbstract: This systematic review of the literature aimed to identify the way that science fiction films (SF) address issues of science teaching and the focus on Science, Technology and Society (STS). The research used databases with the following descriptors: “Science Teaching, STS, Science Fiction and Cinema”. The results showed that, since the 1980s, SF films have been used as a methodological resource in science teaching, but there are still few studies relating STS to SF films. In the four researches found, between 2012 and 2019, the articulation of the three components of the STS triad, rarely occurs in a coherent manner with the references, with emphasis on science or technology and, mainly, on society, prevailing, raising socioenvironmental issues.Keywords: Science teaching; Focus on STS; Art and Science; Movie theater; Science fiction

Relationship Between Movie Theaters and Audience During the Pandemic: “Beyoğlu 1989 E-Bulletin” as an Example

Covid-19, a disease that transformed into a pandemic at the beginning of 2020, caused catastrophic results in the world and Turkey. There have been some restrictions on trade, education, tourism, and art. Daily life was not interrupted but some services and events that they have not primary functions (for some people) like “art” were on the verge of stopping and carried to the digital platforms. In this context, some corporations opened their archives and sometimes actual events to the public free of charge or for a certain amount of money. Art, which has always had “healing”, “mediating” and “unifying” effects, was consumed by the billions of people through digital devices. Considering art is both a sector and an industry, the unexpected phenomenon of Covid-19, which is a kind of crisis that occurs one in a hundred years and takes longer than expected, led to the temporary or permanent closure of some art and culture institutions. Due to these results, some supportive programs have been organized by official or non-official institutions to solve financial problems. In Turkey, all the movie theaters closed down on the 16th of March 2020 by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Some halls opened in July and August, however, because of lack of audience and of the increasing number of patients they have closed down again in November. 2019 was a bad year for the sector yet 2020 was even worse with the decline of the audience by the ratio of %90. Before the pandemic, there were some problems in terms of halls. In this context, some movie theaters tried to find solutions not to lose the audience and find financial support. Beyoğlu Movie Theater that began operating in 1989, had some financial problems before the pandemic. The managers of the hall created a project called “Beyoğlu 1989”, which was a kind of electronic bulletin, and started sending e-mails to the subscribers. This project, which was implemented for the first time in Turkey, has reached the 57th issue and 800 subscribers today and has turned into a kind of weekly electronic-digital cinema newspaper that is also promoted on the Instagram account of the Beyoğlu cinema with 45 thousand followers. The broadcast also follows the cinema agenda and undertakes the task of a written-visual archive. In conclusion, a movie theater that started operating in the analog age, today use all the possibilities and utilities of the digital age and also with the help of its owners and followers, creates a communication ecology to prevent the shutdown. The aim of this article is to examine an electronic bulletin (also a film magazine) “1989”, which is first in Turkey, with the qualitative method.

Negotiation between modernity and local culture in moviegoing practice: A case study of a traditional movie theater in Guangzhou Metropolis

As a medium for delivering modernity, movie theaters have faithfully recorded the dialogue between modernity and local daily lives. In contrast to modern movie theaters, traditional cinemas are distinguished by their long history, through which they reflect the changing connotations and social construction of modernity over time. Based on detailed analysis of the historical and social characteristics of Nanguan cinema, a 100-year-old movie theater in Guangzhou, China, we reach the following two conclusions: first, shaped by local traditional culture, the practice of moviegoing localizes modernity with a distinctive grassroots feature that enlivens everyday lives; second, moviegoing at traditional theaters in modern metropolitan areas has further enriched the connotations of modernity by providing a nostalgic experience for audiences.

When Reinforcing Processes Generate an Outcome-Quality Dip

When does market success indicate superior merit? We show that when consumer choices between products with equal prices depend on quality but also on past popularity, more popular products are not necessarily of higher quality. Rather, a medium level of popularity may be associated with lower quality than lower levels of popularity. Using a formal model, we show that this kind of nonmonotonic association occurs when reinforcing processes are strong. More generally, a dip can occur when outcomes depend on both quality and resources and the latter are allocated bimodally, with some being given a lot of resources and most receiving little. Empirically, we illustrate that such a dip occurs in the association between movie theater sales and ratings. The presence of a dip in the outcome-quality association complicates learning from market outcomes and evaluation of individuals and new ventures, challenges the legitimacy of stratification systems, and creates opportunities for sophisticated evaluators who understand the dip.