London Met heads to Tinseltown
Department of Applied Social Sciences Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Dr Mike Chopra-Gant,
has had a close encounter with Hollywood glamour this summer following
a visit to Los Angeles to work on a research project at the University of Southern California.
USC’s School of Cinematic Arts is home to the Warner Brothers’
archive, which has proven to be a rich source of information for Mike’s
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research project on movie exhibition in the USA during the 1940s and 1950s.
According to Mike, his project covers an area of study that has
tended to be marginal within film studies. He commented: ‘The documents
contained in the Warner archive show that going to the movies in the
‘40s and ‘50s was a very different experience from today.
‘In addition to the main feature, audiences could expect a wide
array of different types of supporting material, B-grade movies,
serials, cartoons, newsreels, boxing matches and even short scientific
and educational films.
'Knowing what this was like is an important way of gaining some
insight into the culture of the period and of what contributed to the
shaping of American culture in the decades following World War Two.’
The research undertaken in Los Angeles, as well as at other
locations around the Chicago area and at the Harry Ransom Centre for
the Humanities at the University of Texas, will form the basis for a monograph on movie-going in America.
A website, www.cinemahistory.org, has been set up to provide more information about the progress of the project.
American popular culture is a research specialism within the department and enquiries for post-graduate study are invited in this area. Enquire here.
