Queer Theory and Nontheatrical Films: Perversion in the Public Domain

This chapter considers the intersection of queer theory and nontheatrical film studies by examining antipornography film Perversion for Profit (1962). Produced and distributed by Citizens for Decent Literature, the film visualizes a range of straight and gay pornographic images by censoring and categorizing them as evidence of societal aberrations. Now in the public domain and streaming on Internet Archive, the film’s pornographic images have been repurposed for new meanings. By analyzing Barbara Hammer’s inclusion of Perversion in her experimental film History Lessons (2000) and a mash-up of the original film titled Come Join the Fun! (2004), shared on Internet Archive, the chapter argues that the Perversion’s value now lies in what queer creators make of its cinematic time and space.

The Persistence of [a] Vision: The Electronically Mediated Corporation

Forgoing an examination of the media industries, Chapter 1 focuses instead on the rise of what one might call the mediated industries. A prehistory of television at work, this chapter traces an intensifying relationship between electronic media and the workplace that follows the development and industrial application of telegraphy, telephony, recorded sound, wireless, applied radio, Muzak, faxing, and nontheatrical film. Situating this discussion in the context of scholars’ treatment of communication and empire, it argues that television occupies a key transitional position for the mediated corporation in which electronic communication’s dual uses as a logistical tool and as a conduit for cultural production converge. These processes illustrate the development of an alternative media sector and the symbiotic relationship between the “knowledge industries” and corporate expansion, as well as the specificities of how media infrastructures are created at scale.

Introduction

The introduction describes television’s use as an instrument of orientation engaged in cultural and logistical management in three interrelated senses: (1) shaping viewers’ understanding of their world and their place within it, (2) enabling action in space, and (3) offering a site for groups and institutions to engage the “problem” of electronic workplace communication. Arguing that industrial television sought to acclimate workers to the conditions of post-Fordism, it describes this transition in the US, focusing on one vector of the move to post-Fordism that was a favored target of television: the diminishing boundaries between work and nonwork. It also provides an overview of three bodies of literature: (1) media studies understandings of the conjuncture between labor and audiences (e.g., the audience commodity), (2) the cultural and political interventions of useful cinema, nontheatrical film, and institutional media research, and (3) methodologies for historical studies of emergent technologies. It ends with a chapter overview.

Fuelling the Nation: Imaginaries of Western Oil in Canadian Nontheatrical Film

Background Canadian nontheatrical cinema has historically positioned natural resource extraction as intrinsic to the country’s economic development and national identity. During the 1940s and 1950s in particular with the discovery of Alberta’s vast oil reserves, industrial and documentary films about oil extraction associated petroleum with nation-building and modernization.Analysis This article examines The Story of Oil (1946, produced by the National Film Board of Canada), A Mile Below the Wheat (1949, sponsored by Imperial Oil), and Underground East (1953, sponsored by Imperial Oil) as examples of such “petro-films” following the oil booms in Turner Valley and Leduc, Alberta.Conclusion and implications The author demonstrates how these texts sought to position Western oil development in relation to contemporaneous resource industries, namely wheat agriculture and ranching. These films leveraged such comparisons to other regional “fuels” to situate petroleum within pre-existing national imaginaries about Canada’s twentieth-century resource economy, and normalize the oil industry’s land-use practices and transportation infrastructures like pipelines.Contexte Historiquement, le cinéma canadien non théâtral a établi un lien intrinsèque entre l’extraction des ressources naturelles, le développement économique, et l’identité nationale du pays. Durant les années 1940 et 1950, en particulier, avec la découverte des vastes réserves de pétrole de l’Alberta, les films documentaires et industriels sur l’extraction ont associé pétrole, modernisation et construction de la nation.Analyse Cet article traite des films The Story of Oil (1946, financé par l’Office Nationale du Film du Canada), A Mile Below the Wheat (1949, financé par l’Impériale), ainsi qu’Underground East (1953, financé par l’Impériale) comme représentatifs de ces « pétro-films » qui ont suivi l’essor des industries pétrolières de Turner Valley et Leduc, Alberta.Conclusion et implications L’auteur démontre comment ces textes ont cherché à associer le développement du pétrole dans l’Ouest avec les industries contemporaines du secteur primaire : agriculture du blé et élevage. Cette comparaison avec d’autres « carburants » régionaux a permis de situer le pétrole à l’intérieur d’un imaginaire national préexistant, construit autour de l’économie canadienne des ressources primaires au vingtième siècle. Elle contribue à normaliser les pratiques d’utilisation du territoire par les industries pétrolières, et leurs infrastructures de transport comme les pipelines.

Between the Front Lines

This chapter, by Florian Hoof, describes how the military utilized vocational training films in the 1910s and how producing, promoting, and selling such films turned into a profitable business model for filmmakers. It specifically looks at vocational training films produced by Frank Gilbreth for the U.S. Army in the context of the Great War. Due to the development of industrialized warfare, concepts from Gilbreth’s industrial work proved to be newly relevant for the military. Film addressed the problem of how to organize the transfer of complex topics in military training. The chapter sheds new light on the interrelations between film, the organizational culture of the military, and educational theory. Lastly, the utilization of film in the military is situated in the broader context of a film history on nontheatrical film.

Quicker Than the Eye? Sleight of Hand and Cinemas of Scientific Discovery from Chronophotography to Cognitive Film Theory

This article explores the topic of scientific discovery in two cases of intersections between imaging technologies and sleight-of-hand magic in the domain of nontheatrical film and media. The first case is the French psychologist Alfred Binet’s use of chronophotography to study magicians in the 1890s. The second is the reanimation of Binet’s study by cognitive (neuro)scientists beginning in the early 2000s using eye-tracking cameras and other digital-imaging devices. The author focuses on how both cases treat the magician as a medium of discovery and how both use optical devices to “see” visual processes related to the experience of wonder.