The Empire and 'Human Interest': Popular Empire Films, the Colonial Villain, and the British Documentary Movement 1926-39

Grandy, Christine

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwu010

Cited by 5 publications

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“…The British were in a difficult position. While the role of African men was not ignored entirely, as seen in the 1943 MIO documentary African’s Fighting Men , these representations were ephemeral (Grandy, 2014: 530). Moreover, while 12% of the US population were descendants of slaves, Britain held colonies in Africa, India and the West Indies (Wynn, 2006: 327).…”

Section: Race and Britishnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The show’s willingness to deconstruct British identity, and to make it more inclusive, was attuned to modern audiences that were confronted with the possible break-up of the United Kingdom in the 21st century as national groups reordered how they defined themselves. The Second World War and the faltering of empire not only altered Britain’s place as a great power but also challenged what it meant to be British post-1945 (Grandy, 2014: 530). Rather than reducing ‘others’ in Land Girls to matters of unimportance that were simply overpowered by the British collective, a conscientious objector named Clifford refuses to be dissuaded from his beliefs despite taunting and physical abuse from his patriotic superiors ( Land Girls 2011.…”

Section: ‘Allies’ and The Construction Of Britishnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Britishness and otherness: Representing and constructing identity in BBC’s Land Girls

White

2019

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Te

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This article situates Land Girls (BBC, 2009-2011) in dialogue with the Second World War and its legacy. Although the series ostensibly deals with the experience of British Land Girls during the war in a melodramatic way, Land Girls is best understood as an anxious commentary on the place of Britain and its cultural institutions following the war. The series uses national, racial and economic others in order to de-romanticise notions of a collective national identity, while simultaneously using those others to help articulate an idealised sense of Britishness for a 21st-century audience.

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Section: Race and Britishnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: ‘Allies’ and The Construction Of Britishnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Britishness and otherness: Representing and constructing identity in BBC’s Land Girls

White

2019

Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Te

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“…The ongoing inclusion of blacked-up actors in feature films from the period was so common that censors at the British Board of Film Classification did not remark on the practice but rather treated the characters by their projected racial identity. 39 A rather different type of film, the amateur film or "home movie," demonstrates that a range of ordinary Britons were also blacking up in public environments in the early twentieth century in local parades, pageants, and celebrations. Zoë Thomas and Tom Hulme have placed an overdue spotlight on historic pageants as a means of modeling various forms of citizenship and identity in the period.…”

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confidence: 99%

“The Show Is Not about Race’”: Custom, Screen Culture, and the Black and White Minstrel Show

Grandy¹

2020

J. Br. Stud.

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In 1967, when the BBC was faced with a petition by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination requesting an end to the televised variety program the Black and White Minstrel Show (1958–1978), producers at the BBC, the press, and audience members collectively argued that the historic presence of minstrelsy in Britain rendered the practice of blacking up harmless. This article uses critical race theory as a useful framework for unpacking defenses that hinged on both the color blindness of white British audiences and the simultaneous existence of wider customs of blacking up within British television and film. I examine a range of “screen culture” from the 1920s to the 1970s, including feature films, home movies, newsreels, and television, that provide evidence of the existence of blackface as a type of racialized custom in British entertainment throughout this period. Efforts by organizations such as the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, black press publications like Flamingo, and audiences of color to name blacking up and minstrelsy as racist in the late 1960s were met by fierce resistance from majority white audiences and producers, who denied their authority to do so. Concepts of color blindness or “racial innocence” thus become a useful means of examining, first, the wide-ranging existence of blacking-up practices within British screen culture; second, a broad reluctance by producers and the majority of audiences to identify this as racist; and third, the exceptional role that race played in characterizations of white audiences that were otherwise seen as historically fragile and impressionable in the face of screen content.

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Empire, Repetition, and Reluctant Subjects: British Home Movies of Kenya, 1928–72

Grandy

2017

The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

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In 1928, Lieutenant Commander Glen Kidston, a renowned racecar driver, pilot, and playboy, visited Kenya with a group of male and female companions from Britain. Amongst Kidston's companions was a friend and cameraman who took a series of 'home movies' or amateur film of the group's safari. Shot in black and white, without sound but including intertitles throughout, these films document the group's activities, including luxurious travel by boat, expansive lunches, and the wildlife they encountered. The footage is punctuated with images of vast landscapes, Maasai housing, and a long scene of a laborious crossing of a river by car. In 1972, 44 years after Glen Kidston visited Kenya with cine-camera in tow, and 9 years after Kenya gained independence from Britain, David Lean, the successful British director, also visited Kenya and made a series of home movies while there. Accompanied by his then mistress and future wife, Sandra Hotz, Lean visited a number of luxury lodges, taking extensive footage on his cine-camera. Lean and Hotz went on safari as well, dined in the wilderness, and produced metres and metres of film of the surrounding landscape, including Maasai homes, river crossings, and wildlife. Indeed, the differences between the amateur 1928 footage by Kidston's party and the footage of a critically acclaimed director are scarce. Other amateur films produced by Britons visiting Kenya in this same period follow similar visual patterns. Ultimately, what stands out in these films shot over four decades by multiple men, including the five amateur film-makers examined here, is the sheer repetition of imagery on screen. These films are both remarkably similar and 2 remarkably undisturbed by the formal end of empire. The holiday films produced by a range of Britons visiting Kenya seem to follow a clear visual pattern that remained static in the 20 th century. Locating the repetitive aspects of culture produced by Britons while abroad in the empire is not a particularly new discovery for those engaged with empire studies, even if that repetition has seldom been the subject of sustained examination. One need only have a passing familiarity with John MacKenzie's 'Studies in Imperialism' series and other key works on the culture of empire to note the persistent similarities in material such as film, fiction, posters, soap advertisements and the like. 1 This imperial culture collectively fosters narratives that, at times, verge on an exhausting pastiche. 2 It is certainly the case that 'culture,' widely conceived, produced by metropolitan-based imperialists, travellers as tourists, and settlers, made for a series of cultural conventions of empire that are striking in their similarities. These conventions, and what we could even identify as a formula, underpin various terms used by scholars, such as the 'imperial gaze,' the 'imperial eye,' the 'colonial order', or, in an acknowledgement of the fixed nature of this trope, concepts of 'colonial nostalgia,' as Anna Bocking-Welch has argued. 3 The repetitive, stylized, and pe...

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The Empire and 'Human Interest': Popular Empire Films, the Colonial Villain, and the British Documentary Movement 1926-39

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Britishness and otherness: Representing and constructing identity in BBC’s Land Girls

Britishness and otherness: Representing and constructing identity in BBC’s Land Girls

“The Show Is Not about Race’”: Custom, Screen Culture, and the Black and White Minstrel Show

Empire, Repetition, and Reluctant Subjects: British Home Movies of Kenya, 1928–72

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