Kathryn Fuller does a good job at describing the small-town movie scene in Cooperstown. One thing that immediately stuck out to me is the attention span comment that she made about audiences back in 1896. She claims that Bert and Fannie Cook were very popular because they realized the audiences desire to not only watch short films but to be entertained by other means such as people singing, music to accompany action, and other such attractions. It took me to the topic that always comes up with audiences and youth culture now. Back then there were 20-25 short films within the time span of two hours and now we have 2 and a half hour plus movies, dare we compare. I know this is before the narratives were completely formed but it's definitely worth taking note of when people try to make the comment that audiences have short attention spans.
It's pretty neat to see all the competition that quickly arose with traveling cinemas as well as the adaptation that these groups had to quickly do with the introduction of nickelodeons. It was awesome to see how audiences grew tired of having the same traveling acts exhibit the same films, which led to nickelodeon's being instated so they could set up shop and receive many new films and immediately implement them, which changed the industry demand for a consistent pipeline of new films.
This whole time I did wonder when popcorn became a staple and what people ate during these shows. If they did resemble Vaudeville type environments, what were they eating at these attractions? Not that this is a big deal, I am just curios to know what foods people started to bring or that were sold during these events. Because if these were traveling shows, did they get profits from vending food at the given establishment or did the theater provide the food services? Just some "food" for thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment