ATPS: Chapters 3 & 4

What first struck me as amazing in chapter three is the clout that the south obtained. I know that American was still VERY racist in the early 1900’s so I guess it all makes sense, but how could the south be able to dictate film subject and audience attendance when they ranked lowest for theater attendance and revenue. It’s a shame how the ‘moral’ opinion of the closed minded and racist south was able to curtail the films that were shown and stop African-Americans from entering certain theaters.

Another thing that I found amazing but this time very funny, is how hard it was for people to come up with names for their cinemas. There were literally articles and competitions held for people to come up with names for what to title the space in which films were exhibited. They went from Nickelodeon, to Photoplay and then settled on theater with a variance in what names people could put on it. I know it was a big deal back then, but it just seems funny now that there was such a big discourse on what to name such a now seemingly simple event. It was also funny to read about all of the confusion and mixed emotions that surrounded the dark aspect of the theater. I can completely understand how people slightly were freaked out about being next to strangers in a dark area. Today theaters aren’t as dark but it’s still an interesting experience to sit next to strangers in a pretty dark confined space.

Lastly, I like the way the Fuller systematically takes us through the process of how nickelodeons tried to attract people from their advertisements, exterior displays, and film programming. I was really able to get a feel of the process that these film exhibitioners went through when deciding on how to present films and what resources they had. It’s amazing that films were produced in the hundreds a week and that nickelodeons could change there programs each day! We have the same programming in theaters with slight weekly changes for about three weeks now if not more! Of course then their movies were about 5 minutes so it’s very understandable to see why things are different now.