Sociology of film : studies and documents (1946)

CHAPTER 10 Conclusions and Postulates 1 he preceding studies have approached a sociological interpretation of film from the consumer's end. We attempted to describe the significance and meaning of the film phenomenon in our contemporary society through the medium of film audiences. No attempt has been made to enter into a. full sociological analysis of the audience phenomena. This obvious and theoretically regrettable neglect may perhaps be justified if we submit that cinema audiences are generally not crowds in the sense in which crowdsociology uses this term. We think here particularly of Gustave Le Bon's famous book on Psychologie des Foules. Apart from the fact that Le Bon's abstract conception of sociology fails to appreciate the important national differences in crowd structures, the cinema audiences become crowds perhaps only in cases of panic. Otherwise the audiences consist either of individuals or mainly pairs, or bands (friends, relatives, groups of friends) who seek what the film industry calls 'entertainment'. I am under the impression that in our large cities the atomised type of cinema-goer and the autark pair form the majority. (With regard to child audiences it may be that group cinemavisitors form the majority.) Nor did we pay attention to the inter-communication which exists among the cinema millions. It is well known, for example, that in factories, shops, and offices — during work and leisure hours — talk about films is probably the most frequent type of conversation. The playhouses have been roofed since the second half of the seventeenth century,1 a fact of very far-reaching consequences for any historico-sociological interpretation of audiences. The film, too, is seen in the dark. (It is even darker in the cinema than in the theatre, also a fact not without its sociological implications!) Yet 1 Cf. L. Hotson, The Commonwealth and Restoration Theatre, Cambridge (U.S.A.) 1928, pp. 8 1 sqq. 274