Charles Acland,
Screen Traffic, Movies, Multiplexes and Gobal Culture.
London: Duke University Press. 2003
ISBN: 0 82233 163 2
320pp
US$22.95 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by Duke University Press)

In Screen Traffic, Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture, Charles Acland investigates the ways in which the post 1986 U.S. commercial film business altered prevailing industry and audience conceptions of movie-going. In particular, he demonstrates how the film industry’s reliance on ancillary media markets such as DVD, VCR and Pay per view television cultivated a global landscape of cross-marketed media commodities and led to the development of the megaplex cinema; a space of “total entertainment” which emphasised “up scaling, comfort, courteousness, cleanliness … and prestige”(106).

Central to Acland’s analysis is a consideration of the “felt internationalism” of globalized cinema culture and its associated implications for the business and practice of moviegoing (44). Drawing on a comprehensive array of trade publications and academic scholarship surrounding audience behaviour, popular culture and moviegoing, Acland spotlights the closing decades of the twentieth century as an era of dramatic industry transformation. Commencing with the 1986 Supreme Court Paramount ruling (which witnessed the return of major U.S film distributors to the exhibition industry) and concluding with 1998 reports of industry saturation and economic instability, Acland investigates the genesis of an “industry common sense” within global media distribution and consumption practices.

A refreshing component of Screen Traffic is Acland’s unequivocal rejection of the clichéd rhetoric of cultural homogeneity that pervades so many academic discussions of globalization. Instead, Screen Traffic explicitly operates in “contradistinction to work that takes international culture, popular or otherwise, as a sign of the failure of nation, of particularity, and of meaning” (37). To this end, Acland argues that the inspiration for Screen Traffic came from a desire to “expose some of the recent historical traces that have formed an episteme of popular entertainment and the global audience” (14).

Acland’s deliberate merging of popular culture, industry discourse and economic data mark Screen Traffic as a fascinating contribution to cinema theory. Extending De Certeau’s observations of everyday life into an understanding of cinema going as a heterogenous site of “social interaction, entertainment [and] aesthetic pleasure”, Screen Traffic provides a much needed account of accelerated media culture at the end of the twentieth century (59).

Screen Traffic is divided into two sections. The first section “Theorizing contemporary cinema going” outlines the theoretical parameters of the study. In Chapter One, “Global audiences and the current cinema”, Acland explores the intertwining of industrial and popular discourses surrounding global film distribution and consumption practices. In acknowledging a “poetics of cultural distance” within the transnational trafficking of media images and forms, Acland signals towards the reconfiguration of industrial and cultural practice within a globalized media context (22).

In Chapter Two, “Travelling cultures, mutating commodities” Acland addresses the “mobility and mutability” of film commodities across diverse media platforms and international borders. He proposes that “globalization and the cross-media trajectory of popular texts confronts us with the location and effects of culture, challenging how we delineate contexts for audience activity” (44). Moreover, he suggests that future contributions to cultural analysis should take as their point of departure “the traces left by intercontextual and intermedia cultural relations” (44).

Chapter Three “Matinees, summers, and the practice of cinemagoing” addresses the theoretical stakes involved in the practice of public film consumption. Drawing on a comprehensive background of film theory, Acland argues that “the problem with film studies has been film, that is, the use of a medium in order to designate the boundaries of a discipline” (46). In asserting that public film viewing needs to be understood as cultural practice, Acland reminds readers of the banal, erotic, civil and unruly components of cinemagoing while simultaneously insisting that the history of commercial cinema “has been one of a struggle to standardize attendance, spectatorship, and viewing contexts “(80).

Titled, “Structures of cinematic experience” the second part of Screen Traffic investigates industry discourse and contemporary formations of knowledge surrounding audiences, moviegoing practices and the construction of megaplex cinema venues. In Chapter Four “Crisis in exhibition and distribution”, Acland provides a comprehensive analysis of the tension that existed between film distributors and exhibitors during the 1980s. After mapping the historical conditions which enabled the 1986 overturning of the Paramount Decree; Acland charts the inevitable building boom that followed the reinstated rights of film distributors to operate sites of exhibition.

Chapter Five explores the realignment of exhibition and distribution industries by way of the emblematic figure of the megaplex cinema. Titled “Here come the Megaplexes”, this chapter investigates the emergence of megaplex cinema spaces that have been specifically designed to construct a “continuity between the lobby and the world of cinema, where the boundaries of the screen, film culture and moviegoing appear fluid and permeable” (116). From this perspective, Acland identifies megaplex cinemas as flagships for an increasingly globalized wave of theatrical expansion which sought to implement multiple screening options in fewer geographic locations. Chapter Six “Zones and Speeds of International Cinematic Life” elaborates on this phenomenon, drawing attention the international simultaneity of globalized cinema culture.

Following an intriguing discussion of megaplex environments and their connections with theme parks, movie palaces and gated communities, Chapter Seven’s discussion of “Northern screens”, considers globalized media practice within a national context. In utilizing Canada as a case study, Acland demonstrates the multiplicity of global media environments. Rather than lamenting the loss of a national identity, Acland praises the “simultaneity and currency in Canadian cinema and culture” which enables Canadians to engage with both local and globalized cinema events (194).

The book’s concluding chapters “The miniaturization of the theme park” and “Cinema-going as felt internationalism”, return the reader to the notion of “popular cosmopolitanism” within a global media context. Dealing explicitly with “localized encounter[s] with a transnational commercial film culture” (239), Acland argues that contemporary cinema-going is not simply about sitting and watching, but rather, ” involves an application of a set of ideas about, and skills in, contemporary sociability” (246). He points out that although megaplex spaces readily utilize discourses of agency and collectivity, they are equally spaces of surveillance and discipline.

Screen Traffic provides a valuable contribution to contemporary understandings of globalized media culture at the end of the 20th century. In drawing upon domestic and international box office statistics, as well as relevant economic data, promotional material and trade press, Acland provides an insightful and thought provoking analysis of the globalized and cross-marketed media landscape.

Leanne Downing,
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Created on: Wednesday, 20 July 2005 | Last Updated: 20-Jul-05