Foregrounding Public Cinema and Rural Audiences
The Usda Motion Picture Service as Cinematic Modernism, 1908–38
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11353815 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Noah Zweig (0000-0002-5579-6160, University of California, Santa Barbara, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 116-125 |
| Publication date | 2009-11-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Popular Film and Television (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0195-6051 • E-ISSN: 1930-6458 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01956050903218091 |
| OpenAlex | W2013967761 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
There are multiple “modernities” in the context of early cinema in the United States. While there has been a great deal of scholarship on the “modern” commercial film culture of early-twentieth-century urban America, historians have paid less attention to patterns of rural audiences from that period who viewed many noncommercial films by U.S. federal agencies, especially the Department of Agriculture. This article draws on Marx and Engels' German Ideology, which argues that “the rural” and “the urban” are to be understood dialectically, to posit that one way to grasp “modernity” is through an examination of the USDA film agency. Keywords: American studiesearly cinemagovernment motion picturesMarxismrural studies Notes 1. At the 2008 Orphans Symposium, film scholar Jennifer Zwarich discussed The Charge of the Tick Brigade, among other USDA films. Her talk also addressed the Department of Interior, whose secretary under President Warren G. Harding, Albert Fall, strongly believed film could mold a patriotic citizenry. The lecture was derived from Zwarich's dissertation. 2. Barron adds, “[films] resonated with city audiences, particularly those who had been raised on the farm, as well as rural and small town moviegoers, and they helped to reconcile both groups to vexing social changes. Urbanites, one step removed from the countryside, found reassurance that the admirable traits they had learned on the farm would not ‘be defeated by the city,’ to paraphrase O. Henry's famous title, and they relished the visual images of home that the silver screen provided. Their country cousins, in turn, appreciated the validation of their lives and values in rural films precisely because they were being challenged and eclipsed by larger social and cultural changes” (383). 3. Evans calls this “the first government motion picture.” 4. Because farmers badly needed information about farming in the new century, the USDA was quick to seize moving-image technology. 5. The Babcock Test (1931), for example, is an account of how Stephen M. Babcock arrived at the Babcock Test—a test for ascertaining the butterfat content of milk. 6. For example, Animal Diseases and Pests: Control of Worms in Hogs (1934). 7. Agricultural Engineering: Clearing Land (1929) demonstrates methods of removing stumps and boulders from farmland, such as burning, dynamiting, mule-power for chain whips and the hand puller. 8. The Motion Pictures of the U.S. Department of Agriculture describes In the Beginning (1937) as a “remarkable time-lapse cinematography of the ovulation, fertilization, and early development of the mammalian egg. Unusual exposition of a biological subject in the layman's language.” 9. In 1862, the USDA declared its mandate: to “acquire and diffuse useful information in the most comprehensive sense of that term.” According to Lindstrom, the USDA was born in early nineteenth century when a clerk in the Patent Office was put in charge of distributing seeds. 10. The USDA did not charge rental feels, but borrowers paid for shipping
Agency (philosophy · Art · Art history · Context (archaeology · Filmmaking · Foregrounding · Highbrow · Literature · Media studies · Modernity · Movie theater · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · American History and Culture · Cinema and Media Studies · European history and politics · History · Law
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |