Our latest blog comes from stipend holder Dr Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal, who lectures in Film Studies at the University of St.Andrews.
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When I applied to research the collections at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (BDCM), I was in the final stages of my doctoral project on early British film and its relationship to educational institutions. One of my thesis’ arguments was that textual descriptions in catalogues, journal articles, and other publicity texts produced by filmmakers, were central to establishing the educationalness of their films, and I wanted to see if there were nineteenth century precedents that could provide further ballast to my claims. For a variety of reasons, I could only make it to BDCM after I passed my viva. The completion of the PhD no longer being a burden though, meant that I could spend the time to reflect on the ways in which text interacted with different visual media objects. I studied lantern catalogues, panorama and lantern publicity pamphlets, lantern lecture readings, technical manuals, amateur science textbooks, among other objects. The items I mention in this blog are more to highlight the different ways of thinking about text and visual media that the BDCM collections have made possible for me, than (as yet) definitive arguments.
The first and the oldest document related to the Panorama of the Nile in 1849. The museum holds an original guidebook with text but I also examined a photocopy of American Egyptologist George R. Gliddon’s 1849 Handbook to the American Panorama of the Nile (based on Joseph Bonomi’s drawings), held in the Ralph Hyde Collection at the museum. Such handbooks and pamphlets informed a viewer of the significance of the images and thus had instructional value. However, the text also constructs Gliddon’s own specific ‘scholarly’ positionality. In his foreword for American audiences (taken from a lecture he gave to accompany the panorama) Gliddon writes: ‘in turning showman, I by no means intend to avoid my proper vocation of an Orientalist and Archéologue… the value of “The Panorama of the Nile”, great as its conception and artistic merits unquestionably are, is regarded more especially in its educational value’ as the ‘most authentic record of man on earth, is… brought within the intellectual contemplation of anyone who sincerely chooses to inquire’ (emphasis in the original).
Gliddon’s text is a manoeuvre to justify his choice to be a ‘showman’, a public entertainer, and positions the choice as a continuation of his credentials as a scholar. In its appeal to the contemplative capabilities of the individual ‘who sincerely chooses to inquire’, the written word bridges the gap between academic pursuit and popular visual entertainment.
However, the writing perhaps belies a fear that using a means of entertainment for instruction would damage Gliddon’s reputation and thus, the value of his work. There must have been a balance that he sought to strike in his lecture: on the one hand the exhibition would have offered him public attention – and perhaps lucrative lecture tours – while on the other hand, it may have given the impression of frivolity to other scholars. Such panorama handbooks exemplify the overlap that institutional knowledge making had with popular propagation of that knowledge in the nineteenth century. Equally though, it makes one wonder about the burden placed on texts by the authors; to ensure that their ‘higher’ credentials were not tarnished or forgotten.
The cover of the Hand-book of the Panorama of the River Nile (63557)
Later in the nineteenth century, the technology of the magic lantern was particularly successful in both amusing and instructing Western audiences. Perhaps more directly than panoramas, text was built into a magic lantern’s instructional performance. Lantern lecture readings – sometimes claiming fidelity to school syllabi – were sold freely by stationers and booksellers among other educational materials such as notebooks, textbooks, atlases, globes, and of course lantern slide sets. BDCM has an excellent collection of ‘Optical Lantern Readings’ that were meant to provide readymade content to any aspiring lantern lecturer. The collection includes temperance and religious stories and songs, fairy tales, narratives of industrial progress, local and global sightseeing tours, and records of colonial conquests and valour.
As examples of the last category two stand out for me: General Gordon: His Life and Work – written by Thomas Hepworth, the pioneering British director Cecil Hepworth’s father – and Conquest of Soudan (also likely him). Together they read like a two-part narrative. The former recounts the military career of the nineteenth century British general Charles Gordon, his imperial exploits, and his valiant but failed defence of Soudan: ‘The brave Gordon it seems was lost through treachery. The gates of Khartoum was opened to the enemy by one whom Gordon trusted, and our hero was shot down at the gate of the palace almost before he realised what had happened’ (sic). Conquest of Soudan then is almost written like a revenge story, with Lord Herbert ‘Sirdar’ Kitchener securing Sudan for Britain in Gordon’s memory. The text for the last slide – ‘THE SERVICE AMONG THE RUINS OF KHARTOUM’ – states that ‘Gordon had his due burial at last’ and he rested ‘under the conquering ensign of his own people’.
The lectures read imperialist propaganda into images. More importantly though, much like my own experience of reading General Gordon: His Life and Work and Conquest of Soudan in relation to one another, for contemporary audiences the different slide sets and their lectures might have acted as a form of world-building; the text shaping the history of British presence in Sudan into an easily digestible episodic structure to enter into that world. The readings often borrowed passages from magazines, newspaper, and journals – the introduction to Conquest of Soudan was taken from the evening newspaper The Echo – and thus, the lantern shows became a method to replay popular histories within visual performance contexts. In that sense, these lecture texts foreground the overlap between lantern performance and the reading of history into propaganda and vice versa.
The lantern lecture readings for General Gordon: His Life and Work (see Featured image)and The Conquest of Soudan (36764 and 36759)
The readings also connect to popular ‘Empire’ filmmaking from the 1930s, such as Sanders of the River, Gunga Din, and The Drum among others. In one sequence from the latter film the fictional Captain Carruthers – played by the Zoltan Korda and Powell and Pressburger staple Roger Livesey – says: ‘do you remember Sir Louis Cavagnari? He was British resident in Kabul… he walked into a trap with his eyes open. And so did Gordon… and as a result of that, Kitchener conquered Sudan and we’ve had peace there for two generations. A not unusual preliminary to our establishing law and order is the murder of one of our representatives’.
Tie-edition of The Drum (EXEBD 33335)
As film scholar Priya Jaikumar has noted, Curruthers’ account ‘creates a tradition of British colonial presence’ and the Captain here is ‘merely channeling his predecessors who sacrificed themselves for the greater cause of peace and legality’ (Jaikumar, 2005, 139-140). Jaikumar highlights how the invocations of past military leaders like Cavagnari and Gordon, legitimise the actions of the fictional hero and almost reads him into historical memory.
We can think of the nineteenth century lecture readings, such as those about Gordon and Sudan, as precursors to such 1930s popular imperial cinema. This suggests that perhaps lantern shows based on fictional material might have had a similar relationship to shows on British colonial history. Indeed, these ‘historical’ lectures on the work of Gordon and Kitchener were produced by the same writers and producers who wrote the content for fairy tales and popular fantasies; their world building blurs the line between fact and fiction here. It is perhaps fitting that one of the lecture texts I found was titled Romance of History or Fact and Fiction that admits to blending apocryphal tales about places of the world that the author had visited with historical details.
The lantern lecture readings also represent the nebulous distinction between texts meant for educational benefit and those meant for entertainment consumption. In that sense, it raises questions about the stature of the lantern lecture vis-à-vis British society. As Jaikumar notes that ‘Brightly hued illustrations reminiscent of British pulp fiction from the 1800s frame The Drum’s opening credits, recalling military adventure tales printed in the popular magazine Boy’s Own Paper’. In comprehending General Gordon: His Life and Work and Conquest of Soudan as precursors to 1930s imperial cinema, does one then claim that these lecture readings were pulp fiction?
Box of Lantern Lecture readings in the museum.
I personally have little doubt that the texts were often used alongside brightly hued lantern-slide illustrations fitting of pulp fiction. However, their status as independent (illustration free) readings also lend a sense of sobriety to them; that the texts could stand for ‘serious’ learning and were amenable to be used alongside similarly sober slides. Much like the panorama handbook then, the independent circulation (and now preservation) of lantern lecture readings makes them artefacts that foreground a magic lantern culture that constantly negotiated the meanings and connotations of instruction and amusement and perhaps, ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’.
In this vein a particularly interesting sub-set of the artefacts here is a handwritten lantern lecture that adapts the biblical story of the Three Wise Men who visit an infant Jesus. This adaptation titled ‘Three Little Wise Men’ is based in a Welsh town around Christmas where the local Earl, Lord Bob, lives on the top of a hill with his two little children, unaware of the ‘broken-up homes and scattered families’ living below. As he recounts the tale of the Three Wise Men, the children see sparks coming from the local blacksmith’s factory and mistake them to be stars that they are meant to follow. The tale ends with the children further mistaking the blacksmith’s son to be Jesus and, in the process, playing the role of the wise men.
More than the tale itself though, the document is a point of curiosity for me. How did it end up in the middle of a collection of printed and published lantern lectures? Since it is written in a school exercise book I wonder if a student wrote this, and if so, was this a classroom or homework activity? What is most likely is that that a teacher wrote this in preparation for their own lantern show for children, and they also possessed copies of some of the other printed lectures. This at the very least indicates that alongside the printed and published materials, personal adaptations and interpretations of slide information preserved in these handwritten texts was a significant part of the instruction/amusement context of lantern culture.
The life and preservation of these personal engagements is more precarious compared to the printed text, but where available they are fascinating. For instance, in the occasional crossing-out and then the re-writing of slide numbers, one can see decisions about when the presenter felt slide changes need to be made. I wonder here if the outline of the story came before or after the slide selection? I don’t know. But still, the text for me shows a process of engagement by those who may have purchased lantern slides and sought to create narratives out of them.
We might refer to it as a lantern user’s perspective. It is possible that the slides for ‘Three Little Wise Men’ included both photographs of a Welsh town and illustrations from biblical and nativity scenes. The text then offers a glimpse into the construction of adaptation. If the printed lecture readings imbricate history with mythmaking, then the handwritten lecture hints at the mixing of different types of slides and thus, perhaps sober and fantastical realities.
Pages from the Three Little Wise Men, lantern story in the school exercise book (36779)
Thinking of users, the final objects I would like to bring up are from much later (the1930s). These are picture flipbooks of the cricketers Frank Wooley and Donald Bradman playing a pull and a leg-glance respectively. Aside from my absolute and unequivocal devotion to the game of cricket and its heritage and history, these objects toe the line between viewing and reading. The flipbooks when flipped through gives the illusion of motion i.e., a cricketing shot being played. Pausing on specific pages though, could be understood as an act of reading each step and each posture that goes into completing the stroke. The book form of the flipbook only encourages this connection. You can see the flipbook in action here and here.
While the photographic experiments of Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge might be more scientifically recognised precursors here – where each still image could be explained as part of understanding the process of motion – there is also a logical extension for me between the act of writing a lantern lecture and the viewing of images. Much like how each still image of the magic lantern is spoken over with someone constructing that speech, the pause is an opportunity to arrest the flow of unceasing images and imbue that arrested moment with words (perhaps in one’s own mind).
Whether a panorama handbook, the printed and handwritten lantern lecture, or the flipbook, a study of the written text surrounding visual media offers ways to reflect upon the relationship between the media and its creator and/or the viewer. Words populate all parts of the production, distribution, and exhibition process, and the collections at the BDCM offer an engagement with the writing present at each of these steps.
Bibliography:
Jaikumar, Priya. Cinema at the End of Empire: A Politics of Transition in Britain and India. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005.