STUDENT ID: 19039121
Thick Description of the Watershed in comparison to the Showcase cinema
One of the cinemas I visited was the Watershed. It is situated at the Harbourside in the centre of Bristol City. It is a long a narrow street right by the river, amongst other shops, bars and restaurants. As you are walking along this street you can’t miss the huge, blue ‘Watershed’ sign outside the front of the cinema facing toward you. As you turn right to face the cinema, the exact same sign is along the top of the cinema. The front entrance of the cinema is bordered with signs and posters of which films are currently on at the cinema. The types of films shown here are predominately independent, niche films in which particularly attract people who are film scholars or experts. Furthermore, the huge, glass windows make it easy to see into the front foyer of the cinema. The whole building itself used to be a boat shed, and is made of two old warehouse buildings linked together. This is where the main desk is, where customers can purchase their film tickets. Beside this, there is a small shelving area for snacks and refreshments that are on offer. There are also greeting cards on sale.
As you make your way up the stairs, you pass three huge boards on the wall that are covered in post-it notes. These are notes visitors have posted themselves having written their opinions on a few of the most popular films in the cinema at the time. This enhances a real sense of community amongst the people who come here. This also suggests that people are passionate about the films they have watched. It is interesting to read other peoples views on the films, and compare with your own attitudes.
At the top of the stairs there is an open foyer. To your left there is the cinema rooms, and to the right the café. The café is a large space comprised of two separate rooms, joined together by windows and a large open plan layout. The café is often busy throughout the day, attracting people of all different ages. As I am visiting now, there are senior members joining in a group to play cards and have a coffee, there are students studying, as well as businessmen having meetings. The café has a food menu as well as an array of alcoholic beverages and hot drinks. It is crucial to notice they have locally brewed beer, which is very important when considering the nature of this niche cinema.
The atmosphere feels very naturalistic. The large windows let in lots of natural light, which is complimented with lots of plants and even a tree in the centre of the café. The tables are natural wood, and the walls are exposed brick which is very rustic and industrial. One of the large glass windows walks onto a balcony which looks over Bristol harbour, a beautifully natural setting. The music is playing softly and isn’t too distinctive amongst the busy noises of people chatting and the clinking of coffee cups.
Just passed the café, there are a row of conference rooms in which are full of people having meetings and talks. Along another corridor off side the café leads to a creative media room which is full of offices that holds all kinds of affairs, such as meetings for volunteers of film festivals that are held at the cinema. This shows that people don’t simply come to this establishment to watch films, but also get involved in all kinds of other events. The Watershed even hold weddings there!
Finally, to the cinema itself. The cinema rooms are fairly small, which gives the experience this cosy feel. There are even a selection of blankets and cushions by the front door of the room which the audience can help themselves to. There are few cinema rooms in the whole establishment also, which perhaps comments on the mass of people that would visit this sort of establishment. Trailers tend to only go on for about ten minutes before the film begins.
Overall, the experience of the Watershed cinema is very humble and there is a very strong sense of community. The fact that there are discussion boards, as well as social spaces such as the café gives people a real sense that they are a part of this space. The fact that so many different events are held there gives locals a chance to get involved with the establishment. In addition to this, the film’s shown themselves provoke further conversation as they appeal to cinephiles who are passionate about film.
The Watershed strongly contrasts with the multiplex in the city centre. The Showcase is located in the busy shopping complex of Cabot Circus. There is a huge, neon sign outside of cinema entrance. As you walk in, you are in a huge, expansive room. The floor is so shiny you can almost see your own reflection. Immediately to every side of the room you are presented with something to buy into. To your left, you have a glamorous box office in which you can purchase tickets for the film. Further ahead in front of you, there is a sweeping bar top that is presenting a wide range of food (popcorn, chocolate, sweets, ice cream, chips, hot dogs) and drink from recognisable brands, such as Ben and Jerry’s. Not only is the selection endless, but the portion sizes are huge. To the right of you there is also a flashy looking bar and seating area in which you can purchase an array of alcoholic drinks before or after the film. To the end of this spacious palace you are greeted with the hosts who will direct you to your cinema room. You are then taken along a flashy red carpet through another expansive corridor to the various cinema screens. Each cinema room is huge with wide screen.Overall, the experience of The Showcase is far less personal and far more consumerist. Constantly you are enticed to buy things and you are bombarded with the dazzling décor, and the experience becomes less and less about the actual movie itself. In my opinion, despite the excitement of luxury, this is a far less special experience and definitely detracts from my passion for film.
How does Bourdieu’s ideas about cultural capital and audience taste relate to the art house film Cleo de Cinq a’Sept?
The art house film Cleo de Cinq a’Sept, by auteur Agnes Varda, would be considered of good taste. Bourdieu discusses good taste in terms of “legitimate taste [which] increases with educational level”, enhanced by a range of institutions, including schooling. The growth of film in education at the time would have been significant in shaping the audiences of arthouse film. Upper classes would have predominant access to higher education, where arts such as film could be studied. Therefore, film scholars became a sophisticated audience in cinema as they took film seriously. According to Bourdieu this would be an institutionalised state, which is knowledge that is officially recognised in qualifications, such as a degree in film. Cleo de Cinq a’Sept has an academic appeal that would be most popular with upper classes. The overall meaning of the film is complex, attracting a “cultivated and confident arthouse spectator keenly attuned to matters of film form, style, and narrative”. The subject of the film invites us to think about the nature of existence, through its detailed inclusion of Cleo’s changing moods, thoughts and responses as she contemplates morality. Heavy focus on emotion and internal dialogue of the female protagonist are crucial conventions of arthouse cinema. The film is driven by characters rather than plot which is unusual, which is why the dominant class that are richest in educational capital have a greater chance of understanding the film.
Furthermore, Varda was very influential as part of the French New Wave movement in the 1950’s. This intellectual approach to film was primarily important in the emergence of independent producers and styles of cinema, which was crucial in the development of arthouse film. The French New Wave was part of an era that refused to tell straight forward stories, bringing a freshness to cinema at the time. To expand on the educational capital of the upper classes, Bourdieu also discusses an objectified state, which includes a high level of cultural knowledge, including art works or antiques. The upper classes would automatically have acquired the ability to appreciate quality of film. In addition to this, the wealth of the upper classes means they would also have excess leisure time and could therefore become the principal audience to visit art house cinemas, as well as increasing their interest in film. Dominant classes would predominately watch films for leisure and education as opposed to just entertainment. Therefore, the upper classes having economic power as well as being able to acquire cultural capital through institutions creates this association of ‘good taste’ and high culture.
However, despite everyone having cultural capital, not all forms are valued as much as others. The more ‘legitimate’ cultural capital you inherit or acquire the more likely you are to do well economically and socially. On the other hand, mass culture includes forms such as popular music and Hollywood films, which are associated with ‘bad taste’ and the lower classes. Bourdieu refers to bad taste as “popular taste […] devoid of artistic ambition […] frequent amongst the working classes”. Also, films with excess of various kinds of crudity, vulgarity, and excessive emotion or sentimentality, is habitually associated with a low-class position. Mainstream films have been criticised of its purpose being for profit rather than cultural worth, involving restraint, formality, and simplicity. In addition to this, “the use of formulas in film is likened to a sleep of consciousness where audiences are lulled by the familiar and the predictable”, therefore audiences of lower cultural capital will struggle to understand the unique techniques of arthouse cinema.
Art house films are very anti-establishment, as they tend to be expressions of an individual worldview, as opposed to the supposedly corporate ideology of Hollywood. Consequently, they are difficult to understand as they tend to be more challenging in content. For example, in Cleo de Cinq a’Sept, lower class audiences may be turned off by the silliness of the situations Cleo finds herself in. Even from very early on in the film, Varda uses experimental editing techniques, such as the repeated shot of Cleo as she is walking down the stairs from the fortune tellers house. Lower class audiences may not understand this and find it confusing as it is so different from the formulaic structure of mainstream films. Instead, it is rather the more conventional built-in suspense as to what the outcome of her biopsy will be that keeps them tied in. Similarly, the motives of characters in the film are unclear, and the film priorities how the narrative is presented, rather than what is told. Therefore, the fragmented structure of the film could be confusing to lower class audiences. Further on, the ending is not definitive or satisfying like the majority of mainstream cinema. Audiences are “likely to be alienated by the final chapter in which Varda seems to be making the case that a reliable [Antoine] is really all Cleo needs. […] The ending is actually much trickier than that”. In relation to Bourdieu, it takes a high level of cultural capital in order to appreciate “this cavalier approach to understanding Cleo as a person”. The motivations of actions being left deliberately opaque is a common convention of arthouse cinema. However, audience’s that are sensitive to the film’s narrative and style may find the story connections disorientating due to the lack of narrative closure. This may misguide audience’s understanding of Varda’s attempt of moulding Cleo’s persona, and may underscore her emotional epiphanies.
Alike to Varda, other extravagant, avant-garde artists at the time would gain similar reactions from certain audiences. Audiences with lower cultural capital would agree that upon watching Cleo de Cinq a’Sept, “if someone asked us what we just saw, we would easily respond: nothing”. Due to the conventional lack of a dramatic event in Cleo de Cinq a’Sept, Bourdieu’s ideas suggest that lower classes would not know what to make of the alternative experimental techniques. Audiences are instead “offered insignificant, unoriginal, unlinked facts”, which are impossible to understand by individuals that do not have high cultural capital, “yet we are moved, touched, troubled”, which emphasises the impact the film has on those that have access to this elite social and economic status.
However, I think taste is individualised as it is subjective. People’s understanding of film may be different from the meaning someone else got from it. I think my discussion in this essay is particularly interesting when looking at changes in society over time. Modern audiences are accustomed to advances in technology as well as improved accessibility of education. Despite this, the contrast in cultural capital still exists in the 21st century. Mainstream films are still predominant in modern marketing, and it still takes a niche audience to choose to watch art house films. It is easier to acquire cultural capital, and therefore knowledge about art house cinema, due to this wide availability of streaming and home videos, as well as through internet forums. However, I would argue it still takes an elite, specialised audience to be aware of these art house films to begin with, and then further choose to watch these films. In relation to the French New Wave, television would have been even more popular form of entertainment and leisure than cinema. During this time, there would be channels that would frequently screen are house films at accessible times, where large audiences could see them and might learn to appreciate them. Whereas nowadays we have to seek art house movies amongst hundreds of channels all showing Hollywood films. Many people would never even encounter them or choose to watch them.
In conclusion, I would agree with Bourdieu’s ideas art house films do require an audience of high cultural capital in order to be aware of its niche market and also the ability to understand the films past their surface level. This discussion especially relates to films like Cleo de Cinq a’Sept, as being part of the French New Wave movement in which films would behave in inconsistent ways, which is crucial in the significant development of audience taste in cinema.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
- Conway, Kelley. “A New Wave of Spectators”: Contemporary Responses to Cleo from 5 to 7. Film Quarterly. ProQuest. 2007.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
- Henderson, Eric. Review: Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7’s Giddily in Touch with its Paradoxes. Slant Magazine. 2003.
- Sergi, Gianluca. Cinema Entertainment: Essays on Audiences, Films and Film Makers. McGraw-Hill Education. 2009.
- Henderson, Eric. Review: Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7’s Giddily in Touch with its Paradoxes. Slant Magazine. 2003.
- Conway, Kelley. “A New Wave of Spectators”: Contemporary Responses to Cleo from 5 to 7. Film Quarterly. ProQuest. 2007.
Group Work Feedback
Forming our group was straightforward. We started off the project by discussing with each other which topics and films we each wanted to write about. Distinguishing a good variety of content from the module was important to us in order for our Film Blog to provide a strong contribution to the module as a whole. We also wanted to ensure we didn’t end up doing the same topics or similar arguments, so that our blog contained a wide range of information. It was a process for us to each reflect back on the module, going through the lecture slides and notes we had each made. It proved more difficult than expected to relate one of the modules with a film from a different module. However, I found this challenge overall enhanced my knowledge of the topics and helped me gain a broader understanding. Eventually, we agreed on a good mixture of topics. Jasmine chose to study franchise in relation to the film Alien. Abby chose to discuss voyeurism in Moulin Rouge. Kate chose the exploitation of the teenage market and The Hunger Games. I chose to discuss Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital with arthouse cinema and Cleo de Cinq a’Sept. I chose this because I have had an interest in arthouse cinema for a long time, especially the French New Wave movement. This module was the first time I had watched Cleo de Cinq a’Sept, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Therefore, I was excited to delve deeper into analysing the film. Similarly, the other members of the group chose their topics based on their interests or subjects they most enjoyed in the lectures, or based on films they were eager to find out more about. We agreed on the selection of topics we had each chosen, and then moved on to designing the film blog.
We all met up several times throughout the project, firstly to work together in designing the blog. Collectively, we chose the colour scheme, layout, background, and blog title. We decided using images of each of our chosen film posters was appropriate in displaying the diversity of genres chosen. We meeting up to work together collectively on designing our blog worked best in terms of navigating WordPress, as none of us had used this software before. Sharing our knowledge and learning together helped us get the design done efficiently. During the time we were working on our personal essays, we used each other for help when we were stuck on certain elements. We did this by each reflecting back to our individual notes from lectures, as well as recommending and suggesting sources, both online and from the library at university.Overall, I am satisfied with how everyone equally participating in the project with a strong amount of effort. I enjoyed working as part of a group, discussing different ideas and learning from others. Our group had really good work ethic and were good at encouraging each other and ensuring we were all on the right track and had a clear vision for what we wanted from our blog.
AJJK Film Blog 