Visiting Speaker, Dr Rebecca Harrison, University of Glasgow - ‘Rethinking the Panicking Audience: Class, Urbanism and the Train Effect in Early British Cinema’

One of the enduring stories about early cinema is that of the ‘panicking audience,’ who, on seeing films featuring locomotives moving toward the screen, would cry out, jump from their seats, or rush for the exits, fearing that the vehicle would enter the auditorium. Scholars including Tom Gunning, Stephen Bottomore and Martin Loiperdinger all suggest that while contemporary reports exaggerated the ‘train effect’, audiences did, on occasion, physically react to filmic trains rushing toward them. However, scholarship tends to reinforce, rather than dismantle, assumptions about class, imperialism and proximity to the urban environment that underpin narratives about early film spectators. Consequently, this paper both expands on, and challenges, literature about the panicking audience to reveal how class and geography were implicated in narratives about film going at the turn of the nineteenth century.