HoMER@NECS Conference 2018

At the end of June I was very honoured and grateful to receive funding from the University of Bristol's Alumni Foundation in order to present my research at the HoMER strand of the NECS conference in Amsterdam.

Key contributors to the field of New Cinema History (NCH) were present - Daniel Bittereyst, Robert Allen, Melvyn Stokes, Annette Kuhn, Philippe Meers - and their presentations provided much food for thought in terms of my research interests:

• Annette Kuhn's work on cinema memory has made me think about the possibility of organising focus groups, interviews and/or questionnaires that invite participants to share their experiences of and interactions with Harry Potter and James Bond movie marketing, merchandise and publicity. Other presenters at the conference had conducted this sort of cinema memory research and asked their participants to bring along artefacts.
• Annette Kuhn also talked about making a plea for memory studies to be included in NCH. I thought that my research could similarly act as an argument for the value of analysing movie marketing and publicity and its inclusion in NCH.
• A question was raised with regards to NCH's tendency to look so far back in time rather than dealing with more recent history. My focus on materials from 2001-2012 should address this gap in the field.

A presentation on the collectible movie star cards sold in cigarette packets and chocolate bars also emphasised the importance of analysing merchandise and memorabilia since they prolong the movie experience for audiences (in turn prolonging certain ideas and themes). 

A fascinating keynote from Professor Henry Jenkins argued for the empowering and positive effects of social media and participatory culture (rather than the usual negative scholarship on this subject). He referred to a range of activist movements that had appropriated popular culture texts for their cause: for example The Harry Potter Alliance and Parkland student activists performing 'Rent'. He also demonstrated empowerment through Harry Potter fans' successful campaign to make the chocolate frog products fair trade as well as calls for a black Hermione, which resulted in the casting of Noma Dumezweni in the stage play 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child'.

Prof. Henry Jenkins' keynote

Following my own presentation, a conference attendee commented on my discussion of the Harry Potter films subsuming the Scottish landscape into an Anglo-centric representation of British culture and they asked about whether I would look at what the Scottish tourism industry has done since then to capitalise on this i.e. Harry Potter walking tours in Edinburgh. I do intend to explore this in my research as I consider this type of tourism a paratext to the films and I find the emphasis on 'real life' heritage iconography particularly interesting with regards to my thesis argument.

A photograph of my presentation courtesy of Sarah Culhane