Professor Robert Shail

A reference guide to British film directors covering both contemporary and historically important figures. © Robert Shail, 2007.

Jason Statham is Britain's most important post-millennial male film star. This book examines his work throughout a career encompassing film, television, music videos, multi-media platforms and video gaming.

This article examines the work of the Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) in Wales. The CFF was founded in 1951 to make films for children and supported a network of Saturday morning cinema clubs which were popular until the 1970s. While considering the role of these clubs in Wales, the article focuses on CFF films with a specific Welsh dimension, particularly A Letter from Wales (1953), which was released in English- and Welsh-language versions. Made by the independent producer Brunner Lloyd, the film illustrates prevailing stereotypes of Wales and the Welsh. The article makes the case for its significance in establishing a lyrical image of rural Welsh life.

Considers the challenges of historical audience research in the field of screen studies.

This edited collection examines the role that gender has played across the platforms that the James Bond franchise now occupies.

In his study of British children’s cinema, Noel Brown suggests its distinctive character has been challenged by the globalization of media culture, arguing that productions with a strong reference to national contexts are under pressure to homogenize their content to please a more global audience. This chapter uses a case study of the British animation studio, Aardman, whose output, and particularly its films featuring Wallace and Gromit, make extensive use of national cultural references, to explore the challenges and opportunities facing national cinemas. In particular, the chapter asks how viable is it for children’s cinema and television to maintain a connection with the national culture from which it emanates? And what is lost, or gained, in the attempt to appeal to children across national boundaries?

For over thirty years the Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) produced a variety of shorts, travelogues, serials and features which were shown at a network of Saturday morning cinema clubs all over the UK and beyond. At their peak in the 1960s and 1970s they reached an audience in excess of half a million per week. Throughout that period their work caused barely a ripple of reaction at the offices of the British Board of Film Censors, latterly the British Board of Film Classification. That is until the submission of Terry on the Fence (1986), the very last feature to be completed by the CFF (by then renamed as the Children’s Film and Television Foundation or CFTF). The film produced a reaction unique in the Foundation’s history requiring alteration to its content. This article makes extensive use of the archives of the BBFC to show how Terry on the Fence touched a raw nerve in terms of its depiction of juvenile delinquency and exposed some of the same social anxieties that had fed into the so-called video nasties case. It doing so it reflects the degree to which censorship can be seen to respond to prevailing contextual factors.

This article explores the possibilities offered to researchers by the film holdings which can be found in archives that exist outside of the more conventional, subject-specific film archives in the UK such as those held by the British Film Institute. The Marks and Spencer Company Archive exists principally to hold the company records and related materials illustrating the history of one of the UK’s most successful and long-established high-street retailers. Although their film holdings are extensive, these materials are somewhat tangential to the main collection and might not be a source that has been recognised to date by film scholars. Such collections also exist in a number of other commercial organisations, as well as public sector ones. The article details the holdings, arranging them into significant groupings, and analyses their style and content with particular attention to their potential status as both history on film and as film form. In doing so, it posits the opportunity to consider further exploration of film holdings normally thought of as outside film scholarship, and the value of more utilitarian forms of film-making than those usually found in entertainment or art cinema.

The contributors to this new collection argue that 1970s cinema is ripe for reappraisal: giving serious critical attention to populist genre films, they also consider the development of a British art cinema in the work of Derek Jarman and ...

This edited collection focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, examining how and if representations of gender in horror have changed.

The Making of English Popular Culture provides an account of the making of popular culture in the nineteenth century. While a form of what we might describe as popular culture existed before this period, John Storey has assembled a collection that demonstrates how what we now think of as popular culture first emerged as a result of the enormous changes that accompanied the industrial revolution. Particularly significant are the technological changes that made the production of new forms of culture possible and the concentration of people in urban areas that created significant audiences for this new culture. Consisting of fourteen original chapters that cover diverse topics ranging from seaside holidays and the invention of Christmas tradition, to advertising, music and popular fiction, the collection aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between culture and power, as explored through areas such as ‘race’, ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender. It also aims to encourage within cultural studies a renewed historical sense when engaging critically with popular culture by exploring the historical conditions surrounding the existence of popular texts and practices. Written in a highly accessible style The Making of English Popular Culture is an ideal text for undergraduates studying cultural and media studies, literary studies, cultural history and visual culture.

This collection provides an illuminating and enjoyable guide to the popular genres, contexts and styles of film production, key films and film-makers of British cinema in the 1970s, addressing films such as 'The Wicker Man', genres such as ...

Tony Richardson was a key figure in British cinema of the 1950s and 1960s.

Robert Shail's fascinating portrayal sheds a considerable light on the image of Welsh national identity and masculinity that Stanley Baker projected."--BOOK JACKET.

The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film offers a uniquely comprehensive study of children's cinema from an interdisciplinary, nuanced, global perspective.

From the 1950s to the 1980s the Children's Film Foundation made films for Saturday morning cinema clubs across the UK - entertaining and educating generations of British children. This first history of this much-loved organisation provides an overview of the CFF's films, interviews with key backstage personnel, and memories of audience members.

© 2014 Taylor & Francis. Much work within the field of childhood studies has focused on the social discourses through which childhood is understood. This article draws on this work in developing a critical framework for considering the appeal of Beryl the Peril. The article examines the influence of conceptualisations of childhood prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These theorised children as disruptive and requiring restraint. Approved literature for children sought to socialise them into the adult order. However, a more subversive strain, identifiable in Lewis Carroll's Alice novels, celebrated an anarchic vision of childhood. This article examines how Beryl the Peril negotiated these conflicting conceptions of childhood. Beryl is an unruly force; her opponent, and representative of social authority, is Dad. Their clashes play out the tensions in these articulations of childhood. The development of Beryl over nearly 60 years provides an opportunity to examine how her subversive spirit has remained appealing.

This Introduction to Male Icons and Identity in Sixties Britain: Revolt into Style provides a rationale for the following chapters. It begins by making a case for the continuing relevance of the decade and then outlines a number of competing interpretations of its significance as argued by historians and commentators. It then focuses on representations of masculinity as a way of considering the alleged cultural revolution taking place in Britain during the period, recognising that masculinity has often been recidivist in its definitions. It moves on to outline each chapter. In summarising the content of these chapters, it notes two contradictory positions: one which sees the decade as offering little substantive change and a second, more common view, that there was a significant move towards plurality in definitions of male identity.

The film critic Margaret Hinxman of the Daily Mail referred to actor Alan Bates as ‘ever the reluctant hero’. Hinxman was reflecting a wider perception of Bates as the ‘nice guy’ of the new British cinema of the sixties, the not-so angry man who had emerged in the midst of British cinema’s class-driven rebellion of the early 1960s. Developing his film persona in Whistle Down the Wind (1961) and, perhaps most significantly, in A Kind of Loving (1962), he became grouped in the public imagination with other new working-class stars like Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay but he never seemed to fit the same mould of discontent. His was a nuanced male characterisation which then expanded in Swinging London films, reaching its full expression in the period literary adaptations Far From the Madding Crowd (1967) and Women in Love (1969). This essay considers the distinctive star persona of Bates in the context of the construction of a new masculinity in 1960s Britain.

Whilst radical developments were changing the shape of British theatre and film in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a similar (but less noticed) revolution was getting underway in the world of fine art. The working-class artists David Hockney and Peter Blake, one from the industrial north, the other from London, were fellow students at the Royal College of Art. Meanwhile, Richard Hamilton, from impoverished beginnings in London, was emerging from the Slade to complete the trio of British Pop Art pioneers who would take art out from the academy and into the dynamic world of popular culture. This essay considers how these artists shifted the focus of British art in the 1960s and heralded an era where painters could attain the public profile of rock stars.

Male Icons and Identity in 1960s Britain: Revolt into Style explores the profound social and cultural transformations of the 1960s through the lens of masculinity. This collection of essays delves into how male identity, often resistant to change, serves as a barometer for the broader societal shifts of the era. Contributors from diverse academic backgrounds examine iconic figures from popular music (Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger), cinema (Michael Caine) and television (Patrick Macnee, Peter Wyngarde, and Patrick McGoohan), as well as artistic polymaths like Anthony Newley and Peter Whitehead. The essays also venture into the realms of politics, football, fashion and fine art, providing a comprehensive view of how evolving masculine ideals influenced British culture. The collection highlights the tension between traditional values and emerging pluralistic ideals, offering a nuanced understanding of the period's cultural dynamics. This collection is ideal for students and academics in gender studies, cultural history, and sociology, as well as general readers interested in understanding a transformative decade when established norms of male identity faced unprecedented challenges.

Whilst radical developments were changing the shape of British theatre and film in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a similar (but less noticed) revolution was getting underway in the world of fine art. The working-class artists David Hockney and Peter Blake, one from the industrial north, the other from London, were fellow students at the Royal College of Art. Meanwhile, Richard Hamilton, from impoverished beginnings in London, was emerging from the Slade to complete the trio of British Pop Art pioneers who would take art out from the academy and into the dynamic world of popular culture. This essay considers how these artists shifted the focus of British art in the 1960s and heralded an era where painters could attain the public profile of rock stars.

The film critic Margaret Hinxman of the Daily Mail referred to actor Alan Bates as ‘ever the reluctant hero’. Hinxman was reflecting a wider perception of Bates as the ‘nice guy’ of the new British cinema of the sixties, the not-so angry man who had emerged in the midst of British cinema’s class-driven rebellion of the early 1960s. Developing his film persona in Whistle Down the Wind (1961) and, perhaps most significantly, in A Kind of Loving (1962), he became grouped in the public imagination with other new working-class stars like Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay but he never seemed to fit the same mould of discontent. His was a nuanced male characterisation which then expanded in Swinging London films, reaching its full expression in the period literary adaptations Far From the Madding Crowd (1967) and Women in Love (1969). This essay considers the distinctive star persona of Bates in the context of the construction of a new masculinity in 1960s Britain.

This Introduction to Male Icons and Identity in Sixties Britain: Revolt into Style provides a rationale for the following chapters. It begins by making a case for the continuing relevance of the decade and then outlines a number of competing interpretations of its significance as argued by historians and commentators. It then focuses on representations of masculinity as a way of considering the alleged cultural revolution taking place in Britain during the period, recognising that masculinity has often been recidivist in its definitions. It moves on to outline each chapter. In summarising the content of these chapters, it notes two contradictory positions: one which sees the decade as offering little substantive change and a second, more common view, that there was a significant move towards plurality in definitions of male identity.

This edited collection explores modern representations of gender in horror and how this factors into the genre's appeal.

This book will investigate the changing and challenging roles that gender has undergone in TV horror, examining a range of shows, including Hannibal, American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful, Supernatural, The Exorcist, ...

This edited collection focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, examining how and if representations of gender in horror have changed.

This chapter investigates the role of HP Lovecraft to horror in cult media.

This is the first book to offer a critical analysis of his work across a variety of media, including film, television, video games and music videos.