Image result for air navy base

 

My dad, Bob Mitchell, is in a much older demographic and with that comes a completely different view on how movies were delivered. In certain studies, cinema seen in times form long ago, mainly attributed to cinema memory, memorised moments during cinema experiences come from a large variety of things besides the movie itself.

Heading into the age of 70, his first cinematic experience he remembers is connected to when he was only 14 years old. He was always travelling around the world at a young age due to his father being a part of the air force and always having to relocate. Since he had such a connection with the air force, he was able to view one in the location of the Navy air force base. It was connected to the overall building, not as large and noticeable location as cinemas of the 80s and even nowadays. The drawbridge that separated the base and the Homefront was obviously more dramatic and especially more exciting way of going to the cinemas. His common allowance at the time was roughly about 20 cents. The movies themselves were also vastly cheaper by comparison, being only about 5 cents per ticket, as well as 4 cents for any confectionary. The confectionary itself has largely stayed the same, with very similar eating items but with other additions that wouldn’t fly as well today. An average set of chewing gum would feature a challenge where if the stick of gum had a strip of black gum within the normal set, a prize would be awarded for picking the wrong one out. Clearly a touching subject surrounding the racist minds of the time period, but the cinema as well as the actual airbase didn’t copy that sentiment. The air force base did have a mixture of men, some of different color, and women, and none were given assigned seating areas. The actual movies being shown were also on a much grander scale, something that would be worth going out to watch. Movies back then were not as commonplace as they are now and as such, the feeling of sitting down and watching a movie in a larger group was a much bigger deal than modern days where it’s easy to watch a film or tv show individually. Sources have stated that ”The object of increasing academic attention, with growing interest in film and cinema as repositories for representing, shaping, (re)creating or indexing forms of individual and collective memories”. The movies shown were prominently westerns or biblical in nature, with examples like True Grit and The Ten Commandments, which again feel like movies that are made for an open environment where the spectacle is better appreciated in a small quiet darker area. Part of the study showed the cinema memory comes less from the details, titles, names etc, but rather the experience itself.  My dad’s family was very large, having 4 brothers and 1 sister along his parents, so the notion of watching of movie would have been a group effort as no other way of seeing movies would be that mainstream at the time and it would be more memorable together.

 

Though the actual screening and experience of watching the movie is pretty much the same from now to then, the environment mixed with the old timey atmosphere made it feel much larger and more important than it would be nowadays.

 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1750698016670783