Charles R. Acland

• Comment: Article is very hard to read: sections about his work are not clearly connected to him or each other. Might be better to start out by paring down this draft. See the inclusion criteria for Wikipedia articles on academics. Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 22:24, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Thanks for adding a couple more sources. Unfortunately, these do not appear to be WP:RELIABLE. ~KvnG 17:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: This article needs independent reliable sources with extensive coverage to prove notability. Chris1834 (talk) 20:30, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

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Charles R Acland
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Born	(1963-10-04) October 4, 1963
Occupation	Professor and Concordia University Research Chair in Communication Studies
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	• Carleton University  • University of Illinois (PhD)

Charles Reid Acland (born October 4, 1963) is a Professor and Research Chair in Communications Studies at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His fields of research include Popular Culture, Media Studies and Cultural History and Theory. He is the Editor of the Canadian Journal of Film Studies and co-editor of Useful Cinema (Duke University Press, 2011), Residual Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), and Harold Innis in the New Century (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). He is the author of three books: Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence (Duke University Press, 2012), Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture (Duke University Press, 2003) and Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of “Youth in Crisis,” (Westview Press, 1995).

Writings

Author

Debunking Subliminal Perception

The debate, as presented on the Colin McEnroe radio show for which Acland was interviewed as a leading expect, circles around the question: "Is Subliminal Influence Real?" 2012. The central thesis of Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence is that there is no such thing as subliminal perception, at least not in the sense of its inaugural and most influential example of spectators in a movie theatre being hypnotized to buy popcorn and drink Coca-Cola by having messages flashed at them at speeds beneath the threshold of human perception. As Acland's research reveals, the original "experiment" was reportedly carried out under the supervision of market researcher James M. Vicary at the Fort Lee Theatre in New Jersey during showings of the film Picnic (1955). Vicary announced his findings at a press conference in 1957, but by 1962 he was, as Acland underlines, already admitting "that these results were exaggerated." In addition to intensive and extensive sleuthing into the original event and the career and life of James Vicary, Acland demonstrates how the concept of subliminal perception, even though the phenomenon did not exist, took on a life of its own becoming not only a subject in various movies but colouring mass attitudes toward hypnosis, mind control, advertising and the media in general. By contextualizing the mid-twentieth-century climate of opinion and attitudes, the wide-spread credulous paranoia, signalled for example by listeners' believing in the veracity of Orson Welles's radio drama The War of the Worlds in 1938, Acland is able to explain how notions of subliminal perception and influence became so quickly ingrained and widespread. The extensive influence of the concept of subliminal perception is demonstrated not only by Acland's overview of the numerous publications on the topic and the fact that the locution and its variations have become part of the lexicon, but by its incursions into education, in particular, attempts to market the tachistoscope, a "swift viewing" machine designed for various purposes and a staple in most psychology labs which in the 1950s and 60s was being heralded as a new form of educational technology.

Film Spectatorship in a Global Context

In his review for the Journal of Film and Video, James McDougall describes Screen Traffic as "an exemplary investigation into the practice and spatiality of film spectatorship." According to McDougall, while it traces "the history of the multiplex," Acland's monograph also investigates "Hollywood's tactics and business practices, [and] adds to a quickly expanding body of texts on culture in our contemporary moment of globalization." Fallen concludes that "the value of this work is undeniable; however, especially for those seeking a more theoretical discussion of cinema-going, a map for the discussion of global popular culture in a national context [ . . . .] Screen Traffic serves as an excellent source as well for those specifically focusing on the years in question [1986-98]."

Useful Cinema

The concept of "useful cinema" implies the use of film in institutions such as libraries, museums, and classrooms, as well as the workplace. Acland and co-editor Haidee Wasson have pursued extensive research into these other, non-theatrical yet abundant and long-standing uses of film as tool and artifact rather than commercial entertainment and spectacle. Acland's Screen essay “Curtains, Carts and the Mobile Screen,” which won the Kovacs Prize for Best Essay, from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2010 pursues this concept, as does his reflections on the tachistoscope in Swift Viewing.

Residual Media

Acland is credited with defining the notion of residual media. Residual media is old media, but the implication of the concept is that earlier generations of media remain present, moving, evolving and in interaction with newer and ostensibly dominant forms. He is a regular contributor to the online journal of television and media studies Flow. In commenting on "an evolving database of the music videos featured on MTV’s indie/underground music program," the Feminist Music Geek observed that "while I’m happy about this archive, I’d treasure viewing fans’ VHS recordings of the show even more. As Charles R. Acland observed in his wonderful Flow (journal) column about video’s obsolescence and how media scholars must address the resultant loss of history, these tapes give us indications of a program’s text, its super-text, and the recorder’s preferences and practices."

Youth, Murder and Spectacle

In Youth, Murder, Spectacle, Acland sets the historical context of his study by pointing out that UNESCO "predicted correctly" . . . "'the 1980s will confront a new generation with a concrete, structural crisis of chronic economic uncertainty and even deprivation.'" At the centre of Acland's analysis is the sensationalization and exploitation of the murder of eighteen-year-old Jennifer Levin at the hands of nineteen-year-old Robert Chambers on August 6, 1986 in New York's Central Park. Acland argues that "The youth of the murdered and the murderer made this tragedy that much more significant and was taken to say something about contemporary youth in general." "A central theme in the book," as Sandra J. Bell points out in her review, "concerns the construction of the reality of this youth crisis through discourse. A discourse of crisis around which conservative and New Right political agendas are organized." "The problem Charles Acland addresses," as Marshall Fishwick underlines in the Journal of American Culture, "is enormous and terrifying. It involves, among other things, meaninglessness. Brenda Spencer fired her semi-automatic rifle at her San Diego high school classmates in 1979, killing and wounding 11 people. Why, she was asked. "I don't like Mondays. Mondays always get me down." This book [. . .] examines the culture that has produced youth violence in the United States; then compares and juxtaposes various popular cultural models of the crisis." From Acland's conclusion, Fishwick observes: "Not only has the period we call "youth" been extended in time, and not only is youth accustomed to its own downward mobility. Where we have had a conception of the essential innocence of childhood, we now have another one: the essential guilt of youth."

Writing Contributions

Harold Innis in the 21st Century

• The extensive collection of essays in Harold Innis in the New Century amply demonstrate the challenge of attempting to synthesize and assess the work and influence of Harold Innis who was for some an economist and for others a historian and essayist, while he remains best known for his later foundational work in the field which would eventually become Communication Studies. As Buxton and Acland point out in their introduction, "Harold Innis: A Genealogy of Contesting Portraits," not only are assessments of Innis widely varied but, paradoxically, Marshall McLuhan's championing of Innis's work may have actually obscured the meaning and significance of his contributions.

(Section to be named & sorted/organized/possible sub-section and/or additional section etc.)

• 2012. Acland, Charels R. Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence, Duke University Press, pp. 328.
• 2011. Acland, Charles R. and Haidee Wasson (editors). Useful Cinema, edited with Haidee Wasson, Duke University Press, pp. 386.
• 2007. Acland, Charles R. (editor). Residual Media, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 416.
• 2003. Acland, Charles R. Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture. Duke U. Press, pp 337.
• 1999. Acland, Charles R. and William Buxton (editors). Harold Innis in the New Century: Reflections and Refractions, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s U. Press, pp. 435.
• 1995. Acland, Charles R. Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of “Youth in Crisis,” Boulder, CO.: Westview Press, pp. 176
• 1995. Anonymous. "Recent Books in the Field of Public Opinion Research -- Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of 'Youth in Crisis' by Charles R. Acland." International Journal of Public Opinion Research 7.3: 284.
• 2007. Braunstein, L. R. "Residual Media." Choice 45.2 (2007): 276-77.
• 2012. Colin McEnroe Show: Is Subliminal Influence Real? WNPR Public Radio, April 2.
• 1997. Cook, Elizabeth. "Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of "Youth in Crisis"." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 553: 224-25. Print.
• 2012. Deutsch, J. I. "Useful Cinema." Choice 49.10: 1881.
• 2005. Fallen, Nancy. "Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture by Charles R. Acland." Velvet Light Trap.55: 65-67.
• 1995. Fishwick, Marshall W. "Book Reviews -- Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of "Youth in Crisis" by Charles R. Acland." Journal of American Culture 18.4: 116.
• 1995. Hildahl, S. H. "Sociology -- Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of 'Youth in Crisis' by Charles R. Acland." Choice 33.1: 221.
• 2005. Jones, Janna. "Book Review of "Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture," by Charles R. Acland." Popular Communication 3.2: 149.
• 1995. McCabe, Mary Margaret. "Preppy Panics -- Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of "Youth in Crisis" by Charles R. Acland." TLS, the Times Literary Supplement.4800: 11.
• 2008. Mullen, Megan. "Residual Media." Technology and Culture 49.2: 506-08.
• 2008. Price, Leah. "Residual Media." Modernism/Modernity 15.2: 418-19.
• 2005. Seago, Alex. "Screen Traffic Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture." American Studies 46.2: 207-08. Print.
• 2005. Sears, R. D. "Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture." Choice 41.9
• 1997. Bell, Sandra J. Review of Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of "Youth in Crisis." Canadian Journal of Sociology (Summer) 22.3 : 383.
• 2005. McDougall, James. Review of Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture, Journal of Film and Video 57.4 (Winter): 53-55.

Awards

• 2011, Useful Cinema, edited with Haidee Wasson, Duke University Press, pp. 386. Awarded honorable mention as the 2013 SCMS Best Edited Book and finalist for the 2012 Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book Award.

• 2009, “Curtains, Carts and the Mobile Screen,” Screen, 50.1, 148-166. Winner of the 2010 Kovacs Prize for Best Essay, from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

• 2003, Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture. Duke U. Press, pp 337. Winner of the 2004 Robinson Book Prize for Best Book by a Canadian Communication Scholar.

External links

Interview:

• Colin McEnroe Show: Is Subliminal Influence Real?

General:

• Departement of Communications Studies: Charles R Acland
• Canadian Journal of Film Studies (Editor)
• Book Review: Useful Cinema, by Charles R. Acland and Haidee Wasson
• Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes, and Global Culture (Review)