Selected Papers from the MLA Convention: Early American Cinema and Politics

Abstract

Abstract of “McKinley at Home” This paper examined early American cinema's role as a “visual newspaper” to assess the emerging medium's influence on the formation of a national public sphere. Focusing on early moving images of William McKinley, particularly a brief 1896 “front porch” campaign film showing the presidential candidate on his front lawn reading a telegram, I demonstrated how this recently introduced visual technology could be deployed to dislocate time and space for pointed political effect. This effect depended on how McKinley was depicted on-screen “at home” (simultaneously in Canton, Ohio, and in front of vaudeville houses across the country) and on how these images were initially exhibited and received (by cheering audiences packed with high-ranking Republican dignitaries). In both formal composition and reception, early cinema was instrumental in helping to blur traditional distinctions between personal presence and mass media representation, as well as between domestic life and public spectacle.