Tyler Walsh - Introduction

Tyler Walsh

In order to better understand Media and Communication Studies, I am going to study 1930s cinema, particularly family-friendly movies. In order to best accomplish this, I will be applying the Circuit of Culture to this era of cinema. The Circuit of Culture is a method of analysis that focuses on 5 key points: Production, Regulation, Representation, Consumption, and Identity.

Production refers to the economic resources and labor that is involved in making the product. Regulation is concerned with the kind of restrictions, if any, that are imposed on the product. These restrictions can be self/socially imposed or institutionally imposed. Representation has to do with how the product is marketed to the public, and Identification, similarly to Representation, is how people identify themselves with using the product. Finally, consumption refers to how the product was…well consumed! Who watched the movie? Was it the target audience or was it some other unexpected group?

These different points will give me insight into Cinema in the 1930s, like what people thought of the movies I will be studying and how they thought of similarly marketed movies as a result and what watching them communicated to others about what they like and the kind of person they are. Some of this information, like the Representation and Identification, might be able to be applied to other products from the era as well.