INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE BLOG COURSE

In the first half of the twentieth century, small-town and neighborhood theater movie fare and Saturday afternoon matinees were dominated by comedy shorts, cartoons, series westerns, and serials from the early 1930s to the mid-1950s.  Many children's images of the world around them were influenced by the form of the motion picture serial.  Their views, indeed prejudices, and biases, regarding crime and punishment,  good and evil, heroes and villains, foreign countries and ethnic groups, may have been affected by the cheaply-made, yet exciting and often hoaky adventure films known as serials that were made from 1910 to 1956.  The question is whether the attitudes of generations of many Americans and others were affected by serials.  With this blog, we shall evaluate the view of the images projected in these films within the context of studying films as popular culture. 

Nevertheless, the form and themes of serials have been revived in recent years in feature motion pictures.  Among the most popular films in the last decade have been those of the Star Wars trilogy, which are, in effect, an expensive refrying of the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s.  The comic book heroes have also been revived in lavish productions, such as Batman, Captain America, and Superman films. The Indiana Jones Films again featured Nazi and Communist villains.  Indeed the portrayal of the villains in these films, together with the action and pace of the films, have been directly adapted from the serials of the 1930s and 1940s.  The producer, George Lucas, and the director, Steven Spielberg, have admitted that their films have been homages to the older chapterplays.   Television has used chapterplay format and situational cliffhangers in its daytime soap operas since its inception and is also widely used in all programming.  Indeed, in India television shows are called serials.   The motion picture and television businesses are producing fare modeled after serials made on minuscule budgets over seventy years ago.

In a day when people really went to the movies, the serials were an integral part of a movie bill, which also included one or two features, a comedy short (such as Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, or the Three Stooges), a cartoon, a newsreel (Pathe, Fox-Movietone, the March of Time, etc.).  The serials increasingly became associated with the Saturday-Afternoon Matinee usually featuring B-westerns, more cartoons, shorts, and a serial.  As chapterplays became more oriented to children and adolescents, they featured more action, stories around which fights, chases, and disasters with all forms of transportation (boats, planes, cars, and trains) occurred with alarming frequency. 

Like today's kung fu and pornographic films, the plots were secondary and often functioned as motivators for further action.  In most cases, serial plots revolved around the conflict between a hero or heroine and a master villain, in which the protagonists would not directly confront one another until the final chapter. Sometimes, the main villain's identity would be a mystery until the last chapter.   In the chapters, the hero and his allies would combat the minions of the villain, henchman, cronies, and lieutenants in crime.  Each chapter until the last would end with a "cliffhanger" in which the hero, heroine, or ally would face imminent death.  Of course, the ensuing chapter would reveal an escape or other factor that saved the "good guys." 

Each viewing will be followed by discussions in which bloggers analyze the merit -if any- of the serials or clips presented.

Each of you will have an opportunity to write a short review essay, either on an individual chapterplay, or a common theme in the offering or the resultant discussion,  If I can get academic credit for the course you can use it as a regular for a class in film and history,  I am now formulating a syllabus and seeking a college or university that may be interested in sponsoring such a course.

READINGS AND FILMS ON THE FIRST SERIALS

•  INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE BLOG COURSE

• Offering #1:  EARLY SERIALS AND  LINKS TO PUBLISHING

Books:

• Maurice LeBlanc, ARSENE LUPIN VERSUS HERLOCK SHOLMS (1910)

• Robert Brown, WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY (1913)

• Harold MacGrath, THE ADVENTURES OF KATHLYN (1914)

• Charles Goddard, THE PERILS OF PAULINE (1914)

Video Clips:

• WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY - Episode 9 - A Way to the Underworld (1912). Blue tinted

• WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY - Episode 11 - A Race to New York (1912). Sepia-toned.

• THE ADVENTURES OF KATHLYN (1913). Video introduction and excerpt.

• PERILS OF PAULINE (1914). Tinted and sepia-toned.

QUESTIONS FOR THE FIRST OFFERING AND ASSIGNMENT:

1.  The only evidence for the first serial, Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes, made in Germany in 1910, is the novel, Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes by Maurice Leblanc.  From your perusal of the stories in the book, are there any elements that relate to serial formats, such as continuous struggles of the protagonists and clifhanger endings?

2. From your study of their plots and actions, what do the adventures of the heroines in the first American serials, Mary, Kathleen, and Pearl, have in common?  Do the films comment on the status of women in the early 20th-century America?  Would you consider them HEROINES or VICTIMS, or BOTH?

The Serial Novels, 1913-1914

Offering #1:  EARLY SERIALS AND  LINKS TO PUBLISHING

THE GENTLEMAN THIEF VERSUS THE CONSULTING DETECTIVE

The first serial, ARSENE LUPIN CONTRE SHERLOCK HOLMES was reportedly produced in Germany in 1910.  It surprisingly featured two important popular fictional characters, the British consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and the French gentleman thief, Arsene Lupin.  It was based on short stories by Arsene Lupin's creator, Maurice Leblanc, and collected into a novel entitled ARSENE LUPIN VERSUS HERLOCK SHOLMES. In his book, LeBlanc mildly parodied Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, renamed Herlock Sholmes. In the film serial, the German producers used the real name SHERLOCK HOLMES, since Germany had different and less stringent copyright laws. Nothing exists of the serial except the consolation of a copy of the English translation of the 1910, found below.

HEROINES AND HAZARDS

In the United States, the serial came because of product tie-ins, adaptations, and franchises, much like many of today's movies and television shows. Their appearance in the silent era was in conjunction with serial stories appearing in newspapers and weekly magazines. These stories were collected into three novels, WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY, THE ADVENTURES OF KATHLEEN, and THE PERILS OF PAULINE, all found below. The plots of many of the first serials, such as The Perils of Pauline, consisted of a mystery or menace that placed the heroine in danger week after week, in episodes or chapters usually lasting about 15 to 20 minutes.  A full chapterplay in the silent era usually lasted from about 10 to 20 chapters ( one, The Hazards of Helen,  lasted over 119 chapters).  Some were more like series than serials with full episodes without cliffhangers.  Women were their main characters and many serial endings elicited situational conundrums rather than physical cliffhangers.  In general, chapterplays of the silent era were more complex and sophisticated in their plots and characters than sound serials because they had an audience of adults as well as youngsters.