Marxist social theory and the instituonalization of film studies in Great Britain

Film Studies as a separate academic discipline with its own degree was established in English-speaking universities only in the second half of the 20^th century. The case of Great Britain is specifically interesting because establishment of the discipline here resulted not only in appearance of separate degrees, but in a detailed elaborated theory as well. The theory became a model in other countries. Search for an adequate radical left critical approach led to attempts of applying French cinema theory to American mass culture. From 1971 the initiative was taken by renewed Screen journal. The journal's crew wanted not only to influence on the British educational system, but also to consider cinema as a field where the struggle against bourgeois ideology is possible. The Marxist concept of ideology in Screen theory was responsible for interconnection between viewer's subjectivity and film's textuality. These concepts were brought together in theoretical synthesis by Colin MacCabe, who took Louis Althusser's structural Marxism as the basis. But MacCabe put aside an important Althusserian thesis that ideology hasn't its history and treated cinema as an ideological apparatus specific for capitalism. Thus each film according to Screen theory inherits classical realist text and masks social system's contradictions. The cinematic form celebrates ruler class' point of view as the only one. This approach was classical for some period of time. It allowed to analyze the level of signification but was unable to recognize films' difference on the level of representation.

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