My focus this week has been on getting my students and myself to end of this unusual and difficult semester. With final exams just around the corner, the end is somewhat in sight, but only distantly. As such, I will keep my preamble to the round up this week brief, but I did want to follow up on one interesting bit of research that popped up in connection to my discussion about the future of movie theatres in the wake of the global pandemic.

Shortly after I made my post last week, I was curious about how movie theatre owners fared during the 1918 Spanish Flu. From my own understanding of film history at this time, this would have corresponded with the beginnings of the film industry on the West Coast in the wake of the dismantling of the Motion Pictures Patent Company on the East Coast, which had kept monopoly control of the film industry in New York until a group of independent film producers and theatre owners sued the MPPC and moved themselves to California to establish what we know today as “Hollywood.” I found this interesting article in the Hollywood Reporter discussing the threat of the 1918 pandemic to the film industry and then searched a bit more and uncovered this fascinating ad from November 1918.

Charlie Chaplin film promoted in Moving Picture World in November, 1918, at the height of the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Featuring Charlie Chaplin and the promotion of his latest film, Shoulder Arms, the ad was placed in Moving Picture World Magazine by one of the largest movie theatres in New York at the time, The Strand, thanking people for “taking their lives in their hands” to pack the venue to see the film. Notice how at the bottom of the page, there is the clear instruction to “Avoid Crowds” as directed by the New York Board of Health, but then the contradictory message to support Chaplin and his film. Indeed, the more I have read about and researched this period of history, the more I am realizing how much of what we are collectively experiencing is neither unique nor surprising. The good news of course is that the film industry survived the 1918 pandemic, but the sad news is that many died needlessly because of failure to understand or take seriously how the virus was spread and how deadly it would prove to be (in fact, the death rate in New York caused by the pandemic following in the weeks after this ad was placed were record breaking). All of this to say, stay safe, wear a mask, social distance, and maybe avoid movie theatres for a while longer.