This talk examines the persistent reluctance of producers and shapers of screen culture to regulate images of ‘blackness’ for British audiences in a period of increased immigration from 1948 to 1978. Producers and regulators at a variety of organisations tasked with shaping screen culture in the period, including the BBC, ITV, the BBFC, and various film studios, were newly invested in imagining the responses of British audiences in the postwar period. These organisations, alongside NGOs such as the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, constructed audiences as impressionable and fragile when it came to sexuality, class conflict, and politics on screen, but largely unaffected by negative representations of black and minority ethnic subjects. This talk consequently addresses shifting official and unofficial perceptions of what was acceptable or ‘politically correct’ when it came to images of race on screen, and the role of a variety of organisations and audiences, including black and minority ethnic viewers, in imagining postwar British audiences.
What the audience wants: Audience research, race, and screen culture in postwar Britain. Dr Christine Grandy, University of Lincoln. 3/3/17
