The Stereopticon: Platform or New Media Form?

Investigates the history of the stereopticon as a radically modernized magic lantern and its place in a larger US media formation. Using random word searches, its arch of popularity is traced from the 1860s to an 1890s apex, followed by a gradual decline. The coincidence of its emergence with the term “illustrated lecture” is noted, pointing towards the initial formation of the documentary tradition. Circa 1850 the Frederick and William Langenheim developed the photographic glass slide: a key element of the stereopticon dispositif. Ten years later John Fallon introduced the stereopticon as a form of screen entertainment. In 1871, the stereopticon began to be used for outdoor advertising; soon after it was used to promote candidates and issues.

Cinema, McKinley at Home, and the 1896 Election

The 1896 elections, coming after a long period of economic distress, produced a political realignment and mobilized various new media forms for politicking purposes. Many traditionally Democratic newspapers rejected William Jennings Bryan’s Populism and switched their loyalties to Republican candidate William McKinley, giving William Randolph Hearst an opening to become a champion of Democracy. The Republican candidate’s brother, Abner McKinley, invested in the American Mutoscope Company and the Republican National Committee sponsored its official theatrical debut as its biograph projector screened McKinley at Home. The rival Edison Manufacturing Company offered a train scene featuring Bryan. The Republicans embraced technological novelties such as the phonograph, the telephone and the bicycle--implying that innovation would help to solve the economic crisis.

The Stereopticon, The Tariff Illustrated, and the 1892 Election

Examines the 1888 and 1892 presidential campaigns that pitted Republican Benjamin Harrison, who favored a protective tariff, against Democrat Grover Cleveland, who wanted to lower taxes on imports. The New York press was predominantly Democratic, which enabled Cleveland to win the 1884 election. The pro-Republican Protective Tariff League sponsored Judge John L. Wheeler’s wildly popular stereopticon lecture The Tariff Illustrated in 1888x, which was hailed as contributing to Harrison’s victory (a brief recession and Tammany Hall’s hostility to Cleveland were additional factors). In 1892 Republicans nominated New York Tribune publisher Whitelaw Reid as vice-president and had six orators who toured the Northeast, delivering illustrated lectures and promoting the protective tariff. Nevertheless, Cleveland proved victorious in the rematch.

Coda

The first section characterizes the structure of feeling of US presidential elections during the long 1890s, making comparisons between that decade and the contemporary moment, noting similarities between the campaigns of William McKinley and Barack Obama. It briefly considers new media moments such as radio and television as well as recurrent structures of politicking in the twentieth century. The second section considers the shift from Film Studies to Film and Media Studies and the dialogic relations between the study of early cinema and the emerging field of media archaeology. Finally considers ways in which the illustrated lecture can be analyzed within the framework of Documentary Studies.

Cinema as a Media Form

Sketches out a succession of motion picture practices before 1910, focusing on the integration of two the stereopticon and cinema as a distinct dispositif between 1897 and 1903. The 1900 presidential campaign fell squarely within this time frame. The deployment of emergent media such as the motion pictures and the phonograph are explored, as the election’s paramount issue was Imperialism. McKinley and his running mate Theodore Roosevelt were advocates of American expansionism while William Jennings Bryan ran on an anti-imperialism platform. Illustrated lectures that celebrated US military interventions in Cuba and the Philippines were widely deployed and often presented by military personnel and preachers. They contributed to McKinley’s victory while Bryan supporters failed to make use of this media form.

Introduction

Defines a mediascape that includes the mass media of newspapers, radio, television and the Internet; audio-visual technologies such as photography, motion pictures, and the telephone; as well as expressive forms such as oratory and public pageantry which do not depend on technology. It sketches the historical backdrop of industrialization for the political campaigns and media formations of the 1890s: the telegraph, railroad and mass circulation newspapers of the 1830s and 1840s, and the emergence of a new wave of communication and transportation technologies in the 1890s. Finally it considers the evolving state of historical research and writing on film and media facilitated by new digital technologies that enable random word searches of huge amounts of new data.