Citation

Mullins, Patrick. “Ethnic Cinema in the Nickelodeon Era in New York City: Commerce, Assimilation and Cultural Identity.” Film History 12 (2000): 115-124.

 
Important Concepts and Terminology
 
Assimilation Ideology: The belief that the cinema experience provides a means for immigrants to learn how to negotiate their way in American society. See assimilation.
 
“Melting Pot” Philosophy: The process of “Americanization” in which different races and ethnicities are amalgamated into a shared American culture. For a discussion of the relevance of the “melting pot” philosophy today, one might read this book from New York’s Manhattan Institute.
 
Nickelodeon Era: The period from 1906 to 1914 when small, storefront movie houses (called nickelodeons in reference to the price of admission) surged in popularity.
 
Subcultural Continuity:  Since “cultural continuity” refers to the efforts by immigrants to remember a shared heritage and extend it into the New World, we can surmise that Mullins’s reference to “subcultural continuity” is essentially the same phenomenon in the context of a larger society. (For further reference, a discussion of cultural continuity among African-Americans may be found here.)
 
 
Discussion of the Article
 
The purpose of Mullins’s article is to build upon previous research that focused on the role of immigration and social class during the nickelodeon era in New York City. He specifically considers ethnic identity as it applies to patterns of film exhibition and spectatorship and claims that the drive for cultural assimilation and subcultural continuity in this new social venue was a defining factor.
 
In order to contextualize his thesis, Mullins stresses the importance of the convergence of new developments in motion picture technology and mass European immigration to the US at the turn of the last century.  This created unprecedented opportunity for immigrant exhibitors, filmmakers, and spectators.
 

• Nickelodeons performed 3 major functions for spectators:
• Escape from the realities of work and tenement life
• Makeshift “schools” for learning English
• A form of socialization and apprenticeship into the “melting pot” of American life

• Many researchers believe that films functioned as tools of assimilation for immigrants by
• Providing an image of what was desirable in American culture
• Rejecting Old World values such as socialism 
• Emphasizing the values of capitalism and democracy
• Engaging spectators in the process through the movie-going experience itself
  

•  Challenges to the assimilationist view of these films include 
• A relatively small number of films actually addressed immigration or the poor
• Many films were made in France and revealed little about America
  

 

• By 1908, there were 600 nickelodeons in New York City.

•  By 1911, one third of New York City nickelodeons were ethnic owned and operated. 

• The majority of ethnic theaters were Jewish, Italian, and to a lesser extent, Irish and German.

•  Nickelodeons were an integral part of ethnic communities, thriving where ready-and-waiting audiences already felt at home.

•  The distribution of ethnic theaters appears to have been centered in four “easily identifiable ethnic and/or socioeconomic areas of the city (click the names for Google maps of the neighborhoods):
• The Lower East Side (predominantly Jewish)
• Yorkville (German and Irish)
• Little Italy
• Jewish Harlem (see this for a fascinating history of Harlem, which was predominantly Jewish in the early 20^th century)

 
 

• Although data indicate that a considerable number of ethnic films were being made (230 featuring Jewish characters between 1900 and 1929 alone), there was little in the way of advertisements, notices, or reviews in local, ethnic newspapers. Possible explanations for this lack of interest might include
  
• Highly-stereotyped characters
• Overly-romanticized and old-fashioned imagery

• Similarly, there is little evidence of localized, promotional materials for ethnic nickelodeons. Possible explanations might include
• Printing promotional materials such as flyers was too expensive.
• Ephemeral materials such as blackboards and handwritten placards were used instead.
• Due to the local character of ethnic theaters, printed materials were unnecessary.

 
Conclusion
 
Mullins concludes by emphasizing the ephemeral quality of any discussion about the actions and motivations of exhibitors, as well as the experience of ethnic audiences. Since there are few contemporaneous accounts to provide researchers with empirical data, we are left with the assumption that past events, consisting of “a collection of fragments,” and “competing narratives … of an inaccessible past” are, at best, comprised of “multiple contingent truths.”
 
Relevance to Course Issues
 
The Mullins article speaks directly to a number of issues addressed in the first couple weeks of the course. For example, the time period addressed in the article – the Nickelodeon era –coincides (by design of the instructor) with both the lecture and the assigned reading for Unit 2. Notably, the Thompson/Bordwell text accentuates the fact that during the nickelodeon’s heyday, the majority of films exhibited in the United States were international in origin. This bears on a specific argument put forth by some researchers (referenced by Mullins) that cinema at this time was not necessarily assimilationist in nature.
 
Further, Mullins’s assertion of the importance of technological advancements in the exhibition and production of films of the period directly references the historical developments covered in Unit 1.
 
Discussion Questions
 

1. At the heart of the Mullins article is the convergence of technological advancement and European immigration to the United States at the turn of the last century.  Given what we’ve learned in the course so far, what would be an example of a technological advancement during the Nickelodeon Era (1906 to 1914)? How might this advancement have specifically affected ethnic cinema in the United States (i.e. spectatorship, exhibition, and/or filmmaking )?

 

2. Researcher Russell Merritt has asserted that most films shown in the United States during the Nickelodeon Era couldn’t be characterized as assimilationist, since they were predominantly foreign and didn’t directly concern the immigrants or the poor – a position that Mullins refutes as being too narrowly defined. Given what we’ve learned so far ( and perhaps the films we’ve encountered) whose definition seems more reasonable? Could they both be right?