the darcy effect

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The Darcy effect: Regional tourism and costume dramaAmy Sargent aa Lectures in media art , The University of Plymouth in ExeterPublished online: 18 Apr 2007.

To cite this article: Amy Sargent (1998) The Darcy effect: Regional tourism and costume drama, International Journal ofHeritage Studies, 4:3-4, 177-186, DOI: 10.1080/13527259808722235

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The Darcy Effect: regional tourismand costume dramaAmy SargentAbstractIn the last two decades there has been largely critical discussion of the role whichcostume films play in the construction of the idea of national hertiage. Much of thiswriting has assumed that such films generally holster partial and conservative interestsand represent a chronic nostalgia for a make-believe past. Adaptations from historicclassic novels are claimed to foist predominantly middle-class tastes and standardsupon the broader viewing public. The extraordinary success of the BBC's 1995 Prideand Prejudice gives one the opportunity to examine in some detail the inter-connectedness of a number of cultural industries including heritage, museums, tourism,publishing and television, in audience perception and reception.

History, the historical and heritageIn the light of renewed interest in the branding of Britain, and theacknowledgement of the part played by the arts in advertising and marketingsuch a product, it seems worth returning to the notion of the heritage film andto its relation to other aspects of the heritage and tourist industries. As is wellknown, tourism is a large earner of foreign currency for Britain and a higherproportion of foreigners give 'visiting historic sites and cities or towns as aparticularly important reason in their decision to visit Britain,' than for anyother activity; 'a powerful attraction is the combination of visible history andbeautiful countryside.'1 The success of high-quality, British costume dramawould appear to afford excellent promotion at home and abroad of a particularview of history. Similarly, one can consider the heritage film as renegotiatingthe distinction between history proper and the merely historical, for, as JaneAusten observed, there is much which passes for history which is of necessity as'made up' as fiction:

The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; themen all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at allIt is very tiresom:and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it mustbe invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughtsand designsthe chief of all this must be invention, and invention is whatdelights me in other books.2

The following article will concentrate on a recent example of the heritagefilm genre which proved particularly commercially successful in its own rightand as a vehicle for associated leisure and tourist activity. The BBC's 1995serialisation on film of Jane Austen's 1813 Pride and Prejudice (itself reputedlyone of the most popular novels in the English language) was released on videoin 1997; the serial has been sold to 44 countries throughout the world (the

Key WordsJane AustenPeak DistrictCostume DramaFilm tourismHeritage filmTelevision

1. P. Fowler, The Past inContemporary Society,London: Routledge,1992. p.6.

2. Jane Austen,Northanger Abbey[1818], Oxford: OUP,1980 p.84.

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3. Information suppliedby BBC Worldwide,December 1998.

4. Helen Fielding, BridgetJones's Diary, London:Picador, 1996 p.246:'Love the nationbeing soaddicted...minutesspent thinking aboutMr Darcy 245'

5. R. Hewison, TheHeritage Industry,London: Methuen,1987, p.144.

6. J. Corner & S. Harvey(eds) Enterprise andHeritage, London:Routledge, 1991, p.5L

7. Andrew Higson,'Representing theNational Past: nostal-gia and pastiche inthe heritage film' inL. Friedman (ed)British Cinema andThatcherism, London:U a Press, 1993, p.l 14

8. see for instance, C.McArthur, Televisionand History, London:BFI, 1980.

9. Virginia Woolf,Collected Essays,London: Prentice1963, p.326; ofcourse, Woolf intendsthis comment aspraise.

10. S. Daniels and D.Cosgrove, 'Spectacleand Text: LandscapeMetaphors in CulturalGeography' in J.Duncan and D. Ley(eds) Place/ Culture/Representation,London: Routledge,1993, p.67; see alsoN. Everett, The Toryview of Landscape,New Haven: Yale UP,1994.

Americas, Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, Australasia and theMiddle East) and, to date, the video has sold some 600,000 copies, more thanten times the average for a costume drama serial.3 Bridget Jones felt compelledto stay at home to catch each episode and her creator, Helen Fielding, drew asimilar success with her own book re-working Austen's Pride and Prejudicetheme.4

In the 1970s and 1980s much criticism of the heritage film complained of itscomplicity with a false notion of historical reality, and its contribution to abogus enterprise, 'an attractively packaged consumer item' loosely connotatedunder 'heritage' in general.5 It was often said that such films served to reinforcethe cultural worthiness of particular towns, houses and sites and that these'prestige products' were themselves enchanted by the aura of certain'landscapes, architecture, artefacts and values'.6 Adaptations were supposed tohave bolstered the classic and approved status of texts similarly canonised intheir adoption by school and university examination boards and to have foistedthese conservative, establishment values upon a popular audience:

[the] key heritage films in the national cinema of the 1980s are fascinated bythe private property, the culture and values of a particular class. By reproducingthese trappings outside of a materialist historical context, they transform theheritage of the upper classes into the national heritage: private interest becomesnaturalised as public interest....The national past and national identity emerge inthese films not only as aristocratic, but also as male-centred, while the nationitself is reduced to the soft pastoral landscape of southern England untainted bythe modernity of urbanisation or industrialisation...In each instance, the qualityof the films lends the representation of the past a certain cultural validity andrespectability.7

Some critics (echoing Austen's 'popes and kings') complained that thedepiction of history was reduced to the biographies of Great Men, others thathistorical dramatisations favoured domestic and trivial detail, advocating insteadsome Great Theory of history, red in tooth and claw.8 In terms of adaptationswhich acknowledge the historical context of Austen's novels, their apparentconservative self-containment constitutes a cause for political dissent; as VirginiaWoolf remarked, she does not prompt the reader to write a cheque or join asociety, let alone take to the streets.9 Others have remarked upon Austen'sconservative (or even Tory) view of landscape and a parochial relation betweentown and country. Daniels notes her concern with the perennial theme of thethreat posed to the established order of money newly acquired.10 The BBCadaptation of Pride and Prejudice, unlike the source novel, tokenly shows us aless refined and aesthetically pleasing view of Regency England, when Darcygoes in search of Lydia and Wickham in London; he gives a beggar in the streeta coin on receipt of the information sought. One could, perhaps, argue that themanners and mores of Austen's novels represent a form of personal politics.Andrew Davies's screenplay for the television adaptation explains the social andfinancial imperative for Charlotte Lucas's marriage to the apparentlyinsupportable Mr Collins; Charlotte, without an income of her own, marries for

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security rather than love and, after all, she confides to Elizabeth, she does nothave to see that much of him. The potentially dire consequences for the familyof Lydia's elopement are set out for a modern audience and it is explained whythe five Bennet daughters needs must marry.

Whose history? Whose heritage?As ever, in the 1970s and 1980s there were also complaints, from professionaland amateur historians, that screened history (in the form of literaryadaptations or otherwise) was incorrect in the very details on which itendeavoured to secure credibility. Nor did even the 1995 Pride and Prejudiceescape the eagle eye of the experts.11 In recent years, history as taught hasshifted towards the recognition of the hitherto seemingly marginal andinconsequential. Social and cultural historical studies have gained ground fromeconomic and political history; peasants are now worthy of study individually aswell as en masse. In addition there has been a vast growth in amateur localhistorical research. The ramifications of this are both positive and negative;more voices are heard, a wider range of experiences is acknowledged, but therecan also be a tendency to return to a trait of nineteenth-century history writing,fetishising documents and facts and the accumulation thereof to the detriment ofconcrete argument (the very objection levelled by McArthur and others of filmdepictions of history in general).12 Sylvia Harvey and John Corner speak onbehalf of the possible benefits:

While much popular story-telling about the past is sustained on the basis offascination with the deeds of the powerful and the extravagant and sensuouspleasures of the rich, the introduction of 'downstairs', 'kitchen' and industrialhistory potentially raises some awkward questions about the social distribution ofpleasure and satisfaction. And if these questions begin to connect with issues ofdifferential power and privilege in the present, and outside the turnstiles of thehistoric leisure sites, a more democratic history may gradually and indirectly bein the making.13

In turn. Bob West, writing of Ironbridge Gorge, has remarked that museumsof working-class life can nonetheless endorse a middle class managerial agendarather than that of its supposed subjects.14 The democratising trend is visiblealso in the acquisition and listing policies of museums, English Heritage and theNational Trust and in their educational and community programmes. Thesummer 1998 edition of The National Trust Magazine marked the shift bycelebrating the Worksop house of the brothers Straw and the recent purchase ofSouthwell Workhouse. The National Trust increasingly directs attention to itsown running of houses and estates (such as 'putting the house to bed') andinvolves its public in learning through activities (such as laundrydemonstrations and the performances of the Young National Trust Theatre) asmuch as in admiring fine objects at a distance. Many houses seek to be morehomely by having appropriate garden flower arrangements and by allowingvisitors to play the house piano. Both the Imperial War Museum and theNational Trust archive aural histories of ordinary and extraordinary experience.

11. S. Birtwistle & S.Conklin, The Makingof Emma, London:Penguin, 1996, p.4.

12. E.H. Carr, What isHistory?, London:Macmillan, 1962,p.9.

13. Comer & Harvey, op.dt., (note 6) p.73.

14. B. West, The makingof the Englishworking past' in R.Lumley (ed) TheMuseum TimeMachine, London:Comedia/ Routledge,1988, p.50.

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15. On Gerry Scott'sdesigns for theMeryton andNetherfield balls seeS. Birtwistle & S.Conklin, The Makingof Pride andPrejudice, London:Penguin/ BBC, 1995,p.37.

16. S. Bruzzi, UndressingCinema, London:Routledge, 1997,p.35.

17. For an exemplary listof locations see ChoiceJanuary 1997. pp.69-74.

18. Penguin Booksproduce a monthlyup-date of tie-in pub-lications; however,the film and tv officerstates that it is hardto establish exactlyhow many copies, ofprint and talkingbooks, are sold as adirect result of adap-tations, especiallywith Austen who issold also in the classicseries (which somereaders prefer).

The Imperial War Museum ran Dig for Victory then Forties Fashion alongside itsdisplays of military paraphernalia, the work of commissioned war artists and itsmemorial to the holocaust. The BBC Pride and Prejudice, while having little to dowith industrial history, falls easily into this pattern of displaying 'downstairs'and 'kitchen' history, can even be said to be in some way performing a typicallytelevisual didactic function in its display of period customs alongside thecostumes. Albeit peripherally, we are shown the staff preparing for the return ofBingley and his entourage to Netherfield Hall; we are shown the countrypursuits appropriate to men and women of a certain class, social distinctions attable between the gentry and aristocracy, we are shown the rituals of dress andgrooming (for instance, to achieve Grecian curls, Jane Bennet sleeps with tightplaits coiled around her forehead).15 Andrew Davies explains the legal niceties ofthe entailment of Mr Bennet's property, such that Mr Collins looks due to secureits possession.

A formal and textual canonThe notion of heritage, as distinct from history, has often met with a dismissiveor at best squeamish response. Stella Bruzzi refers to 'the stifling daintiness ofthe Merchant-Ivory canon and the saccharine reworkings of Jane Austen...theLaura Ashley school of film-making'.16 There is a normal adverse reaction inacademic and artistic circles against English 'ghastly good taste' and, moregenerally, an ambivalence towards the sort of prim gentility of which the ComicRelief television spoof Rest and Recreation readily made fun. There is a moreprincipalled objection to the frequency with which certain houses, sites(Constable's Suffolk, Thomas Hardy's Dorset) and towns (Stamford inMiddlemarch, Bath in Persuasion, Langnor and Lacock in Pride and Prejudice)appear on screen and hence seem to corroborate received ideas of culturalvalue.17 Lacock is especially favoured for its multi-purpose conglomeration ofbuildings from different periods, and the fact that it has been used before rendersit pragmatically a more feasible option for further use. Similarly, certainsupposedly serious and classic authors are more favoured than others. CurrentlyHenry James and the short stories of Thomas Hardy are in vogue, latterly therewas a glut of E.M. Forster and Trollope; the BBC Jane Austens are available onvideo as a boxed set and Our Mutual Friend, along with many other Dickensnovels and stories, has been subject to several adaptations. Audiences readingthe book of the film (of the book) brings financial rewards to publishers of tie-ineditions; but books of films do also stimulate an interest in the work of thatauthor in general which, in turn, fuels a market for further screenplays. Butrecent adaptations and their respective spin-offs seem to have been promotedless as venerable 'classics' by which to be enchanted but rather as middle-browor popular. Michael Winterbottom's Jude, 1996 (following Polanski's Tess,1979), abbreviated its source title. This appears also on the tie-in Penguin withpictures of Kate Winslet and Christopher Eccleston along with the film's postercredits and a gloss on the novel's content worthy of Mills & Boon: 'A timewithout pity; a society without mercy; a love without equal.'18 The typographyof the title sequence for Pride and Prejudice is repeated on the Penguin tie-inedition, all but gold-embossed: the title sequence itself, with its luxuriant

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wandering over lavishly niched satin, lace, embroidery and bows, has the air ofDanielle Steele and Georgette Heyer, announcing the production as PureRomance. Ending with a wedding, two wedding dresses and a kiss, the BBC'sPride and Prejudice is reminiscent of the sort of musicals that don't get made anymore.

Heritage films and tourismMuch writing of the 1980s, as already indicated, tacitly warned against theinfection of culture and film culture by contact with the heritage industry.However, this is nevertheless a reality which we experience economically,aesthetically and imaginatively. Some correspondence in the press accused theNational Trust of aiding the vulgarisation of serious art in abetting filmednovels:

Escapism is one thing, but losing sight of the reality of our historical and literaryinheritance is another. Instead of protecting this inheritance, the National Trustis in effect creating theme parks: surely a task better left to Disney?19

But the National Trust has gratefully received location fees (for Lacock a tidy20,000 per day),20 increased admissions (up 59% and 42% in 1996 toSudbury and Lyme, the interior and exterior of Mr Darcy's Pemberley),21 andthe generally good media publicity resulting from collaboration. Whileperennially blamed for being middle-class, middle-aged and middle-England,visibility of its properties may encourage a more varied membership (and,eventually, a more representative agenda) and may encourage it to return tohouses with a renewed purpose (hence the items in seasonal brochures, 'new for'97', 'new for '98'). Mompesson House gave half price admission to any visitorbearing a Salisbury Odeon cinema ticket stub for Sense and Sensibility, part ofwhich had been filmed there.22 As discussed by Markwell, Bennett &Ravenscroft in a previous issue of this journal, such add-ons are especiallyimportant in a tourist market which includes single competitors offering anextensive range of attractions (such as Cricket St Thomas, Longleat or Woburn).23Visiting stately homes has frequently been associated with more traditionalleisure activities, such as handicrafts and gardening, but the recent crop of filmcostume dramas, in its appeal to a younger audience, may have brought a widerrange of visitors in its wake to the associated locations. The significance ofcasting and performance are not to be underestimated; Jennifer Ehle as Elizabethwas less dainty and saccharine than many of her predecessors and Colin Firth,like Olivier before him, became something of an early evening idol.

If the past is another country then we should expect historical tourism toevince some of the features of travel. In Orlando (Woolf s novel, Potter's film),the fantasy of living through, of inhabiting history, is surely just as strong asbeing inside a different body. Historical films grant sight of places we go toimaginatively or physically and enable a relation of sameness and differencewhich is typical of travel abroad. Equally, one could argue that film adaptationsmediate in one's emotional experience of place and text in the same way thatancient history did for Goethe and Gibbon in Rome or that poetry and pictures

19. Letters page, TheTimes, 25 January,1996.

20. High costs haveobliged some produc-tions, such as MollFlanders to build stu-dio sets instead; seeThe Guardian, 21May, 1996.

21. The Independent, 11August, 1997, p.2;Manchester EveningNews, 12 August,1997: 'If you take thehouse [Lyme Hall]alone, attendanceslast year, directlylinked to Pride andPrejudice, were 253%up'.

22. The National Trust,Wessex Region News,21 February, 1996

23. S. Markwell, M.Bennett & N.Ravenscroft, 'TheChanging Market forHeritage Tourism',IJHS, 1997,vol.3,no.2, pp.96 & 105.


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24. James Pilkington, AView of the PresentState of Derbyshire,Derby: Drewry, 1789,p.25.

25. For a usefuldiscussion of Parr'sThe Cost of living andother work see J.Taylor, A Dream ofEngland, Manchester.MUP, 1994; see also,on painters, M.Andrews, The Searchfor the Picturesque,Aldershot: Scolar,1989 and S. Daniels,Fields of Vision,Cambridge: PolityPress, 1992.

26. Nationwide BBC Radio5 12 March, 1996.

27. J. Loudon, A Treatiseon Forming, Improvingand Managing CountryResidences, London:Longman, Hurst, Rees6 Orme, 1806,p.692: 'ThePicturesque improve-ment of rural sceneryis almost peculiar tothis country'; p.592:'The chief art is, toshew only one speciesof rural character ata time.' On LymePark's 'Darcy Trail'see ManchesterEvening News, 14December, 1996.

28. Jane Austen, Prideand Prejudice, [1813],Harmondsworth:Penguin 1981,p.274...at this pointElizabeth is musing asmuch on theproprietor as she ison his property.

did (see Joseph Wright) and still do (see Martin Parr) for visitors to the 'naturalbeauties of Britain'. James Pilkington described Derbyshire in 1789:

...there are many fine pieces of scenery in these romantic and delightful dales,which have attracted the notice of the painter. Those, who have had anopportunity of seeing them touched by the sweet and magic pencil of Mr Wrightof Derby, will easily conceive, how deserving they are of the attention, whichhas been paid them, [figure I ] 2 4

Views of Derbyshire's most famous attractions frequently appeared in framedvignettes on locally produced ceramics. In recent years, Martin Parr has oftenphotographed trippers (in Derbyshire and elsewhere), sometimes more serioustourists attempting to duplicate a previous image of those surroundings whichhas prompted them to make their visit. 25

Appearance on screen undeniably attracted visitors to Belton, Lyme andSudbury; the BBC Pride and Prejudice received the top award from the BritishTourist Board in 1996 for its outstanding contribution to tourism, [figure 2].Simon Langton, the director, commented on the reception of the serial: 'it's arecognition of, if you like.of the power of television, that no sooner had it goneout than people started going, and not only to Lyme Park but several otherNational Trust properties as well.'26 Austen's precise setting of the action ofPersuasion (the Assembly Rooms, Milsom Street, Laura Place) lends itself to awalking tour, advertised in Bath Tourist Information Centre, of the locations;Lyme Park offers a picturesquely varied walk around the estate in the manner ofMr. Darcy, which in turn may be compared to the prescriptions of Loudon andother Regency improvers: 27

They entered the woods and bidding adieu to the river for a while, ascendedsome of the higher grounds; whence, in spots where the opening of the treesgave the eye the power to wander were many charming views of the valley, theopposite hills, with a long range of woods overspreading...part of the stream....They crossed it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air of thescene; was a spot less adorned than any they had yet visited; and the valley,here contracted into a glen, allowed room only for the stream and a narrowwalk amidst the rough coppice-wood which bordered it. Elizabeth longed toexplore its windings....28

Indeed, throughout the BBC film adaptation, Elizabeth is seen to be in herelement in the countryside and is characterised in her manner and dress, her'self-sufficiency without fashion', in contrast with the affected showy urbanity ofMiss Bingley and Mrs Hurst and the parvenu obsequiousness of Mr Collins. Theeighteenth-century Pickford's House Museum in Derby took the opportunity ofthe region's starring role in Pride and Prejudice to deck out a suitable dinnertable. The BBC costumes were toured to National Trust houses and wereexhibited alongside originals in the Pump Room in Cheltenham. Pride andPrejudice itself reminds us (possibly reassures us) that touring sites of HistoricInterest and outstanding Natural Beauty is a far from new phenomenon. Nor is

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Figure / . '/I Siiujukr Croup of Rocks near Mattock Uath'Thc Ccnllcman's Magazine (klober179 ?, (courtesy University of Bristol.

Figure 2. Belton House (right;, Sudbury Hall and Kedleston, [courtesy University of Bristol.

ours the first generation to remark upon the wear and tear brought about byvisitors and the elements. Derbyshire's Mam Tor is already described in 1817 as'perpetually mouldering away'.29 As Esther Moir and, more recently, AdrianTinniswood observe, regional tourism began with the Tudors, although it wassome time before a sensitivity developed which found the 'disgustful andunpleasing moors of Derbyshire' acceptable.30

Elizabeth Bennet's visit to Derbyshire in Austen's novel is replicated inmodern postcards of the Peak District, but Austen was recording a common

29. Lysons, MagnaBritannia volV,London: Cadell &Davies, 1817, p .155;see also Fowler, op.cit (notel) p .98.

30. See Pilkington op.cit.,p.24 and Rhodes,Peak Scenery; or theDerbyshire Tourist,London: Longman,Hurst, Rees; Orme,Brown & Green,1824, p.8: 'Travellersaccustomed to wellwooded and highlycultivated scenesonly, have frequentlyexperienced a feelingbordering on disgust,at the bleak and bar-ren appearance ofmountains in thePeak of Derbyshire;but to the manwhose taste isunsophisticated by afondness for artificialadornments, theypossess superior inter-est and impart amore pleasing sensa-tion'; see also E. Moir,The Discovery ofBritain, London:Routledge, 1964; I.Ousby, TheEnglishman's England,Cambridge: CUP,1990 and A.Tinniswood, The PoliteTourist, London: NT,1998.


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31. James Plumptre,Cambridge Universitylibrary. Add. Mss.5804, f.9.

32. Ralph G. Allen, 'TheWonders ofDerbyshire: ASpectacular

Eghteenth CenturyTravelogue', TheatreSurvey, 1961, Vol.2,p.54, and S.Rosenfeld, GeorgianScene Painters andScene Painting,Cambridge: CUP,1981, p.33.

Figure 3. Hen Cloud and the Salt Cellar, Peak National Park, [courtesy University of Bristol.

sentimental pursuit of the 18th and early 19th centuries which the filmedversion reproduces (actually using 'Hen Cloud' in Staffordshire) [figure 3]. ThePeak District had become a particularly popular destination; a visit to the rocksand caverns was followed by a guided tour of a stately home (usually Kedlestonor Chatsworth) where the picture gallery often proved to be of greatest interest.Some travellers, unlike the Gardiners and Miss Bennet, were charged by thehousekeeper for the privilege and duly haggled over the price.31 The Gardiners'stopping the carriage on first glimpse through trees of Pemberley 'happilysituated' on its lake, Bingley's appreciation of the 'fine prospect' of NetherfieldHall, indicate a particular aesthetic reconciliation of a building with thelandscape, of, as Andrew Davies has Mr Gardiner say, 'nature and artificecombined*. Visitors frequently continued on to whatever manufactories thelocality could offer, such as porcelain works, silk mills and lead and mineralmines. Philippe de Loutherbourg's 1779 stage show at London's Drury Lanetheatre included Chatsworth and the caves amongst its Wonders ofDerbyshire.32 Indeed, the range of attractions which is currently advertised bythe Derbyshire Tourism Group (Historic Homes and Gardens; Family Fun;Shopping and Crafts; Countryside Activities and Heritage and Culture) is prettymuch comparable: the natural and man-made spectacular, the culturallyrespectable and aesthetic, the educational and informative.

Conclusion: film and television as tourist attractionsThe activity of historical reconstruction is further celebrated in such tie-ins asthe coverage by Homes and Antiques magazine of the making of Vanity Fair andthe Penguin publications The Making of Emma and The Making of Pride andPrejudice, written by members of the production team and including anecdotes

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from cast and crew. These also give location details and outline the proceduresinvolved in making the particular televisual product, from screenplay (stressingits sympathetic treatment of the original) to final edit.

Current touristic tie-ins are not unique to historical drama. The EastMidlands Film Commission's publication 'On Location', available from TouristInformation Centres in the area, gives the locations also for Carlton's PeakPractice, from which characters are then duly used to advertise a product (thePeak National Park) and its publications. [Figure 4] Summertime '98, 'a guide totourism, leisure and shopping in Derbyshire' shows Gary Mavers (who plays DrAndrew Attwood) and Adrian Lucis (who plays Dr David Shearer) gazing intothe distant yonder with copies of the Amber Valley guidebook. [Figure 5]

Figure 4.'On Location' 1998, [courtesy University of Bristol

How became CardaleFilming highlightingDerbyshire's attractions

Figure 5.'Summertime '98' [courtesy University of Bristol.


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33. Tony Bennett,'Museums and "thepeople"', in Lumley,op.cit. (note 14).

HITlil'S FAf BIHTE-ttWtik

Figure 6. The Full Monti/ Tour' Sheffield T.I.C., 1998, [courtesy University of Bristol.

Ready-made locations such as Beamish and the Black Country Museum,often used as authentic atmosphere for film and radio recordings, drawaccusations that they have styled 'a sentimentalised past (a visit to the museumis a bit like spending the day as an extra in an episode of When the Boat ComesIn).'33 Many museums appear to mimic cinematic practice with their dead oralive human exhibits and their fastidious set-dressing. Yorkshire has for manyyears received coachloads of Emmerdale and Summer Wine groupies. Popularinterest has shifted from the lake which Darcy swam through, to that dole officein The Full Monty, and to its other locations, some of them in Derbyshire.[Figure 6] The fact of filming at a place seems to have become more importantthan what was filmed and that perhaps one is vicariously being in the film andthe glory of it rather than whatever it was seeking to present.

Film, television, radio and their institutions increasingly promote and flaunttheir own pasts as a tourist and heritage commodity. The Museum of theMoving Image (London), the National Museum of Photography Film andTelevision (Bradford) the Bill Douglas Centre, Granada in Manchester andBlackpool and the BBC Experience all contribute towards this sense of the mediaas subject and object of study. The IMAX screen on the South Bank ranksLondon's tourist facilities alongside those of other European capitals; it appearsto contribute somewhat less to British film culture per se. Pathe and the BBChave marketed their back catalogue on video and the BBC Experience inPortland Place announces itself on the tourist agenda as 'the most innovativeinteractive exhibition in the West End...transporting you back to 1896'.

All in all, the British film industry is contemporary heritage, currently beingtoured somewhere near you. Far from distancing itself from the heritageindustry, cinema seems more embroiled than ever.

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the darcy effect

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