From ‘English’ Heritage to Transnational Audiences: Fan Perspectives and Practices and Why They Matter

Abstract

The Introduction to this volume sets out a number of propositions about the ‘key role[s]’ played by historical and heritage-film dramas—in reality, a convenient shorthand for a generically, thematically and aesthetically diverse field of ‘period screen fictions’ set in the past or addressing historical subjects close to the present (see Monk 2002: 176)—across Europe. At the national-cultural and nation-state level, these films (and their television drama equivalents) are said to contribute to national (or regional and sub-national) film cultures; are tasked with generating wider economic as well as cultural value across diverse sectors—the ‘national’ film, heritage and tourism industries—by ‘acting as an international “shop window”’; and are also said to generate ‘major’ domestic debates ‘on the role of the past in contemporary national identity construction’ (Bangert et al. 2016: 00). Historical and heritage films are also argued to contribute to the (more abstract, less tangible) pan-European project of articulating and promoting a notionally European heritage, not least via the mesh of formal and informal interactions between the films themselves and ‘tourist sites, the digital sphere and the heritage industries’ (Bangert, Cooke and Stone 2016: 00).