Sometimes The Cap'n just has to disagree with his textbook, no matter how authoritative the source is.
In James Naremore's otherwise quite thorough book More Than Night: Film Noir and Its Contexts, he devotes a portion of Chapter 4, "Low is High" to attack Joe Bob Briggs. For those of you not familiar with Briggs, he prides himself on being a fan of "low" cinema; you can find him providing commentaries for movies like I Spit on Your Grave and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. He is also the author of a handful of books, including Profoundly Disturbing, Profoundly Erotic, and Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In, none of which I have read, but I'd like to.
Naremore considers him to be the very worst kind of champion for "low art", a far cry from the days of Manny Farber. In "Low is High", which is about the blending of low rent crime films and artistic criticism, Joe Bob appears as a figure of derision who "seems to be making fun of both the establishment and the Bible Belt yahoos, but in reality his cultural politics are quite safe". Naremore calls Briggs an "ersatz good old boy - a crefully contructed persona who enjoys redneck camp and who writes about a 'drive-in' culture that no longer exists (if it ever did)"(161)
I do not challenge Naremore's right to look down upon Joe Bob Briggs, and it does not surprise me that a "serious" film critic would do so. There is little toleration in the critical community for artifice or rebelliousness, so he's welcome to accuse Briggs of playing it "safe". What did raise my ire is the second half Naremore's contention, that a drive-in culture never existed, or that it is a fabrication on the part of Briggs.
Most of "Low is High" is devoted to refuting the myth that much of film noir consisted of "B" pictures interspersed with a few "A" movies. Included in that is a breakdown of the difference (both in stature and in budget) between the two kinds of movies, the history of Republic Pictures, Alliance Entertainment, and the birth of American International Pictures towards the end of the classic "noir" cycle.
It also gives me the earliest written usage of the term "grindhouse", from 1947, although Naremore points out that the movie the critic refers to a "typical" is actually a Hollywood A picture based on an Ernest Hemingway story (The Killers).
Naremore does not refute the existence of the grindhouse in large cities, but conveniently ignores the fact that smaller towns and rural areas did not typically have more than one movie theatre downtown. The local theatre would, in fact, play the "A" picture and a "B" picture with cartoons, newsreels, and short subjects. They would be extremely unlikely, however, to play the kinds of movies Briggs champions. Those films fell into the domain of the Drive-In.
I remember well into the eighties a drive-in somewhere in Raleigh called The Starlight* listed in the newspaper. I don't remember when it closed, but since we didn't have a "grindhouse" so to speak**, movies that would never play in a first run theatre or the burgeoining multiplex would show up at The Starlight.
But to actually cover the "drive-in culture" that Briggs defends and Naremore denies, we have to go back before the Cap'n was born. It brings about the crucial distinction between the drive in during its heyday and the dying days of the scene during the 80s and 90s: home video.
The reason I believe the "drive-in culture" had to exist was because there was no such thing as home video in the late seventies, and it wasn't widely available until the mid-to-late eighties for most middle class families. This didn't stop movies from being made that no Downtown movie theatre would play. The 70s is a repository for all sorts of "B" to "Z" cinema that wasn't made to go "direct to video", because such a thing didn't exist. The existence of Z Channel or HBO does not support the idea of films being made for television in the late seventies. So where did movies like I Spit On Your Grave, Robot Monster and Last House on the Left play? The Drive In!
Did "A" pictures play there too? I'm certain they did, but I bet you couldn't find Night of the Living Dead playing at the theatre next to the drugstore. In big cities, sure it probably made it to a smaller theatre or even a "grindhouse", but where that option doesn't exist, the drive-in is the logical alternative. Not to mention the ability to hang out in your car, smoke, drink, make out, or generally kick back and watch a movie.
All of this leads me to believe that there was such a thing as a "drive-in culture", if for no other reason than it would be fun to go to one every week. They offered different choices, double bills, and provided a more relaxed atmosphere than the local movie house. As the multiplex grew in stature, the option to see more than one movie clearly cut down on that angle, and the popularity of home video allowed people to enjoy movies at home in an even more relaxed atmosphere. The Grindhouse and The Drive-In faded, and are now both something of an abstraction; a memory.
James Naremore is quite right to differentiate between our conception of the "B" movie and the reality, and to shed some light on how we understand the history of some films, but I cannot agree that because one is misunderstood, the other cannot exist. There are simply too many movies produced in the era of the "B" film which serve no other purpose but to help support the "drive-in culture", whether he chooses to believe so or not.
* Please feel free to correct me, but I swear it was called The Starlight Drive In. We drove past it once or twice, and I'm almost positive that was the name.
* the closest Raleigh ever had to one was The Studio, which was technically two screens but otherwise pretty much fit the criteria
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