Introduction: Screen Media and ‘Middling Cities’ – Questioning Hierarchies, Dominant Narratives and Negative Associations 

In discussions that trace the long and complicated relationship between media and the metropolis, certain cities are consistently prioritised over others. In the canon of screen representations of cities, patterns in the location of media industries and, relatedly, the interests of film and television scholars, larger ones dominate — from Paris, London, and Los Angeles to Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo. This is despite the fact that smaller cities and towns were central to early moving image experiments. For example, Louis Le Prince documented traffic crossing Leeds Bridge in 1888, the Lumière brothers filmed their factory workers in Lyon in 1895, and the world’s first production studio, Thomas Edison’s Black Maria, was based in West Orange, New Jersey. While the importance of regional urban areas – both in terms of representation and reception¹See, for example, the first episode of Mark Cousins’s fifteen-hour documentary, The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011) and Jeff Klenotic’s work to map early US cinema exhibition at  https://www.mappingmovies.com (last accessed 20 September 2024). – has gained some attention in recent years, this is still largely obscured by the development of screen industries in large metropolitan centres (London, Paris and Los Angeles) across the twentieth century and the scholarly bias that followed.

Academic literature in urban and media studies (and, inevitably, at their intersection) has also long privileged the Global North. This is predicated, in part, on developmental discourse whereby the cities of the Global South are often relegated to the rank of “developing cities” without due consideration given to their rich cultural dimensions. It is also fuelled by theoretical approaches that employ Euro-American frameworks and models (notably, European experiences of modernity and the American model of industrial capitalism).²See, for example, David Clarke, ed., The Cinematic City (London: Routledge 1997). More recent collections on cinematic cities or “urban cinematics”³François Penz and Andong Lu, Urban Cinematics: Understanding Urban Phenomena through the Moving Image (Bristol: Intellect 2011). have widened their scope across the globe (especially by acknowledging “media capitals”⁴Michael Curtin, “Media Capital: Towards the Study of Spatial Flows,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2003): 202–228. in Africa and Asia) and started to include medium-sized cities occasionally but a focus on the large metropolis and particularly the “global cities ” of the Global North remains.⁵A useful timeline of publications in this area can be found in Charlotte Brunsdon, “The Attractions of the Cinematic City,” Screen 53, no. 3 (2012): 209–27.

However, as this dossier attests, it is important to recognise that smaller, intermediate, more regional and otherwise marginalised cities, especially those in the Global South, can provide equally valuable insights into urban living. Sporadically moving beyond industry norms and established representational strategies, such as the high angle and aerial shots of city vistas that constitute a form of “Manhattanisation”,⁶Johan Andersson and Lawrence Webb, “Introduction: Decentring the Cinematic City – Film and Media in the Digital Age,” in Global Cinematic Cities: New Landscapes of Film and Media, ed. Johan Andersson and Lawrence Webb (New York: Wallflower, 2016), 1–15. they can also offer glimpses of innovative media practices. In seeking to fuel further thinking in this area, we take the notion of the “middling city” as a suggestive starting point.

We use the term “middling” for several reasons. First, we want to steer clear of not only larger metropolitan areas but also those otherwise extraordinary cities that have already attracted wider interest due to specific social, political and historical reasons. For example, how Belfast is often the location in which to explore the “Troubles” on screen despite the conflict occurring across Northern Ireland (and sometimes extending into the Republic of Ireland, England and mainland Europe); Detroit has become the go-to visual referent for urban ruin in America (and beyond); and Hiroshima is marked by the history of its atomic bombing across documentary and fiction productions. We are also mindful of “second cities” and other regional cities that have garnered significant attention due to their extended and/or repeated use in media texts — for example, the existing arguments for Baltimore to be considered a “television city”⁷Charlotte Brunsdon, Television Cities: Paris, London, Baltimore (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018). and for Marseilles to be thought of as the “French Los Angeles”.⁸Marcelline Block, World Film Locations: Marseilles (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013). Also, see Joseph McGonagle’s substantial discussion of Marseilles in his book, Representing Ethnicity in Contemporary French Visual Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017). Second, in using the term “middling” we can avoid discussions of cities (such as Galway and Bruges) that have clearly appealed to screenwriters, filmmakers and television producers due to their distinctive smallness and, correspondingly, the particularly productive place they hold in the large/small binary.⁹See, for example, several films by Martin McDonangh. We also do not want to repeat points already made by scholars working on small nation film production.¹⁰See, for example, Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, eds., The Cinema of Small Nations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). In this respect, the contributions to this dossier focus on cities that are “overlooked”¹¹For more on “overlooked cities” as a conceptual framework see, Erwin Nugraha, Julia Wesely, Hannah A. Ruszczyk, Isolde de Villiers, and Yimin Zhao, “Overlooked Cities: Shifting the Gaze in Research and Practice in Global Urban Studies,” Cities 133 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.104044 (last visited September 20, 2024). because of their medium size or average status within a particular nation state – those positioned somewhere in-between the so-called “stellar” cities and small examples – as well as those that are considered “middling” in more subjective ways. Third, the chosen term reflects our interest in tackling the notion that being “middling”, i.e. a “medium” or “average” city, frequently brings about negative associations.

Indeed, middling cities are all too often included on the screen due to the shorthand benefits of an easy, unflattering contrast or a spatial stereotype that drives the narrative. Consider, for example, the American sitcom Friends (1994–2004), where Chandler’s (Matthew Perry) move from exciting New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma (in Series 8) is played for laughs:

Chandler: Y’know how people say that Tulsa is the Paris of Oklahoma?

Monica: What? Who says that?

Chandler: People who’ve never been to Paris.

Similarly, the first episode of recent Netflix comedy series Miseducation (2023) contrasts the rich and exciting megacity Johannesburg with town-like Makhanda¹²There is some conflict on Makhanda’s status as a city. It has been officially recorded as both a town and a city. (formerly Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape for comic effect. Here, nineteen-year-old aspiring influencer Mbali Hadebe’s (Buntu Petse) is too embarrassed to remain in the “city of gold” after a social media fallout and ends up at the fictional Grahamstown University despite her earlier protestation: “Oh hell no, I am not desperate enough for Makhanda!” As such examples illustrate, medium-sized cities are – especially on the screen – often evaluated and all too often comically judged in relation to the more populous cities of a nation-state and, beyond, the famous metropolises of the world, such as Paris, London and New York.

In addition, we can also acknowledge the fact that middling cities often provide a more affordable stand-in during the production process. Delivering the big city views, but for less filming cost or with lesser constraints, medium-sized and otherwise overlooked cities appear on the screen as stand-ins for their larger and/or more “narratively appealing” national and international counterparts. This can be seen as a global phenomenon stretching from Liverpool as “body double”¹³Tim Brown cited in Les Roberts, “Projecting Place: Location Mapping, Consumption, and Cinematographic Tourism,” in The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections, ed. Richard Koeck and Les Roberts (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p.190. to “flexible”¹⁴Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk, “The Flexible City: Cinematic (re)constructions of Cape Town,” Journal of African Cinemas 10 (2018): 81–94. Cape Town and Vancouver, which “never plays itself”.¹⁵Vancouver Never Plays Itself, directed by Every Frame a Painting (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU (last visited September 9, 2024). This contrasts with Los Angeles, which as per the title of Thom Andersen’s 2003 film does play itself, or Lagos, which “is always the star of Nollywood movies”.¹⁶Hakeem Adan, “Lagos is a star of Nollywood films,” Lonely Planet, January 10, 2022 https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/nollywood-in-lagos (last visited September 16,  2024). In a similar vein, media representations can conflate two cities to offer a certain coherent spatial narrative that appeals to (target) audiences. This is the case in several recent Afrikaans genre films whereby the often overlooked administrative capital of South Africa, Pretoria, merges with neighbouring megapolis Johannesburg to offer spatial homogeneity that “foreground[s] the city as a white suburban enclave”.¹⁷Chris Broodryk, “A Particularly Pretorian Political Economy: Phoenix Films’ Pretorian Cinematic Imaginary,” Journal of African Cinemas, vol. 10, nos.1–2 (2018):131–145. This is also the case in the 2010 parody video Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)¹⁸The video went viral but was taken down due to a copyright claim. directed by MJ Delaney, where broader references to Welsh culture, including the nation’s capital, Cardiff, are offered instead of examples more specific to Wales’s third largest city. As playfully addressed by Newport hip hop group Goldie Lookin Chain in their quickly made response parody video: Newport State of Mind (You’re Not From Newport), such instances are a form of identity removal – the middling city’s everyday life and cultural identity gets stripped to turn it into a functional doppelganger or generic cultural/city setting. Our dossier argues that the middling city, in contrast to this, has value in itself when represented on the screen and offers the potential to dislodge both its preconceptions as well as its position in the media production landscape.

To this end, we have included articles that unpack how certain cities have acquired reputations as “dull” and how this may be resisted or reconfigured (as well as supported) by media. This dossier tackles the mediated middling city from a diverse range of angles – from the lack of middling cities on the screen itself, to the leading role middling cities once played in pioneering filmic releases in the past. Our authors further explore how the inclusion of mid-sized cities on the screen can shine a light on secondary spaces that are often excluded from the mainstream consciousness, can stimulate the dismantling of urban stereotypes, and possibly even hold the potential to inspire political agency.

Our first article takes us back in time, when middling cities were once at the forefront of showcasing new filmic material, with main metropolises lagging behind. In his study, Chris Hite specifically focuses on releases of Italian cinema in middling Western Pennsylvania cities and demonstrates how silent-era films were pioneered in picture houses of medium-sized cities weeks or months before larger urban markets – a unique period before film premieres became codified and associated firmly with larger metropolitan centres.

We subsequently examine the importance of filmic narratives about life in middling cities and the potential of bringing a new awareness to cities beyond capitals. Through the lens of the black comedy Levantamuertos (2013), Georgina Cebey’s article analyses the fictionalised vision of Mexicali, Mexico and highlights the value of counter-hegemonic representations, especially of border cities often associated with trafficking. Her article especially encourages a more nuanced examination of violence in border regions.

Finally, we survey the possible political agency imbued in the middling city when it is (re)framed/mediated on the fictional screen. In the case of Pretoria, South Africa, Chris Broodryk’s article argues, the city’s appearance as the fictional Key Mariah in the television series Tropical Heat (aka Sweating Bullets, 1991–1993) generated the potential in some of its viewers to question the historical political conservatism associated with the area.

By considering middling cities from the US, Mexico and South Africa, this dossier hopes to provide a step towards acknowledging and celebrating the value of the middling city on and off screen. Not in comparison with the capitals of this world, not as a stereotypical shorthand or anonymous doppelganger, but as a place with human narratives and culturally diverse features in its own right that interact and fuel media production, exhibition and reception worldwide. Our dossier places the middling city and its many facets firmly in the centre of analysis, so that the middling city, at least in this dossier, no longer plays the second fiddle.

Lavinia Brydon

Lavinia Brydon is Senior Lecturer in Film in the School of Arts and Architecture at the University of Kent. She also co-leads the multidisciplinary Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment at this institution. Her research interests centre on issues of place, space and the environment, extending from questions of on-screen representation to debates regarding location filming, sites of exhibition, cultural tourism and, more recently, eco-activist arts practice. She has published on these topics in various academic journals including Film Studies, Leisure/Loisir and Series – International Journal of TV Serial Narratives. Lavinia is currently PI on the British Academy-funded project Imagining the Ordinary City: Arts, Placemaking and Everyday Urban Lives (2023-25).

Sanele KaNtshingana

Sanele KaNtshingana is a lecturer in African Languages (IsiXhosa section) in the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Cape Town. He is also a PhD candidate in Historical Studies in the same university and is affiliated with the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative and the Andrew Mellon-funded, History Access programme. Sanele considers himself an ‘undisciplined’ young scholar who straddles History, African Languages and Literatures, inside and outside the university. Sanele is a Mandela-Washington Fellow and completed his Leadership in Civic Engagement Course at the University of Georgia – Fanning Institute for Leadership in 2019. Outside of the ivory towers, Sanele is engaged in various kollectives which are dreaming and building a (Black)conscious, confident, bold, self-assertive, and deep-thinking generation of young people. In Makhanda, Sanele leads Makhanda Black Kollective.

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Janina Schupp

Janina Schupp is the SOUTHWORKS Career Development Fellow at Jesus College, University of Oxford and teaches in the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford. Previously, Janina was an Affiliated Lecturer in Architecture and the Moving Image at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her MPhil in Screen Media and Cultures and PhD in Architecture During this time, Janina held a British Research Council Fellowship at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, a Camargo Foundation Fellowship in France and a Visiting Scholarship at the University of Nanjing. Janina’s research is highly interdisciplinary and explores how our urban existence is captured and shaped by screen media. She is particularly interested in the global challenges affecting urban environments and populations and how these can be analysed and responded to via moving images and digital technologies. Recent publications include the co-edited book The Everyday in Visual Culture (Routledge 2022).

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