Travels in modernity: spectatorship and narratives in British film culture

[First paragraph of introduction:] This study explores the meaning of Britishness as it has been defined by its relations with other geo-cultural terrains. If on the one hand Britishness, as we shall discover, has powerfully insular and inward looking elements, it has on the other hand an identity forged within a triangulation of significant Others. Britain's 'special' relationship with America, its political and cultural position on the edge of mainland Europe and the legacy of its Imperial past mark the three points of that triangle in which I want to locate the formations of national identity. This triangulation is complex. There is a sense in which each relationship Britain has with one geocultural formation, e.g. America, is also imbricated with or superimposed onto Britain's relationships with the other two. This imbricated spatial model must also factor in how each of these relations are themselves prone to ambivalence, marked as they are by both fascination and fear with these various Others.