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162 Consuming Media

when the new theatre opened at Råsunda Film City, Sagittarius had closed and the
former manager had moved on to a higher post in the company.
Parallel to the twenty-year decline of Solna Centre’s small theatre, other develop-
ments were taking place that might further explain the outcome. The changes in film
viewing practices that had given rise to the video industry and watching film at home
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were being countered by the building of multiplex theatres. These new vehicles of
film consumption, while not excluding the possibility of small local and suburban
theatres, made it harder for these endeavours to survive. One vehicle for smaller and
independent theatres was to structure an appeal to the cultural importance film had
once had, and forge a link either to the ‘glamour’ of film-going or to a public inter-
ested in the culture of cinema. The more secure alternative nevertheless remains tied
to the large complex, and the possibility of drawing a suburban public ‘who don’t get
in to the city’ in sufficiently large numbers to support the megaplex. 37 A related
development during the period of Sagittarius’s decline is the growth of the block-
buster, which organizes other media and in a sense jumps over the local movie
theatre. Even more influential than its impact on theatres is the ways the blockbuster
overshadows the possibilities of other kinds of film, including European films. 38
Together these factors account for how a theatre complex could open a mere stone’s
throw from Solna Centre – since SF is privy to the showing of the blockbuster and
runs megaplexes that are supported by urban and suburban audiences, and can there-
fore afford the luxury of a small ‘Bergman Salon’ for the occasional viewing of orig-
inal films not available in other venues.
The Swedish film company has engaged in a form of ‘place marketing’, offering a
taste of the glamour of the old small movie theatre by opening a theatre on this
historic site, even though the audience is coming to see the latest blockbuster film.
It’s admittedly not on the scale of the tourism described by Couldry’s study of
Granada film studios, perhaps only because Bergman’s audience is still not on the
same scale as Coronation Street’s. 39 The constructed environment of locality which
the visitor to Granada studios or Film City experiences is undoubtedly one of place,
but more importantly is also an aspect of fandom. Film itself, as a medium, operates
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in a deterritorialized spatial landscape. The Bergman fan could equally well go to a
viewing of his or her favourite film wherever it happens to be shown, or rent or
purchase it to view at home. It does not require a place or locale in order to work as
media consumption. Renting a video at the shop in Solna Centre or watching a film
at the newly opened theatre with its romantic tie to the ‘old’ film city are two distinct
yet compatible forms of media consumption. Neither of them is tied to a specific
local place.
Film as a medium, despite its historic relationship to a locale quite near Solna
Centre remains too deterritorialized to actualize a geographic relationship in the
space of the mall. Soccer, on the other hand, remains highly territorialized, not only
through its geographic connection in close proximity to the shopping centre. Even
when viewed on television, a match is seen in a particular stadium, and the team
retains its local, if constructed, identity. The local soccer team has in this case the