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| Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910-1914
ISBN: 9780520939523
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Motion pictures -- United States -- History; Motion pictures -- Social aspects -- United States; Nationalism -- United States;
This engaging, deeply researched study provides the richest and most nuanced picture we have to date of cinema--both movies and movie-going--in the early 1910s. At the same time, it makes clear the profound relationship between early cinema and the construction of a national identity in this important transitional period in the United States. Richard Abel looks closely at sensational melodramas, including westerns (cowboy, cowboy-girl, and Indian pictures), Civil War films (especially girl-spy films), detective films, and animal pictures--all popular genres of the day that have received little critical attention. He simultaneously analyzes film distribution and exhibition practices in order to reconstruct a context for understanding moviegoing at a time when American cities were coming to grips with new groups of immigrants and women working outside the home. Drawing from a wealth of research in archive prints, the trade press, fan magazines, newspaper advertising, reviews, and syndicated columns--the latter of which highlight the importance of the emerging star system--Abel sheds new light on the history of the film industry, on working-class and immigrant culture at the turn of the century, and on the process of imaging a national community.
Abel Richard :
Richard Abel is the Robert Altman Collegiate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American (UC Press), and The Ciné Goes to Town (UC Press), among other books. |
