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"Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine

Lisa Smithstead

Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period

Swansea University Author: Lisa Smithstead

Abstract

Throughout this chapter, I profile prominent British cinema magazines on the interwar market and look in greater detail at their address to this girl cinemagoer. The chapter is attentive to the differences between publications and how their inflections of girlhood were mediated through their varied,...

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Published in: Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period
ISBN: 9781474412537
Published: Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2017
Online Access: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-s-periodicals-and-print-culture-in-britain-1918-1939.html
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa60755
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spelling 2022-08-23T09:59:06.1203422 v2 60755 2022-08-05 "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260 Lisa Smithstead Lisa Smithstead true false 2022-08-05 AMED Throughout this chapter, I profile prominent British cinema magazines on the interwar market and look in greater detail at their address to this girl cinemagoer. The chapter is attentive to the differences between publications and how their inflections of girlhood were mediated through their varied, intermedial modes of address. Representations of girlhood within these papers were built predominantly around young, and largely American female star images, but they were also constructed through particular uses of the specific tools and techniques of magazine media. The film paper blended photographs, film stills and illustrations with prose, storytelling and advertising, and scattered representations of its stars across these varied platforms, breaking apart the sense of a gendered star identity as stable or singular. Film periodicals thus invited readers into a complex and unstable network of film-inflected girlhoods. They did so in a period during which youthful femininity was defined more closely in relation to class and marital status than age, in which British class structures were reformulating, and in which representations of the unmarried working girl and young wife had complex roles to play in defining a national culture after the war. As such, reading the interwar film magazine is one way of re-reading the narrative of ‘home and duty’, complicating a domestic ideal by offsetting more glamorous images and alternative possibilities of modern femininity against more conservative discourses on domesticity and female identity. The print cultures of film affected ideas about girlhood, class and mass culture between the wars in this way, allowing their readers to simultaneously assign, test out and in some ways re-write girls’ culturally ascribed domestic roles. Book chapter Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh 9781474412537 1 12 2017 2017-12-01 https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-s-periodicals-and-print-culture-in-britain-1918-1939.html https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-s-periodicals-and-print-culture-in-britain-1918-1939.html COLLEGE NANME Media COLLEGE CODE AMED Swansea University Another institution paid the OA fee 2022-08-23T09:59:06.1203422 2022-08-05T13:08:58.2314273 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR Lisa Smithstead 1
title "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
spellingShingle "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
Lisa Smithstead
title_short "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
title_full "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
title_fullStr "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
title_full_unstemmed "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
title_sort "Dear Cinema Girls”: Girlhood, Picturegoing and the Interwar Film Magazine
author_id_str_mv 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260
author_id_fullname_str_mv 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260_***_Lisa Smithstead
author Lisa Smithstead
author2 Lisa Smithstead
format Book chapter
container_title Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period
publishDate 2017
institution Swansea University
isbn 9781474412537
publisher Edinburgh University Press
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR
url https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-s-periodicals-and-print-culture-in-britain-1918-1939.html
document_store_str 0
active_str 0
description Throughout this chapter, I profile prominent British cinema magazines on the interwar market and look in greater detail at their address to this girl cinemagoer. The chapter is attentive to the differences between publications and how their inflections of girlhood were mediated through their varied, intermedial modes of address. Representations of girlhood within these papers were built predominantly around young, and largely American female star images, but they were also constructed through particular uses of the specific tools and techniques of magazine media. The film paper blended photographs, film stills and illustrations with prose, storytelling and advertising, and scattered representations of its stars across these varied platforms, breaking apart the sense of a gendered star identity as stable or singular. Film periodicals thus invited readers into a complex and unstable network of film-inflected girlhoods. They did so in a period during which youthful femininity was defined more closely in relation to class and marital status than age, in which British class structures were reformulating, and in which representations of the unmarried working girl and young wife had complex roles to play in defining a national culture after the war. As such, reading the interwar film magazine is one way of re-reading the narrative of ‘home and duty’, complicating a domestic ideal by offsetting more glamorous images and alternative possibilities of modern femininity against more conservative discourses on domesticity and female identity. The print cultures of film affected ideas about girlhood, class and mass culture between the wars in this way, allowing their readers to simultaneously assign, test out and in some ways re-write girls’ culturally ascribed domestic roles.
published_date 2017-12-01T04:19:08Z
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score 11.012678

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