Menus for Movie Land: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1911-1916

FAIN: FA-55982-11

Richard O. Abel
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)

The period of 1911-1916 was crucial in forming American film culture. A profitable alignment of newspapers and movies emerged in weekly pages and daily columns as "menus" mediating the interests of manufacturers/distributors, exhibitors and a new body of movie fans. This discourse, uncovered in extensive original research, shaped audiences' ephemeral experience of moviegoing, their repeated encounters with the fantasy worlds of "movie land," and a shared social imaginary of attraction to stories and stars. For the industry the issue was: could film promotion become a national phenomenon, producing a more or less homogeneous fan culture? For newspapers and exhibitors, by contrast: was it more often local, specific to certain social groups, making fan culture much more heterogeneous? Because women wrote or edited much of this discourse, were their targeted readers chiefly women spectators and were these new professionals seen as influential figures of the American New Woman?

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Menus for Movieland: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913-1916 (Book)
Title: Menus for Movieland: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913-1916
Author: Richard Abel
Abstract: At the turn of the past century, the main function of a newspaper was to offer “menus” by which readers could make sense of modern life and imagine how to order their daily lives. Among those menus in the mid-1910s were several that mediated the interests of movie manufacturers, distributors, exhibitors, and the rapidly expanding audience of fans. This writing about the movies arguably played a crucial role in the emergence of American popular film culture, negotiating among national, regional, and local interests to shape fans’ ephemeral experience of moviegoing, their repeated encounters with the fantasy worlds of “movieland,” and their attractions to certain stories and stars. Moreover, many of these weekend pages, daily columns, and film reviews were written and consumed by women, including one teenage girl who compiled a rare surviving set of scrapbooks. Based on extensive original research, Menus for Movieland substantially revises what moviegoing meant in the transition to what we now think of as Hollywood.
Year: 2015
Publisher: Oakland: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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