All that Hollywood Allows: Re-reading Gender in 1950s Melodrama

by Jackie Byars

Overview

All that Hollywood Allows explores the representation of gender in popular Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Both a work of feminist film criticism and theory and an analysis of popular culture, this provocative book examines from a cultural studies perspective top-grossing film melodramas, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, From Here to Eternity, East of Eden, Imitation of Life and Picnic.
Stereotypically viewed as a complacent and idyllic time, the 1950s were actually a time of dislocation and great social change. Jackie Byars argues that mass media texts of the period, especially films, provide evidence of society's consuming preoccupation with the domestic sphere - the nuclear family and its values - and she shows how Hollywood melodramas interpreted and extended societal debates concerning family structure, sexual divisions of labour, and gender roles. Her readings of these films assess a variety of critical methodologies and approaches to textual analysis, some central to feminist film studies and some previously bypassed by scholars in the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134910809
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/02/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jackie Byars received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and has taught radio, television, and film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bryn Mawr College, and Texas Christion University.

Table of Contents

Introduction Saying What Can’t Be Said, Reading What Must Be Read: Feminist Criticism, Melodrama, and Film Studies, Chapter One Cultural Studies: An Alternative for Feminist Film Studies, Chapter Two Re-reading Sociological Criticism: Roles, Stereotypes, and Popular Film Melodramas of the Early 1950s, Chapter Three Re-reading Narrative Structure and Gender: The “Social Problem” Film in the 1950s, Chapter Four Re-reading Psychoanalysis for Feminist Film Studies: The “Family Romance” and “the Gaze” in Female-Oriented Film Melodramas of the 1950s, Chapter Five Race, Class, and Gender: Film Melodramas of the Late 1950s, Epilogue