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‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals

Lisa Smithstead

The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals

Swansea University Author: Lisa Smithstead

Abstract

This chapter explores children's film magazines as a particular subsection of the film periodical industry, considering how it conceptualised and addressed child readers in Britain in the interwar period. By comparing and contrasting archival examples of children’s film periodicals drawn primar...

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Published in: The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals
Published: Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2023
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa60759
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first_indexed 2022-09-14T08:14:01Z
last_indexed 2023-01-13T19:21:07Z
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spelling 2022-09-14T09:14:02.5117017 v2 60759 2022-08-05 ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260 Lisa Smithstead Lisa Smithstead true false 2022-08-05 AMED This chapter explores children's film magazines as a particular subsection of the film periodical industry, considering how it conceptualised and addressed child readers in Britain in the interwar period. By comparing and contrasting archival examples of children’s film periodicals drawn primarily from the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (BDCM) in Exeter, the chapter illuminates some key distinctions in the way male and female children were addressed by the extra-textual cultures of cinemagoing. It considers how young viewers were trained to read film narratives through extra-textual media, but also how they were encouraged to read film culture more broadly through a gendered lens by engaging with the distinct multimedia format of the film periodical. I argue that gender-specific children’s magazines served both overlapping and distinct functions in training their young readerships. Boy readers were encouraged to access and understand cinema culture primarily through genre and representations of rituals of adult masculinity, and girl readers were encouraged to connect film culture to broader practices of femininity and modernity focused on etiquette, fashion, and heterosexual courtship. In analysing these overlaps and distinctions, the chapter sheds new light on an under-researched section of British cinema audience in this period and presents a fresh interrogation of ephemeral material often side-lined rather than centralised in the study of historical cinema cultures. Book chapter The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh 1 6 2023 2023-06-01 COLLEGE NANME Media COLLEGE CODE AMED Swansea University 2022-09-14T09:14:02.5117017 2022-08-05T13:27:57.2318410 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR Lisa Smithstead 1
title ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
spellingShingle ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
Lisa Smithstead
title_short ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
title_full ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
title_fullStr ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
title_full_unstemmed ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
title_sort ‘Young Film Friends’: Gendering Children’s Film Culture in Interwar Film Periodicals
author_id_str_mv 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260
author_id_fullname_str_mv 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260_***_Lisa Smithstead
author Lisa Smithstead
author2 Lisa Smithstead
format Book chapter
container_title The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals
publishDate 2023
institution Swansea University
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
document_store_str 0
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description This chapter explores children's film magazines as a particular subsection of the film periodical industry, considering how it conceptualised and addressed child readers in Britain in the interwar period. By comparing and contrasting archival examples of children’s film periodicals drawn primarily from the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (BDCM) in Exeter, the chapter illuminates some key distinctions in the way male and female children were addressed by the extra-textual cultures of cinemagoing. It considers how young viewers were trained to read film narratives through extra-textual media, but also how they were encouraged to read film culture more broadly through a gendered lens by engaging with the distinct multimedia format of the film periodical. I argue that gender-specific children’s magazines served both overlapping and distinct functions in training their young readerships. Boy readers were encouraged to access and understand cinema culture primarily through genre and representations of rituals of adult masculinity, and girl readers were encouraged to connect film culture to broader practices of femininity and modernity focused on etiquette, fashion, and heterosexual courtship. In analysing these overlaps and distinctions, the chapter sheds new light on an under-researched section of British cinema audience in this period and presents a fresh interrogation of ephemeral material often side-lined rather than centralised in the study of historical cinema cultures.
published_date 2023-06-01T04:19:08Z
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score 11.013082

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