Early on in reading Charles Eckert’s piece “The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window,” I was struck by an association I thought I could never make: between the film industry and American agriculture. Nixon’s Farm Act of 1973 encouraged corn production into the billions of bushels, creating an uncontrollable surplus that was remedied by funneling corn into myriad new varieties of junk food; an assault on our grocery stories and arteries. Is this so dissimilar from the phenomenon Eckert described, in which the heads of industry, focused on standardizing production through the end of the 19th century, found themselves with products that had no buyers - and so, used the burgeoning film industry as a tool to introduce American consumerism? Am I the only one getting a conspiracy vibe?
American consumers - particularly female - have long been at the receiving end of a desperate “buy more” rhetoric that's insidiously formed our cultural conscience regarding beauty, self-worth, and social acceptability. Manipulative media that trickled down from the nation’s most powerful capitalists was the main tool. Movies sold stars; stars sold products. It makes me uncomfortable knowing that the guys in charge of selling refrigerators were also tied into selling movies. They say Marxist film theory is outmoded, but I'm not buying it.
American consumers - particularly female - have long been at the receiving end of a desperate “buy more” rhetoric that's insidiously formed our cultural conscience regarding beauty, self-worth, and social acceptability. Manipulative media that trickled down from the nation’s most powerful capitalists was the main tool. Movies sold stars; stars sold products. It makes me uncomfortable knowing that the guys in charge of selling refrigerators were also tied into selling movies. They say Marxist film theory is outmoded, but I'm not buying it.
Maria Laplace’s analysis of consumerism, women’s fiction and fandom with reference to Now, Voyager complicates the issue: it isn’t as though American middle class women have ever been the exploited proletariat, forced to fulfill a purchasing quota of fur coats, perfume and lipstick. Laplace repeatedly notes that women have always been the primary writers and readers of the fan magazines that have glorified stars, who Dyer calls our “idols of consumption,” in Stars: their glamorous appearances and lifestyles, the products by which they’ve achieved their looks. Her purpose here is to indicate that women’s film has been defined by women - that women’s active engagement with the literature and stars intended for them challenges the belief that the genre is a male ploy to get inside female purses. It’s both heartening and unsurprising that fandom has long been a female phenomenon - I’ve been ‘round the Tumblr block enough times to tell you that.
But it’s also troubling that women have been complicit in facilitating a material culture created to bind us, and set us against one another. It is a rhetoric that has manifested itself in racist, homophobic, and discriminatory ways in American culture and the evolution of feminism. The stars of the 1930s were benchmark examples of "feminine beauty" as defined by the white men writing their paychecks - and those men's ideas of female worth were maliciously limited. No women of color, no diverse body types. We created a standard of beauty that we exported world wide; we created a culture that saw African American children in 1954 testify that they swore that the white doll was pretty and important, and the dark colored doll was ugly and worthless.
But it’s also troubling that women have been complicit in facilitating a material culture created to bind us, and set us against one another. It is a rhetoric that has manifested itself in racist, homophobic, and discriminatory ways in American culture and the evolution of feminism. The stars of the 1930s were benchmark examples of "feminine beauty" as defined by the white men writing their paychecks - and those men's ideas of female worth were maliciously limited. No women of color, no diverse body types. We created a standard of beauty that we exported world wide; we created a culture that saw African American children in 1954 testify that they swore that the white doll was pretty and important, and the dark colored doll was ugly and worthless.
If women wrote these articles in fan magazines - fixated on shallow personal appearances - then they were upholding unproductive and insidious cultural values spread to hold us back, distract us, make us devalue ourselves and other women; in short, the ideas that today's feminism seeks to debunk. Considering the white female vote for Trump, it has not yet succeeded in doing so - and it's an uphill battle from here.
I appreciate that there was this ‘women’s circuit’ on the margins of woman’s film in the 1930s and 40s - but it may have been women melting into permanence the iron lock on our own cage. Behaving as the enthusiastic and unoffended consumers that the ‘men in charge’ had banked upon us being. After all, how much of that women’s fiction that Laplace references was written by women? How many of the film adaptations of women’s fiction were directed or written by women? Yes, there is subversive power in Bette Davis’ combined star persona and film roles - she was a true bad bitch. But that can't cancel out the even more subversive content of her films. In the context of American consumerism, Now, Voyager could be read as a two hour long treatise on the importance of diet, smart shoes and plucked eyebrows if you ever want men - and by-nature judgmental women - to like you. Call me modern, but I struggle to find the feminism in that.
I appreciate that there was this ‘women’s circuit’ on the margins of woman’s film in the 1930s and 40s - but it may have been women melting into permanence the iron lock on our own cage. Behaving as the enthusiastic and unoffended consumers that the ‘men in charge’ had banked upon us being. After all, how much of that women’s fiction that Laplace references was written by women? How many of the film adaptations of women’s fiction were directed or written by women? Yes, there is subversive power in Bette Davis’ combined star persona and film roles - she was a true bad bitch. But that can't cancel out the even more subversive content of her films. In the context of American consumerism, Now, Voyager could be read as a two hour long treatise on the importance of diet, smart shoes and plucked eyebrows if you ever want men - and by-nature judgmental women - to like you. Call me modern, but I struggle to find the feminism in that.
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