Classical Hollywood Cinema
1
Kate Woodford
Modernity, Consumerism and ‘The Women’
In the 1920s, ‘modernity’ swept through America, with a enormous economic shift that transformed the pre world war one country from a society still rooted in a predominately agricultural small town past into the worlds primary industrialized urban nation with the formation of the city. It was through corporate capitalism, mass production and consumerism and the process of the mass media that this was done. Where Paris was THE city of the 19th Century, the 1920s New York city skyline boasted an arena for the circulation of bodies and goods, and the exercise of a consumer driven era, and it was women that were taking on these new roles of the consumer. Gone were the days of the 19th century cult of domesticity and in its place emerged the ‘new woman’ of the 1920s. Opportunities in all walks of life emerged for women, the possibility of work outside the home emerged and female secretaries sprung up throughout the new cities, thus enabling them to go shopping and become socially visible. This new ‘Female Marketplace’ fueled women’s desires for power, freedom and pleasure. Companies took advantage of this desire by advertising the purchase and consumption of mass-produced commodities such as cosmetics, fashion and home furnishings, saying that they were life’s ultimate gratification’s and worthy female activities. As Stewart Ewen suggests;
Women were being educated to look at themselves as things to be created competitively against other women, painted and sculpted with the aids of the modern market. (EWEN, 1976: 172.)
2
This cultural revision of femininity was conducted primarily through the mass media. This mass media came in the force of the Hollywood Film Industry, which responded to the ‘needs’ of women both as consumers and as the ‘modern’ woman. It is in this essay
Kate Woodford
Modernity, Consumerism and ‘The Women’
In the 1920s, ‘modernity’ swept through America, with a enormous economic shift that transformed the pre world war one country from a society still rooted in a predominately agricultural small town past into the worlds primary industrialized urban nation with the formation of the city. It was through corporate capitalism, mass production and consumerism and the process of the mass media that this was done. Where Paris was THE city of the 19th Century, the 1920s New York city skyline boasted an arena for the circulation of bodies and goods, and the exercise of a consumer driven era, and it was women that were taking on these new roles of the consumer. Gone were the days of the 19th century cult of domesticity and in its place emerged the ‘new woman’ of the 1920s. Opportunities in all walks of life emerged for women, the possibility of work outside the home emerged and female secretaries sprung up throughout the new cities, thus enabling them to go shopping and become socially visible. This new ‘Female Marketplace’ fueled women’s desires for power, freedom and pleasure. Companies took advantage of this desire by advertising the purchase and consumption of mass-produced commodities such as cosmetics, fashion and home furnishings, saying that they were life’s ultimate gratification’s and worthy female activities. As Stewart Ewen suggests;
Women were being educated to look at themselves as things to be created competitively against other women, painted and sculpted with the aids of the modern market. (EWEN, 1976: 172.)
2
This cultural revision of femininity was conducted primarily through the mass media. This mass media came in the force of the Hollywood Film Industry, which responded to the ‘needs’ of women both as consumers and as the ‘modern’ woman. It is in this essay