Heroes and Happy Endings: Class, Gender, and Nation in Popular Film and Fiction in Interwar Britain UK Edition Contributor(s): Grandy, Christine (Author) |
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ISBN: 0719090938 ISBN-13: 9780719090936 Publisher: Manchester University Press OUR PRICE: $123.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: August 2014 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Social History - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - Literary Criticism |
Dewey: 302.234 |
LCCN: 2015373248 |
Series: Studies in Popular Culture |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6" W x 9" (1.15 lbs) 264 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Cultural Region - Ireland |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: This highly anticipated study examines the content of low and middle-brow film and fiction that was widely consumed by Britons in the turbulent decades between the wars. Departing from a prevailing emphasis on mass culture as both escapist and largely democratic, Christine Grandy offers a fresh perspective by noting the enduring importance of class and gender divisions in narratives read and watched by the British working and middle classes. Heroes and happy endings examines an impressive number of popular films and novels, providing a comprehensive understanding of both the popular culture that arose in the 1920s and 1930s and the themes that persisted within it. Organised around the heroes, villains, and love-interests that populated these works, this book ends with an innovative look at the role that censorship played in shaping popular narratives in the period. Grandy demonstrates that contemporary concerns about ex-soldiers, profiteers, and working and voting women all found their way into the construction, consumption and censorship of masculine protagonists, scheming villains and swooning love-interests as they lived on the page and the screen. An important and highly readable work for scholars and students interested in cultural and social history, as well as media and film studies, this book is sure to shift our understanding of the role of mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s. |