Tim Snelson

'From grade B thrillers to deluxe chillers': prestige horror, female audiences, and allegories of spectatorship in The Spiral Staircase (1946)

This paper examines the prestige ‘shocker’ The Spiral Staircase (1946), suggesting that it challenges the perception of the decline in quality in the horror genre in the 1940s, as well as assumptions in scholarship that the genre has historically been addressed to a male audience. Whilst the film is usually discussed as a womans film, on release it was centred as part of a distinct shift in the horror genre from ‘grade B thrillers to deluxe chillers’. The reclassification of films like The Spiral Staircase as womans films could be seen as an attempt to make text fit established theory – the film is addressed to a female audience and thus cannot be a horror film. Through an analysis of textual and extra-textual discourses, including reception and publicity materials, this paper will challenge the pervasive theories that suggest female pleasure or identification is unattainable in horror spectatorship. Whilst the theory is that women refuse to look at horror, averting their eyes or turning away, in 1946 The Spiral Staircase asked a predominantly female audience to take a closer look and question the very act of looking at the cinema screen.

FROM JUKE BOX BOYS TO BOBBY SOX BRIGADE: Female youth, moral panics and subcultural style in wartime times square

Through its analysis of the complex discursive struggle over Times Squares – and later Americas – ‘bobby sox brigade’, this article reintroduces young women into historical and theoretical accounts of youth culture. In doing so it challenges subculture and moral panic theories for their over-emphasis on working-class masculinity and their inability to account for the complexity and localized specificity – both historical and geographic – that such case studies command. The bobby soxer and the conflicting debates she engendered must be understood as a product of wartime contingency and in relation to the contested discourses within and between different localized contexts and media forms; the bobby soxer was simultaneously positioned as the key problem of wartime and promise of the post-war prosperity ahead. This article ultimately proposes a theoretical framework focusing on localized and contested terrains of discourse, appropriate to (sub)cultural activity in times of war and other disruptions.

Resisting relocation and reconceptualising authenticity: the experiential and emotional values of the Southbank Undercroft, London, UK

Abstract In 2013 the Southbank Centre proposed the redevelopment of a complex of buildings including a famous skate spot known as the Undercroft. The 2013–14 campaign to protect the Undercroft drew strongly on heritage arguments, encapsulated in the tagline, ‘You Can’t Move History: You Can Secure the Future’. The campaign, which was ultimately successful as the Undercroft remains open and skateable, provides a lens through which three key areas of heritage theory and practice can be examined. Firstly, the campaign uses the term ‘found space’ to reconceptualise authenticity and places a greater emphasis on embodied experiences of, and emotional attachments to, historic urban spaces. Secondly, the concept of found space opens up a discussion surrounding the role of citizen expertise in understanding the experiential and emotional values of historic urban spaces. Finally, the paper concludes by considering the place for found space and citizen expertise within current heritage discourse and practice. The paper is accompanied by the award-winning film ‘You Can’t Move History’ which was produced by the research team in collaboration with Paul Richards from BrazenBunch and directed by skater, turned filmmaker, Winstan Whitter.

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

This paper analyses the discursive struggle engendered by the widespread revival of the occult in America during the Second World War. It begins by analysing middlebrow press reports, which used this interest in the occult to spread patriotic messages whilst simultaneously dismissing it as a symptom of womens wartime anxieties. The paper moves on to argue that this complex engagement with ‘popular occultism’ also manifested in ‘escapist’ forms such as literature, radio and cinema. It focuses particularly on a cycle of ‘serious’ ghost films which—like the Ouija board—provided a medium that addressed womens feelings of uncertainty and loss, whilst drawing attention away from the violent eradication of bodies. However, analysis of the production and reception of Paramounts The Uninvited —‘the first serious story of spirit influence’—highlights counter-hegemonic strategies within these films, evinced by complaints to the studio and industry regulator over The Uninviteds ‘dangerous’ influences on women.

‘They’ll Be Dancing in the Aisles!’: Youth audiences, cinema exhibition and the mid-1930s swing boom

In switching the analytic focus from the sites and strategies of production to those of exhibition and consumption, this article challenges dominant understandings of American cinema culture in the second half of the 1930s. Adopting historical reception studies and programming research approaches, it challenges the idea of the dedifferentiated family audience by demonstrating how a number of metropolitan first-run cinemas and, resultantly, major regional and national exhibition circuits, changed their programming strategies to incorporate the demands and rituals of a committed market of young swing fans. With live music declared ‘the most sought after theatre attractions’ by 1938, the elevation of ‘name’ swing bands and bandleaders to cinema programmes’ ‘A’ attractions undermined Hollywood’s ‘one programme for one audience’ policy and challenged the studios’ hegemony in controlling top product.

Delinquent daughters: Hollywood's war effort and the ‘juvenile delinquency picture’ cycle

This paper examines a short-lived cycle of ‘juvenile delinquency pictures’ that have been almost entirely ignored in scholarship on the teen film, perhaps in part because they focus on female rather than male youth. Whilst individually unremarkable, collectively these films were central to political debates about the role of Hollywood in wartime. This paper maps the widespread discursive struggles between Hollywood, the middlebrow press, industry regulators, and various government agencies over the production of this cycle. It moves on to analyse the New York reception of these films, highlighting how this ‘cycle of sensation’ was debated in relation to the very local contexts of New Yorks ‘bobby soxers’ and ‘victory girls’ and the strategies to police them in and around Times Square. It demonstrates that focusing on the localized and contested terrain of discourses surrounding historically situated media cycles reveals the complexity and local specificity required of micro-historical enquiry.