BackAt the Picture Show
Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (book in English)
- Type
- Studies
- Subject
- History of Cinema
- history of cinema, silent cinema, sociology
- Publishing Date
- 2001
- Publisher
- University of Virginia Press
- Collection
- (no collection)
- Language
- English
Dimensions
- Physical desc.
- Paperback • 272 pages • 24 €
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm) - ISBN-10
ISBN-13 - 0-8139-2082-5
978-0-8139-2082-5 - User Ratings
(0 vote)Average rating:
0 rating 
= We can do without0 rating 
= Good book0 rating 
= Excellent book0 rating 
= Unique / a referenceYour rating: -
Book Presentation:
The motion picture industry in its earliest days seemed as ephemeral as the flickering images it produced. Considered an amusement fad even by their exhibitors, movies nevertheless spread quickly from big-city vaudeville houses to towns and rural communities across the nation. Small-town audiences, looking for more than the lurid melodramas and slapstick comedies popular in cities, often lined up to see films with conservative and educational themes: scenic panoramas, biblical tableaux, newsreels, and manufacturing scenes.
In this social history of the cinema during the silent-film era, Kathryn H. Fuller charts the gradual homogenization of a diverse American movie audience as itinerant shows gave way first to nickelodeon theaters and then to more luxurious picture palaces.
Fuller suggests that fan magazines helped to reduce the distinctions between rural and urban moviegoers and created a nationwide popular culture of film consumption. Analyzing the articles, advertisements, and letters in such publications as Motion Picture Story Magazine and Photoplay, Fuller shows that these fan magazines--which initially catered to adult readers--shifted their focus by the late 1910s to young women who, entranced by Hollywood glamour, eagerly bought products endorsed by the stars.
Although the transformation of the movies into big-time entertainment had multiple sources, Fuller argues that ultimately the maturation of the film industry depended on the support of both urban and rural middle-class audiences. Providing the fullest portrait to date of the small-town audience's changing habits and desires, At the Picture Show demonstrates for the first time how a fan culture emerged in the United States, and enriches our understanding of mass media's relationship to early twentieth-century American society.
1st edition = ISBN 9781560986393 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).
> On a related topic:
Le cinéma muet italien à la croisée des arts (2022)
Collective dir. Céline Gailleurd
Le Cinéma, l'art d'une civilisation 1920-1960 (2011)
Collective dir. Daniel Banda and José Moure
Subject: History of Cinema
Silent Cinema (2019)
A Guide to Study, Research and Curatorship
by Paolo Cherchi Usai
(in English)
Subject: History of Cinema
Specters of Slapstick & Silent Film Comediennes (2018)
by Maggie Hennefeld
(in English)
Subject: History of Cinema
Pink-Slipped (2018)
What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?
by Jane M. Gaines
(in English)
Subject: History of Cinema
Histoire générale du cinéma 6 (1975)
L'art muet 1919-1929 (2. Hollywood, la fin du muet)
Subject: History of Cinema
Histoire générale du cinéma 5 (1975)
L'art muet (L'après-guerre en Europe) 1919-1929
Subject: History of Cinema
Histoire générale du cinéma 4 (1974)
Le cinéma devient un art (La Première Guerre mondiale) 1909-1920
Subject: History of Cinema
Note: A book on a slightly gray background is a book that is no longer currently published or that may be difficult to find in bookstores. The shown price is that of the book at its release, the price on the second-hand market may be very different.
A book on a beige background is a book published in a language other than French.