Female Representation In Hollywood's Woman's Films Of The 1930s And 1940s

As a study of popular cultural theory and criticism, the dissertation attempts to answer the question "In what ways can a piece of popular culture be said to respond to — to shape and be shaped by — its historical moment?" Specifically speaking, how did Hollywood's woman's films of the 1930s and 1940s come to mean in their social sense? Or how were American women represented in the woman's films within the dynamics of cultural hegemony, the interaction between the dominant culture and the emergent culture of the 1930s and 1940s? The answer, preliminarily, is confined in their effect on two particular periods of history — the 1930s and 1940s.The dissertation is composed of six parts:The introduction expounds the significance of the study of Hollywood's woman's films to offer a new approach to comprehend American women's paradoxical transformation in both family and work. The limitations in the study are pointed out at the same time.Chapter One presents a theoretical framework of development on popular culture and textual analysis as the research method applied in this dissertation for the film study. Instead of providing a fully elaborated cultural theory, the dissertation is intended to introduce the theoretical perspective briefly in the light of the influential currents in popular cultural criticism, especially Raymond Williams' theory on the social definition of culture and the concepts of the dominant, residual, and emergent cultures within cultural hegemony.Chapter Two probes into the historical context of the 1930s and 1940s in America, which are examined in two regions, each of which progressively leads to a comprehension of the woman's films: first, a general historical survey of the period and a closer look at the paradoxical patterns in family and work among American women that prevailed during the 1930s and 1940s to trace the fundamental currents of social life as experienced by American women; and second, a brief examination of the position of the capital of American film industry — Hollywood during the two...