Early Women Stars

by Negra, Diane; Bean, Jennifer M.

• ISBN13: 9780822365150
• ISBN10: 0822365154
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr (Tx)

Summary

This special issue of Camera Obscura, which gathers work from leading feminists in film studies, takes a fresh look at early film and the creative ventures of women performers. While much of the existing scholarship of the silent era focuses on film form and industrial organization, the essays collected here aim to recover women's roles in the early decades of cinema. They do so in part by considering the ways in which social and ideological economies of the industry contributed to the complex semiotics of film stardom in the period. Essays focus on figures across the wide international lexicon of stardom, including stunt star Pearl White, iconic French performer Musidora, imported European vamp Pola Negri, pixie heroine Colleen Moore, and Chinese star Xuan Jinglin. Other articles revisit figures, such as Mary Pickford and Greta Garbo, whose stardom appears to be self-evident but proves more complex than previous accounts have suggested. In this collection, early female stars function as a medium through which authors reconceptualize feminist film history and historiography.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Female Stardom and Early Film History	1	(8)
Diane Negra
Technologies of Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body	9	(50)
Jennifer M. Bean
Screening Musidora: Inscribing Indeterminacy in Film History	59	(24)
Vicki Callahan
Greta Garbo and Silent Cinema: The Actress As Art Deco Icon	83	(30)
Lucy Fischer
History in Miniature: Colleen Moore's Dolhouse and Historical Recollection	113	(46)
Amelie Hastie
Immigrant Stardom in Imperial America: Pola Negri and the Problem of Typology	159	(38)
Diane Negra
Oh, ``Doll Divine'': Mary Pickford, Masquerade, and the Pedophilic Gaze	197	(32)
Gaylyn Studlar
An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: The Actress As Vernacular Embodiment in Early Chinese Film Culture	229	(33)
Zhang Zhen
Books Received	262	(2)
Volume Index	264