2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Women's Modernity and the Hearst Media Empire
| Project/Area Number |
19K20579
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Review Section |
Basic Section 80030:Gender studies-related
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| Research Institution | University of Tsukuba |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Film History / Newspapers History / Women's History / Film Promotion |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The research allowed me to digitize a large number of newspapers only available on microforms to better understand the extend and context of film promotion in Hearst newspapers and how film content and women's content intersected. Based on this archival collection, I have argued that the close proximity of film content and the society pages in Hearst newspapers contributed to granting film and filmgoing a cachet of sophistication and respectability. Particularly, I have shown that film stars and society women were photographed and framed in similar fashion, and that their portraits were positioned side by side in newspapers to enhance the conflation of the two. This was only possible by looking at actual layout of entire newspapers rather than databases.
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| Free Research Field |
Film Studies
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| Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
This research an important first step in better understanding how filmgoing was widely perceived and advertised as a female activity, and why film studios devoted a large part of their resources to producing made specifically for a female audience.
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