Naylor, AMP;
(2007)
Discourses of affect in the 1930s Hollywood horror film cycle and in its aftermath to 1943.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
My PhD is a study of discourses of affect in the 1930s Hollywood horror cycle, which ran from 1931 to 1936, and the aftermath and conclusion of disputes related to such discourses which played out in the period from 1936 to 1943. I engage in a historicist study which examines the cycle's the production, censorship and reception context in order to consider the role played by various discourses of affect in the cycle's development, and the controversy surrounding it. I examine in particular how the wider cinema censorship crisis of the 1930s played into the cycle, concentrating on case studies rather than broader overviews in order to draw out the disputes and competing discourses regarding horror's affects, pleasures and alleged negative effects which were at stake in the marketing, reception and censorship of horror films. Discussion of horror's affect was pursued from two different poles of interest, by those sites wishing to analyse it as a cinematic pleasure in order to reproduce it, and those wishing to isolate it as an undesirable quality in order to moderate or even excise it from cinema. My thesis intervenes in debates in several specific fields: genre studies, 1930s horror histories, and censorship scholarship. My work has been informed by the recent genre studies work of Rick Altman and others, and I aim to offer a contribution to this strand of scholarship by analysing the effect of censorship and media controversy upon genre-making in the case of 1930s horror. I also argue that existing histories of the 1930s cycle can be substantially modified by the application of recent work in both genre studies and censorship studies. My archival investigation has also led me to a number of historical observations which challenge existing scholarship, which I call attention to during the course of the thesis.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | Discourses of affect in the 1930s Hollywood horror film cycle and in its aftermath to 1943 |
| Identifier: | PQ ETD:593361 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Thesis digitised by ProQuest. |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1446035 |
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