A01=Lea Jacobs
adultery
anna karenina
Author_Lea Jacobs
baby face
Category=ATF
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSF
censorship
death
early 20th century film history
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fallen woman
fallen women film
feminist theory
film and television
film melodrama
film studies
films of the late thirties
gender studies
gold diggers
hollywood
humiliations
kept woman
movie theory
movies
mppda
outcast
policies and procedures
production code administration
prostitute
prostitution
self censorship
sex and sexuality
sexual transgression
sexuality
studio relations
women and gender studies
Product details
- ISBN 9780520207905
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 1997
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The story of the fallen woman was a staple of film melodrama in the late 1920s and 1930s. In traditional plots, a woman commits a sexual transgression, usually adultery. She becomes an outcast, often a prostitute, suffering humiliations that culminate in her death. In more modern variants, the heroine is a stereotypical "kept woman," "gold digger," or wisecracking shopgirl who uses men to become rich. In The Wages of Sin, Lea Jacobs uses the fallen woman film, which served as a focal point for public criticism of the film industry, to explore Hollywood's system of self-censorship and the evolution of the rules governing representations of sexuality. Drawing on the extensive case files of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the industry trade association responsible for censorship, Jacobs focuses on six films. Her close analyses of The Easiest Way, Baby Face, Blonde Venus, Anna Karenina, Kitty Foyle, and Stella Dallas reveal the ideology of self-regulation at work and the social constraints affecting the film industry.
Lea Jacobs is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
