Hollywood's America, America's Hollywood

In recent years, Hollywood has become a rich field of scholarly inquiry. Dealing with the "dream factory" from the rise of the Kinetoscope to the flowering of the multiplex, interdisciplinary experts—in literature, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, history, American studies, and other related fields—have closely explored the growth and development of cinema over the past century. A core body of these works scrutinizes the film text, through analyses of aesthetics, production, and representation. These "thick descriptions" effectively elucidate the politics and ideological orientations of the on-screen narratives, particularly the ways in which these textual spaces reflect and reinforce the complex value systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality.¹ Another body of scholarship examines the people and processes outside the immediate circles of filmmaking. Covering such themes as censorship, promotion, exhibition, consumption, and fan activities, these works help illustrate the sociocultural impact of film narratives as well as the influence of outside forces on cinema and movie-making.²

The three books under review represent some of the newest contributions to the latter body of literature. Based on extensive primary research and cogent analysis, they cast a spotlight on different institutions that interacted with the motion picture industry. In these stimulating accounts, the cast of characters includes social reformers, intellectuals, museum curators, and in-house censors—each of whom formed a complex relationship with the movie colony. These important agents, as the authors portray them, were not faceless victims or passive subordinates of the Hollywood system. Whether collaborative or oppositional, they dealt with filmmakers and studios on their own terms, influencing the economic and cultural practices of the movie business to varying degrees. A close look at these groups and individuals does more than enhance our understanding of Hollywood's multifaceted institutional practices. These three works also reveal how different sectors of American society reinvented and enlivened communal life through negotiations with one of the nation's foremost cultural enterprise.

At first glance, it might appear odd to begin this review essay with Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America, 1873–1935. As the title suggests, Leigh Ann Wheeler's interest does not center on Hollywood history per se. Rather, she is intent on examining a group of white, middle- and upper-class women in Minneapolis who mobilized a dynamic anti-obscenity campaign during the first three and a half decades of the twentieth century. Writing about a time in which Progressive and New Era politics were reshaping the American landscape, Wheeler ably demonstrates the emergence of a Victorian-minded "politics of womanhood" that confronted changes in cultural and sexual attitudes through community formation, institutional alliance, and political activism (3). A central goal of this movement was to defend children and adolescents from what its participants regarded as obscene. Popular entertainment—particularly the movies—became a site of tense debate and discussion.

According to Wheeler, efforts to regulate obscenity first emerged in the 1870s as part of a movement primarily driven by men. Responding to the large-scale changes that swept the United States in the wake of the Civil War, male reformers, led by the likes of Anthony Comstock, strove to protect the sexual purity of women and children by way of political and social reform. Although hardly in favor of salacious tabloids and risqué stage shows, middle-class and upper-class women during this time played limited roles in these vice crusades. Constrained by essentialist notions of "true womanhood," they sought refuge and empowerment elsewhere—in local women's clubs, for example, where participants engaged in a wide variety of self-improvement activities (29).

The leadership of...