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Love and Marriage Across Social Classes in American Cinema

  • Book
  • © 2017

Overview

Authors:
  1. Stephen Sharot

    1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv, Israel

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  • First comprehensive and systematic historical survey of American films centering on cross-class romance
  • Outlines in detail the most important narrative patterns and thematic concerns of cross-class romance films, emphasizing both continuities and changes in these patterns and concerns over the decades
  • Contextualizes the films with reference to the structure and operations of the American film industry, their reception, the personas of the stars who appeared in them, and the social realities of working life, dating, and marriage in American society

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xix
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  2. Love, Marriage and Class

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 1-19

  3. Before the Movies: The Cross-Class Romance in Fiction

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 21-48

  4. From Attraction and the One-Reeler to the Feature

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 49-81

  5. Sexual Exploitation and Class Conflict

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 83-119

  6. Consumerism and Ethnicity

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 121-162

  7. The Cross-Class Romance in the Depression

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 163-194

  8. Male Seducers and Female Gold-Diggers

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 195-226

  9. The End of the Golden Era and After

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 227-258

  10. Conclusion: Formula, Genre, and Social Experience

    • Stephen Sharot
    Pages 259-266

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 267-273
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Keywords

About this book

This book is the first comprehensive and systematic study of cross-class romance films throughout the history of American cinema. It provides vivid discussions of these romantic films, analyses their normative patterns and thematic concerns, traces how they were shaped by inequalities of gender and class in American society, and explains why they were especially popular from World War I through the roaring twenties and the Great Depression. In the vast majority of cross-class romance films the female is poor or from the working class, the male is wealthy or from the upper class, and the romance ends successfully in marriage or the promise of marriage.

   

Reviews

“Stephen Sharot, professor of sociology and anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, presents here the first comprehensive and systematic study of cross-class romance films throughout the history of American cinema. … Love and Marriage Across Social Classes is a great journey.” (John A. Dick, Marriage, Families & Spirituality, Vol. 29 (1), 2023)

“This book is useful for American cinema scholars for its encyclopedic coverage of these films and for the patterns it observes across the quantity of films it explores. Sharot also provides enough context of both developments in the film industry … . Accomplishing much more than merely a history of a prominent film subgenre, the book joins the complex historical and sociological conversation about class and gender in twentieth-century America.” (Paul Arras, Journal of Popular Culture, 2018)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Stephen Sharot

About the author

Stephen Sharot (D.Phil. Oxford) is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His research focuses on representations of class and their relationships to gender in popular cinema. He is the author of five books and numerous articles in the sociology of religion.    

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Love and Marriage Across Social Classes in American Cinema

  • Authors: Stephen Sharot

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41799-8

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-82432-1Published: 11 July 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-41799-8Published: 18 November 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIX, 273

  • Number of Illustrations: 26 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: American Cinema and TV, Genre, Gender Studies

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