Proto-cinephilia: retheorizing working class women’s moviegoing pre-1920

Abstract

ABSTRACT Where are the women within historical and theoretical discourses on the cinephilic phenomenon? Christian Keathley boasts that the cinephile’s experience draws its intensity partially from the fact that ‘it cannot be reduced or tamed by interpretation’ (2005, 9). I question whether the female cinephile is allotted that same experience, ‘untamed’ as it were. Both sides of cinephilia’s ‘Janus face’ have been known to close their eyes to the female cinephile, or otherwise enforce a binary between her consumerist ‘fan’ participation and the traditionally masculine, legitimately ‘untamed’ enthusiasm of the male cinephile. My article raises the question of whether we can look to working class women’s moviegoing practices pre-1920 as new ground for theoretical and historical discourse on cinephilia. Before widespread efforts to ‘uplift’ cinema became more standardized, and before critical attention to cinema as an art form became ubiquitous, there could be fruitful ground to honor and expand upon cinephilia’s ‘radical potentialities’ by repositioning cinephilic imperatives like the cinephile’s ritual, ‘panoramic perception’, ‘the privileged moment’, and ‘the cinephilic anecdote’ in a different historical context. This article insists on new ontological territory in the study of cinephilia to include marginalized women as active participants in cinema’s early cultural production.