Smut, novelty, indecency: reworking a history of the early-twentieth-century American ‘stag film’

Abstract

As many film historians have noted, there are serious problems in understanding what have been labelled ‘stag films ‘during the first half of the twentieth century. While scholars have been able to use a more-or-less agreed upon definition of ‘stag films’ within the scope of histories of pornography, a crucial level of nuance is lost by grouping films from the early 1900s to 1970 under one common moniker. This article works to deconstruct traditional understandings and definitions of a ‘stag film’ by focusing on the want adverts and public announcements of American periodicals such as The Billboard between 1907 and 1930. By doing so, the article explores and complicates traditional histories of ‘stag’, finding new evidence that suggests the ‘stag film’ before 1930 was not a cohesive genre.