Pin-Up at the time of the pre-Code (1930-1934)
of Melanie Drinkineau
Publisher : Editions Lett Motif (March 19, 2019)
Language : French
Number of pages : 520 pages
The pin-up is everywhere. Even before the word was invented to refer to the pretty girls who adorned the rooms of soldiers in the Second World War, it was essential in popular culture. From the Gibson Girls to Katy Perry via Marilyn Monroe, she is always present!
But the pin-up is much more than a woman-object. This book intends to look behind the poster and the fantasy, and to explore what, in this glamorous figure, reveals the tensions between the genres. We propose here to examine from all angles, from a culturalist perspective, this essential figure, to consider it as a tool for analyzing gender relations, capable of detecting the mechanisms, sometimes subtly concealed, of male domination. To understand the pin-up, and what in her crosses the ages, we will rely on a key period, both for the history of cinema and for the representation of women: the cinema of the 1930s in the United States. and in particular the so-called “Hollywood pre-Code” period, those few years preceding the strict application of the Hays Code, between 1930 and 1934, often presented as an enchanted parenthesis.
By analyzing several pin-up archetypes, from Betty Boop to Jane Parker, including actresses Jean Harlow and Mae West, the ambition of this book is to deconstruct the fantasy of the pin-up as a woman-object but also to nuance the vision of a pre-Code where everything would be permitted.
A specialist in pre-Code, gender representations and gender cinema, Mélanie Boissonneau has a doctorate in cinematographic and audiovisual studies and a teacher-researcher. Member of the IRCAV (Institute for Research on Cinema and Audiovisual), she published in 2010 with Armand Colin Les Pin-up au cinema , co-written with Laurent Jullier, co-edited the collective work Tim Burton, Childhood Horrors published by L'Harmattan in 2016. She is currently preparing the publication of collective works on the Hammer studios and a symposium on John Carpenter.