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Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast
Selling Out Santa: A Deep Dive into Post-War Cinema with Dr. Vaughn Joy
00:49:57
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a history podcast. The show all about United States history delivered to you in the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite sized history. Hey everyone. We're still celebrating Christmas in the civics and coffee household with this week's guest, Dr. Vaughn Joy, as we discuss her book Selling Out Santa, a case study of Hollywood Christmas films released in the post war period between 1946 and 1961. I hope you all enjoy the conversation.
- [00:50]
B
Welcome everyone.
- [00:51]
A
Joining me today is Dr. Von Joy shirt. She is an independent researcher of Hollywood history, media literacy and post war culture. She is also the designer and administrator of the public scholarship website Black and White and Red all over, where her weekly review Roulette newsletter is available, among other public scholarly resources. She is also the author of Selling Out Hollywood Christmas Films in the age of McCarthy, which will be the focus of our conversation today. While welcome Dr. Joy.
- [01:25]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I we have been longtime social media mutuals, but it's very nice to meet you.
- [01:33]
A
Nice to meet you as well. I'm so happy to have you on. Let's dive into this fantastic scholarship. So what was it about cinema that drew your interest as a historian and.
- [01:45]
B
A researcher so much? Honestly, I actually switched into film for my PhD, which I don't recommend switching your entire kind of source approach and methodology for a PhD but I have always studied pop culture in various iterations and different eras. I used to be a classicist, so I studied pop culture through literature and drama in the ancient Mediterranean. And there's. And then I studied comic books and I've just kind of bounced around through different types of media and something about film that draws together the literary aspects of literature and drama and the performative aspect of drama, the artistic sides of comic books, things like that. It just has so many different aspects, avenues of analysis. You can look at it through the script and literally, or you can look at the composition of shots. You could like there are just so many influences. And then with cinema history especially, you can look at what led up to the film, what influences on the story and the people and the hundreds of hands making the film, what happened there. You can look at the actual production or you can look at it like the life cycle of the film after production, how it was marketed, how people received it, then how has it been received since and today. And all of those have just such fascinating layers to dig into. So I was drawn to it. Kind of the pinnacle of pop culture.
- [03:29]
A
Well, and you, in selling out Santa, you. You kind of share in your opening how the Christmas holiday has kind of served to exhibit this idealized version of values. And so I'm wondering, can you expand on this and share how the holiday has evolved to kind of meet any given moment?
- [03:49]
B
Yeah. So that was the other, the other side of the coin from the cinema is the, the Christmas. How did we get there? And I honestly, I. I chose Christmas because I loved the Christmas films from this post war period. But as I was doing my research, I realized like exactly that, that it is this, this incredible avenue in American history for idealizing. And there are lots of scholars who talk about this. Stephen Nissenbaum is the kind of primary scholar on American Christmas that I would point to. And he conceives of Christmas as, as this cultural entity that is omnipresent in American history that can really spark people so spark individuals to reflect on their life where they are, what they have done, who they want to be. It. It has that power as a holiday and we also embrace that at a. At a societal level and a national level and in our culture. So there, there are different ways that it can prompt these reflections and also actions. 1863, we get our first depiction of Santa from Thomas Nast, in which Santa is delivering gifts to the Union soldiers. And that's such an iconic presentation of Christmas that says so much more about our national identity and the values that we hold, the trust and faith in the Union army and how it equates to American ideals and an American promise. And we just like. Christmas is always a lens that we can read these American values through because it is largely in American culture and American history, a secular civic holiday in the public sphere, much more than a religious holiday.
- [05:43]
A
Well, and you talk about, you know, your, your book kind of focuses on Christmas and Christmas movies, but it, it's a part of a larger conversation and, and a larger kind of genre. And so can you talk. Your book really engages in the existing conversation regarding genre studies and how Christmas is different from like horror or science fiction.
- [06:08]
B
So, so genre studies I find really fascinating because I both, if you, if you read Review Roulette, you will know that I have a very complicated relationship with genre studies. I both believe they are. I mean, I wrote a book I on them, so I believe that they're incredibly useful. But I also kind of believe they don't exist because genre is so flexible. And it is what you kind of say it is. You can, you can mix and match and decide what constitutes a genre. And that flexibility can really help us narrow in on very interesting things. So with science fiction films, a lot of them have very political overtones and undertones and sometimes it's very overt messaging, like the Blob is pretty overt messaging about our relationship with nature. Or they can be less overt. And then like horror study is also very political genre. So a lot of genre studies focus on the political especially. And what I try to do with my book is start with the political. There's a lot of politics in the book, but it's also an American studies approach of bringing in the, the social, the cultural, the economic, the kind of more holistic version of those genre studies to think about. Where, where are we in the post war period and how does that present moment influence the films that now are classics? The classic American Christmas films all come from this post war period. So that's what I'm looking to do with the genre study here is see how far we can push it, honestly.
- [07:53]
A
Yeah, well, and speaking of that, right, so you talk about this post war period. You intentionally chose to focus your research on that 15 year period. So what motivated this decision and why do you think it's important in kind of understanding America's evolution?
- [08:14]
B
It's a great question and there are two answers. The easy one is that historians love round numbers. We like, we just, we really like something we can conceptualize as like this is like what I call the long 1950s. A little bit before, a little bit after. How does it encompass this decade? My supervisor used to say historians love a rule of three. And this is three five year periods or like three phases is how I really conceive of it in the book. So that's the simple kind of human answer. The better answer is that this 15 year period is from 1946 to 1961 and is bookended with two Capra films. And that was something I could not pass up. The chance to have a comparative study of one director at the start and the end, open and close with how did he experience this period? And starting from a film like It's a wonderful life in 46, which most Americans would agree. Well, maybe I, I bet a lot would now say like Home Alone or something is like the American Christmas film. But it, it's, It's a Wonderful Life. It's like just such a, an iconic mid century film and post war film. And it closes with pocket full Of Miracles, which I bet most people have never heard of because it was a film so poorly received that it ended Capper's career. And going from that height to that depth, it's, it's just a very good story to tell. And that's what we do as historians. We tell a story. So that's, that's what I went with there.
- [09:56]
A
Well, and speaking of the classic American Christmas, American film, A Wonderful Life, many people might be surprised to learn that it actually went under FBI investigation. So how and why did the FBI decide to investigate a Hollywood classic, It's a Wonderful Life?
- [10:17]
B
So it's really interesting. They, they investigated a bunch of films. The FBI had this, this internal report, this memo that they were keeping for about 15 years called communist infiltration in the motion picture industry. And they were looking at all sorts of things like unions and organizations and individuals, ties that people have outside of the film industry, all of those things, but also films themselves. And in 47, there were eight films that they had short write ups about about how they were potentially communist subversion. And one of them was It's a Wonderful Life. Another was the Best Years of Our Lives, which I talk about in the book. In comparison to It's a Wonderful Life. And to me, in my idea of patriotism, these two films are some of the most patriotic cinema we have because they are so. They're both so loving to the American people by acknowledging the hardships that they've gone through in the first half of the 20th century. And I really think both films are love letters to them and also requests to kind of keep going, keep sacrificing, keep working through the trauma that they experienced over the last 45 years. And they're just beautiful. They're, they're very beautiful films. But the FBI had a problem with this. And for It's a Wonderful Life specifically, they said that it maligned the upper class and that it painted Potter as a Scrooge like character and that was unfair to bankers. And it's a pretty terrible reading of the film. It's not what it's about. Of course, Potter is like Scrooge because it is a modern American twist on A Christmas Carol where, like, what if we focus on Bob Cratchit in Jimmy Stewart's character George Bailey instead of Scrooge? And that's not a bad thing. It's a really good thing actually to think about. How is our economic system hurting people? How can we improve it to not hurt people, not hurt communities? How can we prop up communities so that they can thrive without the need of a. An even larger government, really. And yeah, that was a problem. That was a problem for them. FBI wrote about that.
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A
And what was it about films in the post war period that kind of prompted such concern from lawmakers and federal agents?
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B
So this is a really good question. It seemingly kind of comes out of nowhere that everyone's focused on Hollywood. But Hollywood in World War II became incredibly important. Part of the war effort was making pro American propaganda. And Frank Capra served by making the why We Fight series. And cinema was used both for the troops for training purposes and also for the people at home to rally them to support the troops. It was also used to kind of influence public opinion, particularly about Russia, that they were positive allies to have. And then the war ended and some people were like, oh, this is a really powerful propaganda machine. What do we do with that? And I do think that some people were genuinely worried, genuinely concerned that if Hollywood fell into the wrong hands, then we could influence public opinion towards communism. And that was terrifying for a lot of people. And like, fair enough, it's post war period, understood there were some other people who wanted to use that fear to harness Hollywood. And this, this comes up in the HUAC testimony of James K. McInnes. He's talking to Chairman J. Parnell Thomas about the potential for Hollywood to be a pro American propaganda machine, to make films that would be shown for free in schools and churches and around the country with, quote, unquote, their idea of pro American messaging. So it becomes this question of now that we have this weapon, not unlike the atomic bomb, now that we have this weapon, what do we do with it? And that's a huge question in the post war period on a lot of fronts of reckoning with, like, this is the new world Order. What do we do with it?
- [15:09]
A
And you also discuss how Hollywood shifted its storytelling in Christmas films from kind of looking at those larger systemic issues to kind of more interpersonal. And so I'm wondering, can you expand on this a little bit and kind of go into, I think we've kind of touched on it a little bit here and there in some past answers, but can you expand on this and what motivated that shift?
- [15:33]
B
Sure. So I argue that films are going from this Dickensian view in It's a Wonderful Life and Warren Films from 1947 to these simple kind of one plot narratives that are largely rom coms or rely on, or center on kind of interpersonal issues and don't consider the larger world outside of things. And I think that this is Partially because those are safe narratives. You won't be called out. The FBI isn't investigating your film if you don't say anything in your film, if it's. If it's just a very simplistic story. So it's safe. And this is a period of extreme tension and suspicion and fear. So filmmakers want to play it safe. Bankers want to play it safe. They don't want to fund films that could potentially get them called into a HUAC interview. And then the other reason is a more cultural kind of understandable, especially today, more understandable reason that it was hard. It was a scary, scary time. The nuclear age ushered in so much of that fear and suspicion and tension. And people wanted escapism. You don't want to think about the possibility of another nation nuking us. You don't like if. If you're looking for entertainment you don't want. And I think that's a fully fair thing that I've been advocating for a lot recently, that it's very important to have your escapism and to take times to just nourish yourself with lovely little stories that feel good. And we get a lot of lovely little stories that feel good in the 1950s because people needed it. And I think that there, There, both of those answers are true at the same time. People didn't know if they could make more critical films. And obviously there are still a lot of critical films in the 1950s. It's just that the majority of them, and specifically the Christmas films, are not these challenging narratives. There's also an element of the economic that I talk about a bit in the book, too, that people are doing better. So they don't need stories about impoverished neighbors and communities. They. They don't need that aspect of the Dickensian part as much. The average kind of white American audience member at a cinema is better off. So that also changes the dynamic of what goes into a film.
- [18:11]
A
Well, and then kind of speaking of those scarier times in Hollywood, I think most people are going to be familiar with the Hollywood blacklist that resulted from the HUAC investigations. But what are some other ways that HUAC kind of influenced Hollywood's filmmaking decisions? And what are some films that kind of illustrate this?
- [18:35]
B
Yeah, so I think the fear really goes a long way. I think the fear is most of the answer because the blacklist is. Is this looming threat that you will never work again. But there was also a gray list where you were on the way to the blacklist. And that was a scary place to be. Cause you never knew you never knew if your name was gonna be called up or put on a list or written in the red channel like you. You never knew. So that that fear, I think, really pushed people to, as I said, change their tune and have more simplistic narratives. A good example of that is kind of the shift into social conservatism of domesticity. So there's lots of fear in this period, as I'm saying. And one way to confront that was the idea of domestic containment. Where we had our foreign policy of containment abroad was containing the communist threat. The domestic equivalent, the cultural domestic equivalent, was the idea of domestic containment. In that in your home, your immediate domestic sphere, you could control your family, you could control what appliances you buy, you could control your interactions in the home. Ideally, obviously you can't really do that, but there was a perception that you could. And that's, that's where this nuclear family idea comes from, is that if we can stabilize the home, then we don't have to worry about the things that we can't control because that's our sphere of influence. And these films lean into that a lot in a kind of multi layer kind of political way that that is a push for HUAC of containing the political and the social and the cultural all into like the family unit. Films in this period shift from like Miracle on 34th street in 47 to Holiday Affair in 49 are the examples that I'll use. Miracle on 34th street is about Santa Claus and a Macy's. We're familiar with the story, roughly, but the dynamic in it is that the family dynamic is that Maureen o' Hara is a single mother who is divorced, not widowed from the war, but divorced and has a high level job at Macy's flagship store in Manhattan. And she has a daughter who she is raising to be a strong, independent woman who doesn't believe in myths or men, right? And gradually we kind of knock down her barriers and she has a love interest who softens her edges and the little girl is just wishing for a dad and a family and a suburban home. And ultimately like we get that at the end, right? So we have this, this happy heteronormative family ending in a suburb very mid century, but also with a super agential mom. And it's not kind of suggested that she's leaving her job at the end of it, it's just that they now live in the suburbs. She has a longer commute, but she is still like a working mother two years later in 49 we have this film Holiday Affair where Janet Leigh is. She is also a single mother, but she is a war widow. And she is not over her late husband. She has a boyfriend of three years in Wendell Corey. And she meets a handsome stranger who insults her constantly at a department store where she. She also works for a department store. And that handsome stranger is Robert Mitchum. And of course she's going to end up with Roger Robert Mitchum, because he's Robert Mitchum. But they have this like, will they, won't they Ross and Rachel kind of thing. The whole film long and the question is like, who is she gonna end up with? And the worst possible ending is that she doesn't end up with Robert Mitchum. She leaves her job. Cause she's terrible at it. And the whole film there's this running joke about how bad she is at her job, which is shopping. She's bad at like. It's, it's so different. It's such a different depiction of a woman working in a department store. And she also runs off to be with Robert Mitchum and takes her son with her. And we end in similar places in both of these films, but it's interesting how we get there. So, so this shift into kind of social conservatism and the singular plot and the low stakes. Yeah, like, like the stakes of Miracle on 34th street are do we want to live in a society that believes in a figure who would be generous for free? Is the question that Santa Claus is on trial for. And in Holiday Affair it's is she going to marry Robert Mitchum or not? Like, you're different films. It's. Yeah.
- [23:28]
A
And you, you had mentioned in the 50s and kind of how the, the, the films shift. One of the kind of reasons perhaps is that Americans were doing better off kind of economically, so they had a little bit more spending power and Hollywood kind of respond bonds in turn in. In some of these movies. And so how did Christmas movies of this period kind of reinforce this evolving cultural attitude about commercialism and consumerism?
- [23:59]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. So I explore this in the book through a case study on mink coats. How they, how they go from a kind of item of necessity for people who don't have like central heating in the post war period to an absolute luxury by 61. And they have this really fascinating life cycle in our social, cultural kind of consciousness through this period where a woman who has a mink coat in the 40s must have been given it by a man who may have asked for favors in. For the coat. There's strong insinuation And It's a Wonderful Life that, that Violet, the kind of opposite of George's wife Mary and Donna Reed, Violet, played by Gloria Graham, they insinuate that she is going to sell her body when she goes to New York because she's gonna hawk her fur later in the 50s. We get a direct kind of rebut to that in a crazy film that needs way too much context to really give you. But there's one scene that we'll talk about that it's Susan Slept Here where Susan is given a mink coat by Dick Powell, the guy she's staying with. He's played by Dick Powell. She's 17. And her only kind of context for this is, oh, I have to kiss this man now. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like it's not that kind of mink. And that's a really, really important line in the life cycle of mink. That that's not what mink means. By 1954, it's changing, it's evolving because there's more money in the system, there's more luxuries. More luxuries are more common. You can have that kind of life without being ultra wealthy or selling yourself for things. So, yeah, really, really fascinating kind of life cycle there.
- [25:53]
A
Well, and as you mentioned, you kind of start and stop the book with Capra films, but the final chapter kind of really looks at the career trajectories of two pretty famous directors, Frank Capra and Walt Disney. And so I found that chapter to be incredibly fascinating. But how do their stories overlap and kind of how do their careers really help us understand the shifts in, in storytelling during that post World War period?
- [26:29]
B
First of all, thank you so much for asking this.
- [26:31]
A
You're welcome.
- [26:32]
B
It is my crowning jewel. Love this chapter. And a lot more people are way more interested about It's a Wonderful Life. But I love this chapter. And you can tell I love it because it's a quarter of the book. It is so long. But I find it just fascinating. So where we start with this is a book by Robert Sklar, Movies Made America, which is a top tier classic in film history, especially American film history, Hollywood history. And Sklar wrote a chapter comparing Disney and capra in the 1930s, where Disney was kind of starting out, but also incredibly helpful with Bonds and moving into the World War II with war bonds and Capra was making all of these like iconic patriotic films and interpreting the American ideals in human situations. And like how do we actually live up to our ideals in the day to day with Films like American Madness and like Meet John Doe. These are, these are two very important American directors in the 30s. And what I wanted to do is think about them in 1961 in that, in a similar comparison, because they both have a Christmas film come out in the Same Week in December 1961. And it's Disney's first feature length Christmas film and it is at a new peak in his career. And Capra, as I said, is now at the lowest point of his career. He's about to quit Hollywood in 1961. So this chapter thinks about that. How did we go from both of them being so foundationally important in 1930 to where they are in 1961? And I look largely at again the post war period, this 15 year period here. And Disney here goes from near bankruptcy in the late 40s to success with Cinderella in 1950. That kind of gives him a second chance. And then he just explodes. He builds this escapist empire that is both imaginary and physical and he expands laterally. And what I mean by that is, outside of the films, there's merchandise, there's the parks, well, the singular at this point, Disneyland. There are television shows that support Disneyland. There's the Disneyland television show. There's like Mickey Mouse shows, there's the wonderful world of Disney, there's comic books, there are actual books there, like just anything you can think of. Disney had like a publishing company, he had ties with abc, he had his own film company. And he just read every situation for like, how can I maximize? How can I play both sides if I have to, to come out on top every time. I think he's like the ultimate capitalist, like Disney. Disney is so good at capitalism. Read it how you will. So by 61 he has like read the Christmas film trajectory really, really well. And we have another stage here, this is the third stage where we still have kind of simplistic plots. But 1960 is grittier. It's got an edge to it that people are now turning that fear from the earlier years where they were just trying to escape into like anger about where we are. And those, those middle films don't have villains really. There might be someone who's a little like disgruntled, but there's no villain in those films. And Disney has figured out that we need a villain. We need someone who we can like scapegoat, who we can put the blame on. And they can be defeated and the heroes can leave happily at the end of the film. So that when you walk out of the cinema, you are in good Spirits. It's like meditative almost to put you in a better space when you leave and go back into the World in 1960 or 1961. Christmas Film in 61 is a film called Babes in Toyland. You may have seen it. It's on Disney. Rock on. It's an interminable film, in my opinion. It's a lot. It's a lot. And there are a lot of things happening. A hell of a lot of misogyny. Like, even for 1961, you're like, okay, you can cool it a little bit. But it's a fantasy film and there is a bad guy and he is vanquished by the end. And everybody lives happily ever after. And that kind of fairy tale is what is needed in this period. It's like not even about Christmas. It is barely about Christmas. It's a feature length advertisement for Disneyland because Disneyland TV show was no longer running. But they mentioned Santa Claus and they have a deadline of Christmas. So it's a Christmas film. But that's the flexibility of genre that I was talking about, that you can. You can count what you want to count. So that's. That's Disney. He's just on this upwards trajectory that we all know how that went after 61. And Capra is in this opposite place. So most of the chapter is about Capra, because I have a lot of feeling, feelings and thoughts about Capra. So he has this opposite experience. He is not reading the moment as well as Disney. And there are multiple reasons for that. But firstly, it's that going back to It's a Wonderful Life, it was investigated. And his film after that State of the Union was alleged to be communist subversion. And this led to Capra, who at the time in the early 1950s was working for the State Department, he had his security clearance revoked. And Frank Capra, if you don't know, he was an immigrant from Sicily. He came over as a young child and was deeply, purely American. Made some of our most iconic imagery, most of the kind of even parodied now, ideas of, like, corny American patriotism. The images that are conjured. That's Capra. And he dedicated so much of his career to these values that he truly, deeply believed in the promises of America, the things that we pretend to believe in and stand up for. So when he had his security clearance revoked and his American ness was challenged, I argue that he kind of lost it. He lost his spirit. He lost the connection he had with the American people and with Hollywood. He was kind of a little bit Ostracized. Part of it was a self exile, as he refers to it in his autobiography, but part of it was also that he was succumbing to the fear that KUAC head been instilling in filmmakers. And he started making these. These kind of, like, fine films. I. I call them immensely fine. They're fine. His 1950 films are like. They're fine, but they're not like Capra films. Like, they don't have, like, the heart of Capra films. There's one. A hole in the head that is closer. It's a Frank. Frank Sinatra film. I don't know. You can judge for yourself. It's not like a Capra film to me. It's. It's fine. So he's. He's, like, making these films that feel pretty lackluster, especially compared to his earlier work. And the whole time he was thinking about this other film he wanted to make that I talk about in the book. It's a script, an unfilmed script called Ride the Pink Cloud that we only have seven pages of now that are in the Capra archives at Wesleyan University. But it starts out so much more interesting than any of the other films he made in the 50s. It's challenging, it's political. It's about these. Again, seven pages are about a journalist in a small town who wants to do right by people, wants to report on justice. And we can see that. We can see why he would be thinking that in the 50s, after his. His films had been cast in this way as potentially communist subversion and specifically un American, he would challenge those kind of narratives. So we see that in this text, but it was never made. And we don't know how far he got with the script. But it is suggested that he finished the script, but only seven pages exist, or got to a place with it where he had a draft, and he shopped it around to studios and they didn't want it, and they pushed him to remake a film from 1933, lady for a Day. And he was like, okay, if I'm gonna do lady for a Day, then I wanna update it. I wanna do a modern version. And they said, no, no, no, just do straightforward remake. So he does. He makes this. This Damon Runyon kind of Broadway gangsters film from the Great Depression in 1961. And he's like, ain't no way this is gonna work. And then, like, it didn't, and it ruined his career. Like, he knew. He knew. And that's what's so, so tragic, is like, Frank Capra had had the pulse of the American people. He knew what to put in films a lot of the time. And some people say I'm way too generous to Capra, but I think a lot of people are way too harsh on him. His films are amazing. His films are for like normal people. And it's. It's just a real, A real tragedy that his career ended the way it did three decades before his death. Like, like, what would three more decades of Capra films have looked like? What would 70s Capra have looked like? We'll never know. Because of this, because of the HUAC, the McCarthyism, the fear and suspicion and hatred of art that came out of this period. And it frustrates me. I think it's a real tragedy in American history and culture.
- [37:19]
A
Well, and that kind of leads me to another question that I had for you. I know that this book really focuses on the post war period and Christmas films specifically. But as somebody who subscribes to the fantastic black and white and red all over, I read your review Roulette quite frequently and I love everything that you have out there. But what is another era in cinema that just fascinates you that you think kind of speaks to a specific moment in history that you think more people should be aware of?
- [37:52]
B
First of all, thank you so much. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Review Roulette is my passion project. Another era in Hollywood history. I mean, I think, I think 30s cinema is really important. And I. I was talking about this with my husband earlier today, actually, because I just reviewed a film from 1996, Dear God, with Greg Kinnear, and there's. There's so much parallel. It's a. It's quite a Frank Capra film for the mid-90s. And I think there's a lot of comparison to be made. Maybe I'll write a book or a paper on it one day, but a lot of comparison to be made between the 1930s and 1990s in our cinema. There's a lot of slapstick. Like, I think Adam Sandler really falls into that quite unique kind of slapstick. There's a lot of Capra spirit in films trying to capture something communal over an increasing individualism like, Dear God. There's also a ton of nostalgia for an earlier period in the 90s. And I just, I find it really interesting to compare those two.
- [39:10]
A
I like that so many people point to like the 70s. So I like that the 30s is. Was the answer.
- [39:17]
B
I've never been a 70s cinema girl. Okay. Okay. I. I'm trying, like I I've seen, I've seen a lot of films now because of Review Roulette. Like, like I said, I switched into cinema and I had never really been like a film person before studying it. So that's why I started Review Roulette was to like, catch up on a lot of the films that, that people are like, how have you never seen? Like, because I hadn't, I had not seen most of them. So now I watch them and review them and, and try and do lots of things with Review Roulette. But that's, that's part of it for me is like expanding my own film filmography. And the 70s is something that I'm working on. I, I have seen many that I really enjoy. Like, I think the Conversation is an impeccable film, just fantastic. But it's not something I ever gravitate towards.
- [40:09]
A
Yeah, hey, that's fair.
- [40:10]
B
That's fair.
- [40:11]
A
Yes, the 30s is a, is a marquee choice. So I, I'm here for it.
- [40:15]
B
Yeah, especially, especially in comparison to 90s films. I really, I, I, I implore people to think about the comparisons between them.
- [40:25]
A
Well, okay, my, my next question for you is, how does exploring cinema help us understand the past? Because I think when people think about watching movies and, and quote, unquote, escaping. Right. They don't, they don't necessarily think about looking at cinema as, as a window to understanding our past. And what I love about your book is that it kind of helps give us a roadmap. So help us, help us understand that.
- [40:48]
B
Well, like, like I said at the top, there are so many different avenues into films and film study that you can kind of pick your poison here. I think, trying to. So, so, like, what I do with Review Roulette is like I, I spin a roulette wheel that has all different approaches to film every week, and then I watch the film with that lens in mind, and that changes the viewing experience. So one of those is like contemporary history or contextual history, either the world around the film or the world in the film. And going into a film, thinking about, like, what does this tell us about the period it was made in? What does, what does Dear God tell us about 1996? And that kind of clues you into thinking about, like, what do I know about 1996? What do I know about the long period before and after that? And Dear God pushes us into thinking about Reaganomics and the kind of social, cultural, multicultural, and like, race relations in the mid-90s, after the 80s. And, and like that. It, like thinking about these Things. Actively watching a film, actively thinking about, like, okay, what am I looking for? For what it says about family or money or the genre? What. Like, picking your. Your thing and actively thinking about it while watching the film is the roadmap, I would say. And that can. That can raise lots of questions that you don't have answers to. And it's fun to either just think about them, ponder them as kind of philosophical questions, like, what does it say about the 40s? Or it can prompt you to be like, I don't know anything about what this is saying. Let me go read something about it. And that can. That can just help you kind of contextualize the period, the social, economic, cultural. It's a phrase that I say a lot in the book. The social, cultural, economic, and political moment. Yeah. So just active watching really is the idea. Yeah.
- [43:04]
A
And what do you hope readers take away from your book?
- [43:07]
B
Active watching. It's so important. It's so important. Especially with something like Christmas films. That was also part of the. What became the reason for the Christmas films was that we watch them so passively. Like, I've seen It's a Wonderful Life so many times. Like, at least 31. At least 31 times I've seen It's a Wonderful Life because you watch it every year, but it's been more than that. And there's still things that I get out of it, different things that I didn't see before. That's because I'm watching it actively with different questions in mind while I'm at a different place in my life, while there are different things that. That I'm focused on and concerned with. And that's really important. It's really important to actively watch a film and see what does it say about all of those things I said, the time period, the people making it, the content of the film, what are we actually seeing? Like, all of that stuff. Very important to think about, but also to internalize. And what does it say about me that I react in this way, that this is something that I'm focused on, that I noticed this this time. What does that say about me right now? Is it good? Is it bad? Like, that's active watching. And it's, I think, one of the most important things that we can do right now for the escapism part of it, but also for the critical literacy, the media literacy, the understanding of what am I watching and how do I feel about it. Is it propaganda? Is it propaganda in favor of something that I agree with? Or is it propaganda in favor of something I don't agree with. And should I not take that on board? Should I think about it a little bit more? Should I. Should I criticize it? Should I critically view this or critically review it and write about why you think it's a bad thing for other people to watch? They're important things to think about. And I really hope that my book kind of introduces people, if they are unfamiliar with the period or with this act of watching, introduces them to new lenses of how to look at our own period with increasing McCarthyism and fear and suspicion and tension and propaganda and all of these things that are in our massive, massive, massive media climate at the moment. I end the book with a quote from a film analyst from this period. Her name's Dorothy Jones. She deserves so much more recognition for her brilliance. I talk about her quite a bit in the book because I fell in love with her during my research. But Dottie has an article from the mid-50s called the language of Our Time. And she talks about how the motion picture, for better or for worse, is the language of our time. And if we don't learn how to read it and use it and communicate with it and understand what we are being told through it, then we are lost. And that was in the 50s, when the motion picture meant cinema and the budding kind of television industry and not also video games and streaming services where Things are available 24. 7 and TikTok, where you can. You can say some asinine thing and share it to millions of people in seconds without having a second thought about what you just said or what those millions of people will take from it. So Dottie was prescient, and it's important to think about the motion picture in all of its different iterations as the language of our time. And I really think that media literacy is a survival skill that we all need to practice.
- [47:11]
A
Well said. And so where should people go when they've finished the book and they want to learn more about you and the work that you do and pick up on more media literacy tips?
- [47:21]
B
So we've mentioned it a billion times. But I have a newsletter called Review Roulette where I try to do all of these things. And that is at my new website, Black and White and Red All Over. It's Black, White and Red, R E A D Com. And that also houses my husband, Ben Railton, his daily American Studies blog and Scholar Sunday thread of all sorts of public scholarship. We also have resources on our website for historians who want to get into public scholarship but don't really know where to start. So please check that out. Email us, get in touch and we are both on bluesky. I'm Joy on bluesky and we'll be.
- [48:03]
A
Sure to put the website in the show notes for the episode so people can click on there. And I feel like we've only kind of scratched the surface of the fantastic book, but is there anything that we haven't covered that you want future readers to know?
- [48:16]
B
Bear with Susan Slept Here. It is a complicated film for our moment, but a very important one to think about in this mid century moment. Bear with it.
- [48:31]
A
All right. And so for all the listeners out there, be sure to grab yourself a copy of Selling Out Santa. Not only is it a fascinating exploration of Hollywood history, but it's also open source, meaning that you get all of Dr. Joy's amazing scholarship for free, which in this economy is nothing to sneeze at. And also be sure to subscribe to Black and White and Red all over the newsletter. We'll be sure to include a link to it in the show notes. It's again, a fantastic newsletter. You'll be smarter and better for subscribing to it, I guarantee you. You'll also laugh because the review roulette is, I chuckle at least once, a newsletter. So it's, it's fantastic. So thank you again Dr. Joy for coming on. Really appreciate it. Loved having you.
- [49:19]
B
Thank you so much. This has been wonderful.
- [49:21]
A
My thanks again to Dr. Joy for spending time with me. And be sure to snag your copy of Selling Out Santa and subscribe to Black, White and Red all over to stay on top of all of the fantastic public scholarship happening and Read more of Dr. Joy's fantastic historical analysis. Thanks peeps. I'll see you next time. Thanks for sitting down with me as I explored this chapter of American history. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.