Visual Studies Commons^™

Made In Movieland: Imitation, Agency, And Girl Movie Fandom In The 1910s., Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

This article uses the key concept of imitation as a frame through which I explore the complex relationship established between a burgeoning American film press and the first generation of girls to be culturally construed as “adolescent” and “movie fans.” Interlacing early-twentieth-century psychology literature with commercial print sources and girls’ own fan testimonies, I set out to investigate the ways imitation became a source of agency for movie-loving girls at a time popular and scientific sources understood imitative behavior as both a mark of women’s intellectual inferiority and a product of female adolescent arrestment. The goal of this piece is …