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Daughters, dream girls and gymslips : British teen femininities in the long 1960s
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Hitchin, Hannah (2022) Daughters, dream girls and gymslips : British teen femininities in the long 1960s. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3948277
Abstract
This study explores how teenage girls were portrayed on film during the ‘long 60s’ in British cinema. The ‘long 60s’ is an existing historical framework which argues the decade of the 1960s were not limited to the decade itself but began in 1957, and the effects of which were still in evidence until 1973. I have also examined how the star image of teenage actresses developed in this period and how social and cultural events and developments may have affected this representation alongside how the genre of the films helped shift this representation over the decade.
My methods consist of the analysis of existing scholarship to explore the current thinking around the teenage girl in British cinema of the long 1960s in the field of film studies. I have textually analysed key British films starring my case studies to explore the representation of the teenage girl on screen during the period. Through archival research, I examine how the star images of my case studies were constructed in publications of the time.
I have approached the material using a star focus, as this allows me to look at sub-genres in British cinema and it has also enabled me to narrow the scope of the work. Hayley Mills, Judy Geeson and Jenny Agutter each enjoyed success as teenage girls at different stages of the ‘long 60s’. Hayley Mills was a teen star in the transition of the 50s to the 60s from 1959 to 1965. Judy Geeson embodied the ‘swinging’ teenage girl and enjoyed film success between 1965 and 1969, and Jenny Agutter closes the study as the teen girl star during the transition of the 60s into the 70s from 1968 to 1974. I demonstrated how each of these stars embodied a kind of teenage femininity which was informed by the specific period of the ‘long 60s’ they were playing their roles in. Raymond Williams’ theory of dominant, emergent and residual trends in culture is used to explain the differences in roles each actress played and the different treatment they received from the media of the time.
This thesis expands scholarly understanding of the construction of the teenage girl’s star image and screen presence in British cinema during the ‘long 60’s’ – an area virtually ignored to date in Film Studies. I have complicated existing discourses surrounding the representation of the teenage girl in the period on screen and in the media, while demonstrating the limited understanding and lack of attention to this subject and 60s teen cinema in general in existing work.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Teenage girls in motion pictures, Motion pictures -- Great Britain -- 20th century -- History, Motion pictures actors and actressess -- Great Britain, Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 1945- | ||||
Official Date: | September 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Film and Television Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Moseley, Rachel | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 307 pages : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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