Crying for Flicka: boys, young men and emotion at the cinema in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s

Tebbutt, Melanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8376-8175 (2022) Crying for Flicka: boys, young men and emotion at the cinema in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. Journal of Social History, 56 (1). pp. 144-167. ISSN 0022-4529

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Abstract

This article re-visits contemporary surveys of the cinema in the 1930s and 1940s to explore the implications that the cinema’s role as an “emotional frontier” between everyday life and the imagination had for the emotional lives of boys and young men. It makes a novel contribution to the history of youth and emotions, arguing that for boys and young men who were disconnected from social life, the cinema was an “emotional refuge,” a space of heightened emotional encounter, where conventional assumptions about masculinity could be fractured and where “feminine” sensibilities otherwise difficult to express publicly could receive cathartic release.