ABSTRACT

This article discusses ‘the dainty’, an aesthetic category that rose to prominence in the trade and fan press during American cinema’s transitional era as a means of characterizing female stars like Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clarke, Billie Rhodes and Lois Wilson. The readiest reading of the dainty is that, like the stars the term often described, it was a throwback to an older, diminutive ideal of femininity that bore little relation to the ‘modern’ woman as she was emerging in the early twentieth century at the intersection of aesthetic modernism and industrial modernity. This article, however, contends that the dainty has more in common with paradigmatically modern aesthetics like ‘glamour’ than one might initially suppose. As I show, the dainty’s modernity is twofold. First, it lies in the category’s objective register, where its formal qualities, most notably its diminutiveness, afford it an unexpected affinity with modernist mandates of restraint and reduction. Second, it lies in the category’s subjective register, where its association with ‘fastidiousness’ suggests a calculating and discriminating form of aesthetic subjectivity that is peculiarly modern by virtue of its aesthetic reflexivity. In paying close attention to one of the specifically aesthetic categories that define female star images at this period, I join a small coterie of scholars, like Lea Jacobs and Rosalind Galt, who have set out to explore the aesthetic formations through which we evaluate and experience film and film-adjacent phenomena.

摘要

本文讨论了“精致”这一审美类别，在美国电影过渡时期，它在行业和影迷媒体中脱颖而出，作为描述莉莲·吉什、玛丽·皮克福德、玛格丽特·克拉克、比莉·罗德斯和露易丝·威尔逊等女明星的手段。对精致的最容易解读是，就像这个词经常描述的星星一样，它是对旧的、娇小的女性气质理想的回归，这种理想与 20 世纪早期出现的“现代”女性几乎没有关系。审美现代主义和工业现代性的交汇点。然而，这篇文章认为，精致与典型的现代美学（如“魅力”）的共同点比人们最初想象的要多。正如我所展示的，精致的现代性是双重的。首先，它位于类别的客观寄存器中，它的形式品质，最显着的是它的小巧，使它与现代主义的克制和减少要求有着意想不到的亲和力。其次，它存在于类别的主观范围内，它与“挑剔”的关联暗示了审美主体性的一种计算和辨别形式，由于其审美反思性而显得特别现代。在密切关注这一时期定义女明星形象的特定审美类别之一时，我加入了一小群学者，如 Lea Jacobs 和 Rosalind Galt，他们开始探索我们评估和体验的审美形态电影和电影相邻现象。它存在于该类别的主观记录中，它与“挑剔”的关联暗示了审美主体性的一种计算和辨别形式，由于其审美反思性而显得特别现代。在密切关注这一时期定义女明星形象的特定审美类别之一时，我加入了一小群学者，如 Lea Jacobs 和 Rosalind Galt，他们开始探索我们评估和体验的审美形态电影和电影相邻现象。它存在于该类别的主观记录中，它与“挑剔”的关联暗示了审美主体性的一种计算和辨别形式，由于其审美反思性而显得特别现代。在密切关注这一时期定义女明星形象的特定审美类别之一时，我加入了一小群学者，如 Lea Jacobs 和 Rosalind Galt，他们开始探索我们评估和体验的审美形态电影和电影相邻现象。