ABSTRACT

In this essay, we offer a comparative analysis of women service workers in early cinema in Britain and the United States from the 1910s to the 1930s. Although this period has been the subject of much important scholarship in film history over the past several decades, women’s experiences as box office attendants, cashiers, cigarette girls, purveyors of ice cream and sweets, and especially as usherettes, constitute an under-researched field. Tracing the narratives surrounding women’s work in a wide variety of capacities in early cinema auditoriums can illuminate much about how women were perceived as employees and sexualized as objects of the gaze of male patrons, while, at the same time, acting as spectators and mediators with a privileged perspective on both the screen and the audience. In pursuing this line of inquiry, we draw not only on existing scholarship, but also on our own original research on industry journals, girls’ and women’s popular magazines, star and fan culture, and changing conditions for women’s labor and leisure in the interwar period.

摘要

在本文中，我们对 1910 年代至 1930 年代英美早期电影中的女性服务工作者进行了比较分析。尽管在过去的几十年里，这一时期一直是电影史上重要学术研究的主题，但女性作为票房服务员、收银员、香烟女郎、冰淇淋和糖果供应商，特别是作为招待员的经历构成了一个研究不足的领域. 追溯早期电影礼堂中以各种身份围绕女性工作的叙述可以阐明很多关于女性如何被视为雇员和性化为男性顾客凝视的对象，同时充当旁观者和调解人屏幕和观众的特权视角。在追寻这条线索的过程中，