Fire in the Hole

Abstract

Drawing on the letters female fans submitted to Motion Picture Magazine between 1914 and 1918, this article seeks to center negative feelings as a constitutional part of Hollywood reception during the World War I years. Emergent at this time, the language of affective film reception took up a combative tenor reflective of women’s lived experiences: anger, derision, and dissent pervade the first-person writings submitted by self-identified movie-loving “misses” and “girls.” Reading their published correspondence as proto-manifestations of feminist “troublemakers” and “killjoys” helps in historicizing early Hollywood fandom as an “intimate publics” commercially centered on women’s culture, but communally appropriated by female consumers as a means to express antisocial responses.