All that Hollywood Allows

<p><em>All that Hollywood Allows</em> explores the representation of gender in popular Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Both a work of feminist film criticism and theory and an analysis of popular culture this provocative book examines from a cultural studies perspective top-grossing film melodramas such as <em>A Streetcar Named Desire From Here to Eternity East of Eden Imitation of Life</em> and <em>Picnic</em>.<br> Stereotypically viewed as a complacent and idyllic time the 1950s were actually a time of dislocation and great social change. Jackie Byars argues that mass media texts of the period especially films provide evidence of society's consuming preoccupation with the domestic sphere - the nuclear family and its values - and she shows how Hollywood melodramas interpreted and extended societal debates concerning family structure sexual divisions of labour and gender roles. Her readings of these films assess a variety of critical methodologies and approaches to textual analysis some central to feminist film studies and some previously bypassed by scholars in the field.</p>