FASHION, CINEMA, AND GERMAN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN 1930s BUCHAREST Cover Image

FASHION, CINEMA, AND GERMAN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN 1930s BUCHAREST
FASHION, CINEMA, AND GERMAN-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA IN 1930s BUCHAREST

Author(s): Sonia Andras
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Cultural history, History of ideas, Social history, Gender history, Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), Fascism, Nazism and WW II
Published by: Institutul de Cercetări Socio-Umane Gheorghe Şincai al Academiei Române
Keywords: interwar era; gender; Hollywood; Nazi Germany; United States; Romania;

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores how Bucharest’s cinema-going public perceived the Nazi influence on Hollywood in the 1930s. The aim is to identify how Nazi propaganda was disseminated and consumed in interwar Bucharest and its similarities to the idea of glamour, relevant both to fashion and cinema. Considering the links between Goebbels’ propaganda machine and certain entities or individuals in Hollywood, US cinematography becomes a more complex medium of dissemination beyond a mere promoter of modernity’s technological and consumerist ideas. Romania’s situation in the 1930s, especially the increasing leaning towards the extreme right then inform movie star image, particularly through a gendered lens, as perfect tools for propagandists. The interwar cinema-centered Romanian discourse involves a triple filtration, through Hollywood, Berlin, and Bucharest, as a complex depiction of the Romanian public’s ideals and views. To illustrate these points, I will analyze relevant written and visual texts from the interwar era, including fiction, memoirs, essays, nationally and locally spread cinema-centered and general periodicals, postcards, or photographs. The interdisciplinary research will include cultural studies (fashion, media, cinema, gender), history, and discourse analysis. This innovative perspective on fashion and cinema in an interwar Romanian context adds to the existing knowledge by opening new research topics and subjects in the fields of fashion studies and Romanian studies.

  • Issue Year: 25/2022
  • Issue No: 25
  • Page Range: 211-235
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: English