Why Classical Hollywood Still Matters (and Why We Should Teach It and Write About It)

Note: I recently attended a seminar at the annual Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference on the subject “Why Study Classical Hollywood Films Today?” The following is the position paper that I wrote for the seminar.

Some time ago, I was chatting with a young queer friend of mine about my introductory film course. When I mentioned that I was going to screen All About Eve, he instantly gushed: “Bette Davis is life in that movie.” Now, given that my companion was a 19-year-old college freshman (who was majoring in engineering), I was somewhat taken aback. In my experience, it isn’t every day that you find a person under the age of 30 who has ever seen All About Eve, let alone knows who Bette Davis is, let alone gushes that she is “life” in that film. But then again, I thought, what young queer person wouldn’t take great pleasure in this almost 70-year-old artifact from classic Hollywood? The waspish and snappy dialogue continues to dazzle and, somewhat surprisingly, it has aged better than some other films of that era. What’s more, its influence continues to be seen in contemporary Hollywood; as a friend recently reminded me, the critical darling The Favourite is basically All About Eve but with the Stuarts.

I have thought about these conversations a great deal over the past several weeks as I mulled over what to write in this position paper, precisely because they revealed to me why it is so important and valuable to continue studying…