Browsing by Author "Duncan P"

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"‘Anybody May Look Smart!’: The Smart Aesthetic and Women Film Stars in 1930s Hollywood
(Taylor and Francis Group, 3/04/2023) Duncan P
As Maria DiBattista has shown (2003, 332), the ascendance of figures like Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn during Hollywood’s depression decade (1930–1939) marked the rise of a new breed of woman film star: the “smart girl.” These stars were smart in two senses. Yes, they were quick-witted and quick-tongued—proto-feminist fodder for the newly egalitarian vision of (re-)marriage peddled in 1930s screwball comedy. Yet they were also smart in a new, aesthetic sense, embodying a “smart aesthetic” that marked a shift away from the formal, affective, informational and gendered logics of glamour. For contemporary commentators on 1930s Hollywood, these stars’ smart mouths and their equally smart dresses were in clear accord—and, in part as a result of this apparent accord, the smart aesthetic earned a reputation as a progressive aesthetic formation that both expressed and reinforced the feminist potential of the new strain of “smart girls” on screen. This essay, however, complicates this view by at once elaborating and unpicking the links between these two registers of smartness. Through an analysis of the smart aesthetic as it emerged across coverage in 1930s fan periodicals, it contends that the smart aesthetic’s progressive promise may have been more apparent than actual.
The glowy: the aesthetics of transparency in postfeminist "wellness" culture
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2025-02-21) Duncan P
Over the past ten years or so, across the physical and virtual spaces of postfeminist culture, a novel aesthetic category has quietly but insistently taken hold: the glowy. In this article, I contextualise the glowy as the archetypal aesthetic of what has become known as “wellness culture,” an outgrowth of postfeminist culture that promotes the pursuit of an optimized state of physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. At the same time, I make an argument about the glowy that challenges one of the central assumptions of scholarship on wellness culture. This is the assumption that wellness culture marks a turn, across postfeminist culture more broadly, from “outside” to “inside,” such that new forms of psychic discipline now flourish alongside longer-standing forms of bodily discipline. Resisting this reading, I argue that the rise of the glowy reflects not a turn from the cosmetic domain to the psychic domain but a collapse of the boundaries between these two realms. To sustain this argument, I draw on wellness content from prominent international fashion and lifestyle publications Elle and Vogue, as well as from the promotional material of key wellness brands and products.
Towards a natural history of film form: silver salts and the aesthetics of early studio-era Hollywood cinema
(Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen, 6/12/2022) Duncan P