Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13688804.2011.532373

1469-9729

Tim Snelson,

Cinema and Media Studies

Abstract This paper analyses the discursive struggle engendered by the widespread revival of the occult in America during the Second World War. It begins by analysing middlebrow press reports, which used this interest in the occult to spread patriotic messages whilst simultaneously dismissing it as a symptom of women's wartime anxieties. The paper moves on to argue that this complex engagement with 'popular occultism' also manifested in 'escapist' forms such as literature, radio and cinema. It focuses particularly on a cycle of 'serious' ghost films which—like the Ouija board—provided a medium that addressed women's feelings of uncertainty and loss, whilst drawing attention away from the violent eradication of bodies. However, analysis of the production and reception of Paramount's The Uninvited —'the first serious story of spirit influence'—highlights counter-hegemonic strategies within these films, evinced by complaints to the studio and industry regulator over The Uninvited's 'dangerous' influences on women. Keywords: Second World WarHollywoodfilm cyclesfemale audiencesoccultreception studies Notes 1. Thomas Doherty Doherty Thomas Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War Two New York Columbia UP 1993 [Google Scholar] discusses the 'transparent allegorical reach' of war films dealing with the afterlife such as a Guy Named Joe, The Human Comedy (1943) and Happy Land (1943) in Projections of War (174). Michael Anderegg Anderegg Michael 'Home Front America and the Denial of Death in MGM's The Human Comedy ' Cinema Journal 34.1 1994 3 17 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] also discusses how these latter sentimental 'home front films' work towards 'a denial of death, towards a transcendence which will be powerful enough and convincing enough to negate the material reality of death' (10). 2. Reverend Brendan Larnen to Will Hays, Letter, 10 May 1944. MPAA PCA Files. Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles. 3. Owen Davies Davies Owen Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 Manchester Manchester University Press 1999 [Google Scholar] cites evidence from prosecution records of fortune-tellers and mediums to highlight a parallel occurrence of women (and to a lesser extent soldiers on leave) regularly visiting practitioners in Britain during First World War (266–7). See also Hammond Hammond Michael The Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War 1914–1918 Exeter Exeter UP 2006 [Google Scholar] The Big Show. 4. An article from the Baltimore Sun—Baltimore being the city in which the patented William Fuld board was produced—also highlighted that the 'most eager purchasers of Ouija boards are WACs, schoolgirls and office workers' ('Ouija Boards Mum' 24). 5. Whilst Farber saw merit in A Guy Named Joe's patriotic comingling of supernatural and war themes, he attacked Happy Land as 'made to satisfy the most suspicious, narrow-minded upholders of American goodness'. In the film, when a soldier is killed in combat, the grandfather's ghost returns to earth to tell his son to stop mourning and be proud of his grandson's sacrifice ('Heaven, American Style'). 6. Writing in 1950, Leo Handel Handel Leo Hollywood looks at its Audience: A Report of Film Audience Research Urbana The U of Illinois P 1950 [Google Scholar] suggested that the industry had long been under the impression that the majority of the American movie-going audience was female, some estimating as high as 70%. He continued that this 'erroneous assumption' had led the industry to cater, largely, to 'the tastes of female patrons both in their productions and in the promotional campaigns' (99). 7. See also: Fiddler Fiddler Jimmie 'Hollywood in Clutches of New Horror Cycle' Dallas Morning News 23 Sep . 1943 , 18 [Google Scholar] 18; Stanley Stanley Fred 'Hollywood Flash: Studios Scrap many War Stories—The Horror Boys Convene' New York Times 16 Apr. 1944 3 [Google Scholar] 3. 8. Significantly Between Two Worlds Between Two Worlds Dir. Edward A. Blatt Warner Bros 1944 [Google Scholar] , A Guy Named Joe and The Uninvited, are all set in Britain. Britain is seen as a place closer to the reality and mortality of wartime, but also—perhaps partly due to the European roots of this type of supernatural storytelling tradition—a place where belief in the spirit-world is somehow more possible. The Uninvited's opening voice-over explains that the coastline is known as 'the haunted shore […] not because there are more ghosts than in other places, mind you, it's just that the people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.' Britain had comparative ghost narratives in films such as The Halfway House (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Dead of Night (1945). 9. A 1943 national survey of women conducted by the Women's Institute of Audience Reactions into the choice of books they wished to see adapted for the screen overwhelmingly 'revealed that their tastes trend is towards spiritual themes. Stories with a war angle received practically no votes' ('Poll 'Poll Shows Women want Spiritual Pix Theme' Film Daily 19 Apr . 1943 : 1 [Google Scholar] Shows' 1). 10. Miss Holloway says of Mary Meredith 'She was a goddess. Her skin was radiant […] The nights we sat here planning our whole lives. It wasn't flirtations and dresses we discussed. We weren't silly giggling girls. We intended to conquer life'. Rhona Berenstein Berenstein Rhona 'Adaptation, Censorship, and Audiences of Questionable type: Lesbian Sightings in Rebecca (1940) and The Uninvited (1944)' Cinema Journal 37.3 1998 16 37 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] makes a convincing case for the 'spectre' of lesbianism underlying the other relationships in the film rather than solely the one between Mrs Holloway/Mary Meredith. Patricia White White Patricia Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability Bloomington Indiana UP 1999 [Google Scholar] goes further positioning the film generically as a 'lesbian oedipal drama' in her book on lesbian representation in classical Hollywood cinema named after the film (73). 11. Diana Basham's The Trial of Women highlights how the Victorian women's rights movement and Victorian women's literature drew on old notions of female occult power. She suggests that this 'curious alliance' was at once liberating and limiting. 12. See for example: Hartman Hartman Susan The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s Boston Twayne 1982 [Google Scholar]; Campbell Campbell D'ann Woman at War: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era Cambridge Harvard University Press 1984 [Google Scholar]; Costello Costello John Love, Sex and War, 1939–1945 London Pan 1985 [Google Scholar]; Berger Gluck Berger Gluck Shena Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, The War, and Social Change Boston Twayne 1987 [Google Scholar]. 13. Reverend Brendan Larnen to Will Hays. Letter, 10 May 1944. PCA Files. 14. Luigi Luraschi to Joseph Breen. Letter, 5 June 1944. PCA Files. Breen conducted his own audience research and reported back to Hays on June 5th, 'I am able to tell you that in not one single instance—in discussion with more than 20 people—did anyone indicate, even the slightest way, a reaction that could be even remotely suggestive of the reaction set forth by the Legion of Decency'. Joseph Breen to Will Hays. Letter, 5 June 1944. PCA Files. 15. Daniel A. Lord to Joe Breen. Letter, June 1944. PCA Files. 16. John D'Emilio suggests that 'the Second World War created something of a nationwide coming out experience' for lesbians (24). See also: Davis and Lapovsky Kennedy. 17. Some of the other texts the MPH highlights as part of the cycle include MGM's The Canterville Ghost (1944), Universal's The Mummy's Ghost (1944), UA's Dark Waters (1944), even TCF's now perceived seminal film noir Laura (1944). 18. See also: Scheuer 'Study Scheuer Phillip 'Study of a Child' Los Angeles Times 28 Apr . 1944 : 11 [Google Scholar] of a Child'; McManus 'A Blessing'; Cook 'New Rialto'; Barnes Barnes Harold 'The Curse of the Cat People' New York Herald Tribune 4 Mar 1944 (Republished in New York Motion Picture Critics' Reviews. New York: New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, 1944: 450) [Google Scholar]. 19. The interest in the afterlife was extended into the post-war period with It's A Wonderful Life (1946) and The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947); the rights to both these properties were bought during the war. However, 'serious' supernatural treatments did not rematerialise until the early 1960s with films like The Haunting (1963), and Rosemary's Baby (1968). This was of course a period again marked by the dialectic of America's involvement in major International conflict and calls for social change.