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(2018) Cecil B. Demille, classical Hollywood, and modern American mass culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
This chapter examines the consensus of consumer desire. Branding helped DeMille align his family's legacy on Broadway to cinema and served as an important dramatic device that the director used throughout the silent era. Central to the analysis is an appreciation for the distinct ways that celebrity, stardom, and spectacle functioned as powerful cinematic "brands' for the director and how these often clashed with the material goals of his employers. DeMille's popular marital dramas, between 1918 and 1923, famously pitted the appeals of modern hedonism against traditional social structures and mores. They granted women a key, often determinative role in the resolution of modern strife yet did so from within the limited boundaries of marriage and the home. The chapter concludes by exploring DeMille's treatment of stars and stardom.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-76986-8_2
Full citation:
Blanke, D. (2018). The brand, in Cecil B. Demille, classical Hollywood, and modern American mass culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 45-87.
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