Crying for Flicka: Boys, Young Men, and Emotion at the Cinema in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

This article re-visits contemporary surveys of the cinema in the 1930s and 1940s to explore the implications that the cinema’s role as an “emotional frontier” between everyday life and the imagination had on the emotional lives of boys and young men. It makes a novel contribution to the history of youth and emotions, arguing that for boys and young men who were disconnected from social life, the cinema was an “emotional refuge,” a space of heightened emotional encounter, in which conventional assumptions about masculinity could be fractured and “feminine” sensibilities otherwise difficult to express publicly could receive cathartic release.

Revisiting space and emotion: New ways to study buildings and feelings

“…Reddy's (2001, pp. 125-8) notion of emotional refuges has guided several scholars towards investigations of spaces where deviant norms or subversive emotions were possible practices (e.g., Buchanan, 2014;Hamlett, 2015;Seltenreich, 2015;Tebbutt, 2022), but his emphasis on textual sources limits our access to illiterate groups, individuals who did not have time to write, or people whose writings were not deemed important enough to archive. This is especially true when gendered, age, religious, or ethnic minorities are considered.…”

A Cultural History of Youth in the Modern Age

“…To boys and young men, however, "the cloaking effects of cinema darkness" became an "emotional refuge" in which they could confront orthodox and emotionally constraining notions of masculinity. Offering "mimetic learning," movies such as the Hollywood film My Friend Flicka (1943) enabled the young male cinema-goer to try out softer feelings and tears, as he "imaginatively project[ed] his own emotions onto film characters' feelings and situation," thus enabling the development of a richer emotional life (Tebbutt 2022).…”