Time: 6:15 - 7:15pm Venue: ArtsTwo 3.16
Anna Knight, a doctoral candidate at Queen Mary, will give a talk on her research, entitled ‘A Hollywood rebel in Britain: James Dean’s posthumous stardom.’
The paper discusses how the British censor acted to limit the screen violence of Rebel Without A Cause (1956). Censors also wanted to reduce the Americanisms of the film and, thereby, diminish the glamour of juvenile delinquency. Younger fans responded to the recently deceased Dean with the unexpected fervour of his American fans. The British media, however, undermined these American fans by depicting them as “morbidly obsessed” and found various ways to distinguish them from British Deanagers.