Heroes and Happy Endings: Studies in Popular Culture

Departing from a prevailing emphasis on mass culture as both escapist and largely democratic, Christine Grandy offers a fresh perspective by noting the enduring importance of class and gender divisions in narratives read and watched by the British working and middle classes. Heroes and happy endings examines an impressive number of popular films and novels, providing a comprehensive understanding of both the popular culture that arose in the 1920s and 1930s and the themes that persisted within it. Organised around the heroes, villains, and love-interests that populated these works, this book ends with an innovative look at the role that censorship played in shaping popular narratives in the period. Grandy demonstrates that contemporary concerns about ex-soldiers, profiteers, and working and voting women all found their way into the construction, consumption and censorship of masculine protagonists, scheming villains and swooning love-interests as they lived on the page and the screen.

An important and highly readable work for scholars and students interested in cultural and social history, as well as media and film studies, this book is sure to shift our understanding of the role of mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s.