Abstracts
Abstract
By the late 1890s, mutoscopes were associated with “adult” material. Yet such displays were often accessible to children. Two sources of documentation, an 1899 Hearst newspaper campaign against “picture galleries of hell” and U.S. Farm Security Administration photographs of the 1930s, demonstrate the longevity of American children’s access to mutoscopes. The rhetoric of moral panic used in the Hearst campaign was short-lived and self-interested, but instructive in demonstrating how discourse on new media displays a similarly anxious tenor throughout the twentieth century. By contrast, the FSA photographs reveal that the perceived indecencies of the mutoscope were consigned to the margins by the 1930s.
Résumé
À la fin des années 1890, les mutoscopes étaient associés aux productions dites pour adultes. Pourtant, ces appareils étaient souvent accessibles aux enfants. Deux sources de documentation, la campagne du groupe de presse Hearst, en 1899, contre « les images des galeries de l’enfer », ainsi que les photographies de la Farm Security Administration, remontant aux années 1930, permettent d’établir la longévité de la fréquentation des mutoscopes par la jeunesse américaine. La panique morale qu’instillait la rhétorique des journaux de Hearst fut de courte durée et servit surtout les intérêts du groupe de presse. Elle demeure cependant fort instructive pour qui s’intéresse à la manière dont les discours sur les nouveaux médias diffusent une même angoisse au cours de tout le vingtième siècle. Au contraire, les photographies du FSA révèlent pour leur part que les indécences du mutoscope n’étaient ressenties comme telles que de façon marginale dans les années 1930.
Appendices
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