[My awesome wife Vaughn Joy’s book Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy has been out for about four months, which means Vaughn has had the chance to share it through a ton of book talks, podcast episodes, writing, and more. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of such occasions, leading up to a special post featuring my own thoughts on this must-read book!]
On two exemplary and fascinating evolutions from Vaughn’s second book talk.
Just a few days after the Edgartown Public Library talk about which I wrote in yesterday’s post, Vaughn was back at it, this time at Fitchburg State University helping us relaunch our too-long-dormant Graduate English Colloquium series. Besides the chance to bring together these two vital parts of my own career and communities, without doubt my favorite thing about this book talk was that in the audience was none other than FSU President Donna Hodge; I wrote in that hyperlinked post about some of the things that make President Hodge so awesome, but since drafting it have experienced many more still, including her truly groundbreaking proposal (which will go into effects this coming Fall) to automatically accept and offer free tuition for any students from Fitchburg’s local high schools. Like so many of those students (and like my awesome wife as well), President Hodge was a first-generation college student, and I believe that’s directly related to her fantastic commitment to every part of our community, including Grad Colloquium talks!
The talk that President Hodge heard was similar but not identical to the Edgartown Public Library version, and one of Vaughn’s most significant additions was directly related to the principal audience for our Grad Colloquia: grad students. In a sizeable and compelling introductory section for this second book talk, Vaughn reflected on her own academic journey, particularly through her three graduate degrees: an MA in Classics (focusing on ancient-world representations of reproductive illnesses), a second MA in History (focusing on gender in post-WWII comic books), and the PhD in Film History that produced Selling Out Santa. She made sure to highlight the role that serendipity (and a concurrent openness to it) played in that process, which was a great reminder for our grad students that you don’t have to have every moment planned out if you’re willing to follow the research and ideas where they might lead. But she also traced compelling throughlines across these seemingly distinct projects and disciplines, including a consistent interest in how popular culture texts serve as “temporal mirrors” (her pitch-perfect phrase) for both their own times and the moments in which subsequent audiences engage and are influenced by them.
If intended audience produced one significant evolution in Vaughn’s book talk, an actual audience question led to another fascinating addition. My FSU English Studies colleague Lisa Gim generously joined our Google Meet stream of the talk, and in the Q&A asked about both a pair of specific films (1949’s Holiday Affair and 1954’s Susan Slept Here) and the overarching subject of shifting depictions of gender roles and dynamics across Vaughn’s focal period of 1946-1961. Of course that’s a subject with which Selling Out Santa already engages, especially in Chapter 4’s excellent case study on mink coats and commercialism. But Lisa’s thoughtful question pushed Vaughn to continue thinking through depictions of women in her focal films, and led her to argue with particular clarity and force for just how independent the main female characters are in immediate post-war holiday films like 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life (where Donna Reed’s Mary buys a house for herself and her future husband without consulting him) and 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street (where Maureen O’Hara’s Doris is a divorced single mother working a high-powered big-city job). As you might expect, those dynamics changed for the worse in 1950s films, making it that much more important to see these more progressive alternatives.
Next book convo tomorrow,
Ben
PS. If you’ve had a chance to check out the book, and/or have ideas for places or ways Vaughn can talk about it, feel free to reach out!
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