‘How to Land Jobs in Hollywood’: Popular media, historical knowledge and the casting couch

This paper contrasts a series of speculative historical claims used in the wake of the #MeToo movement to justify cultures of abuse embedded within the US entertainment industry with historic documents which examine sexual harassment and assault. While most of the contemporary media discussions of the casting couch and abusive behaviours in Hollywood were necessarily euphemistic and vague, due to legal and taste boundaries, this paper contrasts a range of ephemeral, paratextual materials such as contemporaneous, newspaper and film fan magazines articles of the 30-50s, alongside concurrent illegal publications where explicit discussion of sexual matters was made – the more explicit the better. The use of Tijuana Bibles - once hugely popular but now little-discussed, illegal pornographic comic booklets which featured depictions of film stars and speculated the sexual scenarios behind the gossip and euphemism of the legitimate press - will allow us to test the notion that, in the recent past, sexual harassment was culturally acceptable or conversely was an unknown and secret practice.

Using approaches to speculative texts drawn from Bourdieu and Relational Frame Theory in the analysis of metaphor and jokes and the understanding of cultural distinctions and references and implicit beliefs of producers and audiences in historic contexts, this work provides a methodology for such historical analysis. The cross examination of available historic audience understandings of and speculations on the casting couch not only provides historical context for a seemingly recent social and industrial issue, it reveals the levels of understanding and acceptance of the American film industry’s systematic use of sexual exploitation and ‘the lie-promise of the casting couch’ during these periods, exposing the fault lines where apparent acceptance and victim blaming in the press represent the limitations of censorship and contemporary mores, rather than popular opinion.