Of paramount importance: American film and cultural home-rule in Knoxville, 1872-1948

This work examines the relationship between American film and one medium sized community--Knoxville, Tennessee--during the cultural reconstruction of the so-called New South between 1872 and 1948. The process of cultural reconstruction, the goal of reaching equality with New York City in terms of access to the same cultural activities, brought elements of Victorian culture back to Knoxville after the Civil War, and when "the movies" came to the community in 1907 it became imperative that the city accept this aspect of the new mass culture into its evolving cultural synthesis as further proof of Knoxville's growing sophistication. As a result, "the movies" were accepted by the community because failure to do so would reinforce the "hick" image Knoxville so desperately wanted to avoid. Previously unpublished materials from the Department of Justice and a manuscript collection containing specific materials relating to what Paramount, the representative of American film in this study, brought to its relationship with southern communities provide the majority of the sources on which this study is based. From 1919 to 1948 professional reformers sought various means to weaken Hollywood's outside participation in the "cultural home-rule" debate at the communal level. Because this movie-reform movement succeeded in painting a portrait of a passive community in this relationship with American film, the government removed Hollywood from theatre ownership in 1948. This study concludes that Knoxville, and by implication other southern communities, acted upon American film rather than the outsiders acting upon the community. The goals of "cultural reconstruction" and the preservation of the "evolving cultural synthesis," both communal patterns established before the movies came to Knoxville, explain the community's continued active defense of "cultural home-rule" in its half-century relationship with Paramount.