Managing Constraints and Stories of Freedom: Comparing Cinema Memories from the 1950s and 1960s in Sweden

Abstract

AbstractIn this chapter, cinema memories collected in Sweden from the 1950s—when cinema-going peaked—are compared with ditto a decade later, when attendance had drastically dropped. The comparison is based on 40 interviews divided into two age groups and includes men and women who come from a variety of social backgrounds and who lived in urban as well as rural locations. The selection allowed us to tease out similarities and differences in the memory narratives related to the mentioned intersecting features, to determine whether they had an impact on the rupture of cinema-going. Our results show that gender accounts for the most prominent difference. In the interviews with male participants, delightful memories of childhood matinées are especially salient, and we could only detect slight variation in the memories of this group when we compared the two time periods. In the interviews with female participants, matinées are mentioned only briefly, and we found stark differences in the memory narratives of the two time periods. Cinema-going is remembered by female participants as a special event in the 1950s, while in the memories from the 1960s, it is recalled as a subdued activity in a broader youth culture involving music, dancing, and fashion.