Storm Center: a discursive approach to constructions of library workers

Abstract

The film Storm Center was released in 1956, featuring Bette Davis as a librarian in small town America. The narrative is a parable of anti‐communism in the McCarthy era where the town council tries to remove a book on communism from the library. The librarian opposes this and is fired. The details and consequences provide a rich framework for a discursive approach to the text. A discursive approach is chosen because of the film’s extensive use of thematic oppositions around the central concern of censorship and freedom of information. A number of discourses are briefly explored including: femininity; the individual and the group; emotion and scientific rationalism. Concludes that qualitative work in library and information studies might benefit by considering the type of questions posed by discourse theory, as outlined here.