Revamped: Theda Bara, Cultural Memory, and the Repurposing of Star Image

Abstract

Between 1915 and 1925, Theda Bara, the actress typecast in both cinema and memory as "The Vamp," starred in forty feature films; at present, three are known to survive. Despite this, her star image continues to circulate in popular culture and attract new fans. In examining the reasons for this unusual occurrence, this dissertation presents a cultural history and reception study of Bara's image as it has been adapted, or repurposed, to convey disparate meanings in diverse contexts across a century. Combining archival research and ethnographic interviews, I use Bara as a case study in analyzing the role popular culture plays in people's lives, and how audiences' responses to the media become part of cultural memory. Working with film history, reception, memory, and gender studies methodologies, I argue that repurposings of Bara's image, by the media and by media consumers alike, comprise a historical record, incorporating voices and perspectives often overlooked or unrecorded elsewhere, and revealing a century-long archive of changing values and attitudes about gender, sexuality, ethnic difference, cultural marginalization, and social transgression. By examining how these examples of media consumption function as remembrances, I further make the case that audiences have long served as amateur archivists, curators, and historians of cultural heritage through their interaction with the media and the resultant expressions of taste, knowledge, and affective attachments.