America\u27s Lollipop Licking Tease: The Eroticization of the Female Child in 1930s Film

This dissertation examines the eroticization of female children in film during the 1930s as a mechanism for concealing troubling realities of the Great Depression in the United States. The repressed sexuality embedded in the plots of Post Hays Code movies featuring Shirley Temple and characters such as Stella Dallas, Dorothy Gale, and Scarlett O\u27Hara serve to suture over a crisis of masculinity triggered by changing roles in gender, race, and class. By attempting to invoke the image of a little girl in place of that of a grown woman, some films (such as Gone With the Wind, and Bright Eyes) do a better job of masking these abruptions than do other others (such as Stella Dallas and The Wizard of Oz)