‘Stel je voor zeg! Meisjes, jongens, zoo maar zittend zij aan zij!’

Katholieken, gender en sociale klasse in de Paleis Bioscoop te Rucphen (1929)

Samenvatting

‘Just imagine! Girls and boys, sitting right there, next to each other!’ Catholics, Gender, and Social Class in the Paleis Cinema in Rucphen (1929)

Notwithstanding the recent ‘spatial turn’ in social film history, the topography of the cinema auditorium is not a regularly visited theme. Van Oort analyses the atypical case of a Dutch Catholic city council in the rural municipality of Rucphen that decreed the separation of seats for male and female audience members in the local cinema. Although many institutions in the daily life of Dutch Catholics were segregated along gender lines, discrimination of the sexes in the cinema did not turn out to be a viable option for Dutch Catholic policy makers. This case, therefore, touches on the limits to Catholic control over cinema audiences.