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.

Citation

Kerslake, E. and O’Brien, A. (1999), "Storm Center: a discursive approach to constructions of library workers", Library Management, Vol. 20 No. 8, pp. 439-446. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435129910291247