Mabel's Titles

In the emergent period of any medium practitioners will experiment and negotiate their conventions in response to their cultural positioning. Early film has received enough debate from scholars about the extent to which it moved between entertainment and artistry. One unique dimension of Mabel Normand’s filmography that highlights the silent films' unique conventions are their titles.

Many silent films, comedies especially leveraged the names and personas of their stars to increase their popularity. Because films were a new medium, there was a greater sense of reflexivity among its creator and audience. Using Voyant to examine frequency of words occurrences and their relationship in the titles of Normand’s film demonstrates how her career was emblematic of the trend in silent comedy at the time. Studios would often place a star’s name in titles to leverage that star’s persona.

We can also see that when Mabel and Fatty made films together, there was clearly an effort to frame these works as part of a larger series. More about the relationship between “Mabel” and other terms can be found in the network graph below. Try using the search bar in the bottom left hand corner to see what other links are present.