Choosing to Live: Cancer Education, Movies, and the Conversion Narrative in America, 1921-1960

摘要

when, in 1921, the American Society for the Control of Cancer (ASCC) released its first cancer education movie, it chose a form that would dominate cancer education movies until the 1950s: the conversion narrative. In general, the narratives issuing from this choice dramatized the ways in which people were persuaded to accept ASCC/ ACS advice regarding cancer and the penalties for those who failed to convert. Crudely put, those who converted to the ASCC/ACS's vision of cancer survived their diseases; those who did not tended to die. The former chose to live, as the title of one 1940 film put it; the latter chose a different ending.