NEW WAVE
ON TIKTOK, AN EVER-EXPANDING COMMUNITY OF FILM FANS ARE BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO OLD HOLLYWOOD. WE SPEAK TO THE YOUNG WOMEN TURNING RETRO CINEMA ON ITS HEAD
A21-YEAR-OLD theatre major with her hair in old-school pin curls, known as @feminist_fatale, hops through the frame of a video, acting along to a series of 1930s Warner Bros. bloopers featuring Bette Davis.
A teenager with the username @Classic.age makes precocious memes about her crushes on old movie stars like Gregory Peck and James Dean.
Gen Z-er @lana40s shares clips of Rita Hayworth having her make-up done in Hollywood style in the musical Cover Girl (1944). In the comments, she discusses Hayworth’s complicated relationship with her ethnicity for those who don’t know about America’s long history of whitewashing its stars.
On smartphones across the world, a retro revolution is taking place. On Tiktok, of all places, an app primarily known for its bewildering dance routines, for its choreographed cats and, thanks to its Chinese ownership, its riling of Donald Trump, a new generation of cinephiles is rejuvenating Old Hollywood, in ways that would baffle its Golden Age stars. Tiktok mostly functions as a way to create and share short videos: they can be stitched together, edited, captioned and soundtracked by creative users, and young film-lovers have taken that inspiration to a new level, lip-synching quotes from Ingrid Bergman and making memes out of 1950s movies. They are rethinking this mixed-medium, warp-speed app to express a fresh and forward-looking love for movies over 70 years old. What they are doing with that passion may also have a surprising wisdom to it: this corner of the internet is challenging traditional bastions of movie culture.
And it’s a growing phenomenon. The #oldhollywood hashtag on Tiktok has nearly #marilynmonrote
32 million views; #classicmovies 4.6 million; has over 360 million. Some of these users have hundreds of thousands of followers. They share tips on how to pin-curl their hair, movie recommendations, and memes about silent film stars. On the face of it, Tiktok’s #oldhollywood users are a pretty varied bunch: some live with their parents; some are married; some are from the LGBTQ+ community; some are Black, some white or Latino. But they all passionately share content related to the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Also, they are almost entirely young women. This helps distinguish the community from the usual digital spaces focused on Old Hollywood, which tend to be somewhat creakier, more concerned with criticism or plumping for male auteurs than busying themselves with the perceived frivolity of Marilyn’s make-up tips or the idea of teenagers playing ‘dress-up’. But these are the markers of difference for a younger generation, who hold a deep knowledge of film history side-by-side with their love of the decorative elements of it. Many of the Tiktokers we speak to refer to “characters” and “performances”; as they step into the role of the old Hollywood icon, they cast aside notions of the type of person who is allowed to occupy that role — traditionally white, straight and slim.
THE NATURE OF Tiktok’s performance element — allowing its users to take on roles and to be anyone they’d like to be — seems to be a big draw. Old Hollywood is being taken into a brave new world.
Most of these users have a distinctive appearance, modelled on beauty icons like Hayworth, Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, Katharine Hepburn and the like. And what they’re doing can be therapeutic. @pinuppixie, who has a more-than-passing resemblance to Monroe, explains. “Watching Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s or Roman Holiday, costumed by Chanel and Givenchy, was like looking in on someone else’s glorious daydream. They don’t make clothes like that anymore, and even if they did, growing up in poverty the way I did meant anything beyond the basics was simply out of reach. It wasn’t until I went to a local thrift shop and discovered my first truly vintage outfit that things changed for me. I tried it on in the mirror, and it felt like home.”
Whereas online spaces devoted to classic film have historically been dominated by men, often with specific ideas of what it means to be ‘serious’ about cinema, these young women
spit in the eye of that old-fashioned consensus, brushing off any association of superficiality with Tiktok — or with their ‘girly’ interests. For them, exaggerated femininity sits next to posts about Howard Hawks; bubbly lip-synching is joined with lessons about obscure film noir.
Turner Classic Movies host Alicia Malone has noticed that these fans often seem devoted to the lifestyle elements. “Every year I’m pleasantly surprised to see more and more younger people attending our annual TCM Classic Film Festival,” she says. “And what I especially love is how many young people immerse themselves in all aspects of old Hollywood — down to the way they dress, embracing a vintage 1940s/’50s look. There is a growing and vibrant vintage-loving community who skew young and attend all sorts of events.”
@lola_gbenjo is an excellent example of how the immersion Malone describes works on Tiktok. The Georgia transplant is originally from Nigeria, with some 58,000 followers. She sometimes uses Tiktok duets, where you can pair off in a split-screen to ‘interact’ with another user. In one, she looks up from under a fan of eyelashes, mouthing Ingrid Bergman’s famous last lines in Casablanca (1942), along with a dapper gentleman standing in for Humphrey Bogart. She’s essentially recasting Casablanca with Black stars. In others, she spouts sassy Mae West one-liners and I Love Lucy quips wearing form-fitting, strapless evening gowns. “I can’t tell you how many of my videos on Tiktok I know I can never post on Instagram because of fear of being judged. I play a lot of non-black characters and on Tiktok, no-one in the vintage community will say, ‘Lucy [from I Love Lucy] wasn’t Black, so you can’t play her.’ It’s very inclusive and I love that.”
@Theaudreylove, a Black New Yorker in her late twenties, says she’s “been seeing more women of colour loving themselves and finding other like-minded people” on Tiktok. With her pierced nose, set hair and many tattoos, she offers an alternative vision of the past that seems like a perfect embodiment of the ways the app’s community are combining the old and new to end up with something fresh.
Another user, @Iridessence_, is a twentysomething from Chicago. She has nearly 40,000 followers, and although her reference points include Monroe, she also works from the template of the great Black starlet Dorothy Dandridge. As a plus-size Black woman, @Iridessence_’s embodiment of a lily-white beauty icon like Monroe is in itself fascinating. “I’m focused on creating the representation I want to see in visual culture, however I can,” she says.
She admits the overwhelmingly white narratives of Old Hollywood make it difficult for her to always enjoy them. “So many race films [early 20th-century films made for Black audiences with Black casts] were lost. Many of the existing representations of Black or brown actors are... unfortunate, leaving only a few cinematic accounts that actually focus on Black stories, instead of giving a few minutes of screen time to Black people.” She names a few she appreciates: Reet, Petite And Gone (1947), Stormy Weather (1943), Cabin In
(1943), and Carmen Jones (1954) among them. Her appreciation of the pioneering Black stars of the past, from Lena Horne to Harry Belafonte, shows her users a throughline of African-american film history.
TTHIS INCLUSIVITY MEANS that the films and figures being celebrated are not always from the traditional white male canon — and this community is incredibly well-versed. “Have you heard of a Japanese-american star named Sessue Hayakawa? He was one of the biggest stars in the USA in the late 1910s and early 1920s,” a teenage user offers in her comments. Another has created a video devoted to the first Dominican actress in Hollywood, Maria Montez. @feminist_fatale is keen to recommend The Children’s Hour (1961), a William Wyler film starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine which was one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to deal with lesbianism.
“It’s Audrey Hepburn. In the ’60s. Why isn’t this film better known?” she asks. “Because it’s not about cis straight men.” She is a lesbian and talks about Wyler’s film with the same passion as she does Todd Haynes’ modern classic Carol. Another she recommends is Stage Door (1937), starring Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn. “It’s a woman-centric comedy about dancers living in a boarding house during the Great Depression. Here are two humongous stars, and I wondered why it wasn’t talked about, with these women both having top billing. And I realised, it’s probably because it’s a womancentric movie. No-one gets the girl at the end. There are a lot of complex women characters in Old Hollywood, and many are more interesting and progressive than people might think.”
@Iridessence_ doesn’t limit her Tiktok to Old Hollywood or film-related content, but she is a fan. “I’ve used a couple of tracks from Marilyn Monroe movies like Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” she says. “Also, my love for mid-century Westerns came out in one of my less popular shorts.” @Lana40s says she loves “to binge documentaries and podcasts on my favourite stars, especially Hedy Lamarr and Rita Hayworth, but also Carole Landis.” On her social media, she shares lists of recommended films where glamour is a central focus, from the silent era to the late 1940s.
@Pinuppixie further explains how there is an appealing balance between power and vulnerability in performances from women like Monroe, Anita Ekberg and Norma Shearer. “When I look at the iconic performances in Some Like It Hot or La Dolce Vita or The Women,” she says, “what strikes me most is the vulnerability that these powerful women brought to their roles, and how their audiences recognised it and responded to it. It takes some courage to expose yourself when the societal norms trend toward perfection. That’s what I try to bring to Tiktok.”
Given the progressiveness of its users, it figures that the unofficial mission statement for #oldhollywood Tiktok is, “Vintage vibes, not vintage values,” as @feminist_fatale puts it. Many users are outspoken against transphobia, racism and sexism, and active supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. A proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, @lana40s likes to “make people aware of LGBTQ stories, like those of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, or people who experienced horrible exploitation like Judy Garland. I think it’s important for everyone to know the good, bad and the ugly about what we consider to be the Golden Age; how far we’ve come; and sometimes, how we have a long way to go.”
User @Msmaverickmuse explains: “Although the vintage community loves the past, many of us are progressive and want to impact real change. We are living in a new world, and as a community that advocates for nostalgia and preserving the past, we realise the impact of maintaining outdated thoughts, patterns and beliefs.”
SSOME OF THE most exciting Tiktokers in the #oldhollywood community are doing just this: putting a new spin on films that are almost a century old. That might be @pinuppixie sharing her vulnerabilities along with her beauty tips, or @Iridessence_ subverting white supremacist and fatphobic beauty standards through reimagining the sirens of the past. By displaying and discussing their own bodies, sexuality, race, and mental-health backgrounds — and sharing their love of classic film through self-expression — they offer their own kind of representation in response to a Hollywood of the past which marginalised so many.
In a media landscape increasingly fraught by arguments about how to contextualise ‘problematic’ older films, this attitude of equal parts love and awareness is reconciliatory — and feels productive. Instead of focusing on the usual ‘canon’ films, many of these young women look beyond the received wisdom, to films which address their lives and representation on screen. This can show a wide audience of teenagers that film history is not a monolith, or some sort of inflexible set of conservative ideas.
In addition, the users recasting, cutting, and playing with clips from classic film make it clear that they are engaging and interacting with old cinema in a brand-new way. Mid-20thcentury movies are brought squarely into 2020 with contemporary music or the sight of a face-piercing. The nature of the medium itself is breaking down old barriers, and blowing the dust off film history. Tiktok may not be seen as the reserve of ‘serious’ movie scholarship, but some of its users are doing classic film an enormous service. And they’re having a lot of fun while they do it.