C.L. Moore's No Woman Born

"In times before her, other actresses had been lovely and adulated, but never before Deirdre’s day had
the entire world been able to take one woman so wholly to its heart.So few outside the capitals had ever
seen Bernhardt or the fabulous Jersey Lily. And the beauties of the movie screen had had to limit their
audiences to those who could reach the theaters. But Deirdre’s image had once moved glowingly across
the television screens of every home in the civilized world. And in many outside the bounds of civilization.
Her soft, husky songs had sounded in the depths ofjungles, her lovely, languorous body had woven its
patterns of rhythm in desert tents and polar huts. The whole worldknew every smooth motion of her
body and every cadence of her voice, and the way a subtle radiance had seemed to go on behind her
features when she smiled."

One of the many things I looked up after reading C.L. Moore's No Woman Born was the history of cinema and television in the forties. What I found was incredibly interesting-I found that apparently, during the Second World War, people still went for entertainment. Specifically, going to the cinemas was very popular, which I think set up a basis for the passage above from C.L. Moore's short story.

The story mentions that Deirdre, in the height of her career, had reached successes that no other actresses had ever been able to dream of, particularly because Deirdre was able to be known by every person in the civilized world through the invention of television. This brings me to an interesting discovery-television was not commercially introduced until 1947 while this story was published in 1944. However, the television had been introduced at the 1939 World Fair many years earlier, but the war had stopped it from further development. Perhaps then, C.L. Moore had known about the television from the World Fair and predicted just how widespread it would become. Perhaps this fact was the basis or inspiration for this part of the story, as well as the meaning of how it is just one's image that carries on through the minds of others. In this case, it would specifically be Deirdre's image because television can be likened to a series of images.

Part of the reason C.L. Moore, if the World Fair had been the basis, was able to predict the success of the television was because Cinema was already very big at the time. Apparently, since World War 2 was going on, many people needed entertainment to help relax and take their minds off of things. Cinema was naturally a great option, and many actors and actresses started getting famous like people had been in the radio's past.   Perhaps that is why C.L. Moore chose for Deirdre to only have sight and sound-just what you need to understand a television. This opens up all the questions like if we actually need the other senses to be considered human or able to experience the human experience.

However, my guess is that because the television only emulates sight and sound, it is the same for Deirdre's career. In fact, it seems that Maltzer was quite minimalist with Deirdre's design, giving her only the tools of her image and sound, the only things she would need for being on television. It makes you think that many people in the past watching television would only be able to remember the image and voice of a person, the only things carried by a television. People in the radio era probably only remembered voices. Therefore, for Deirdre, it is quite sad that her image has been shattered, for people must have remembered her image well-not her personality or anything, but simply it had been her images that had captivated the audiences.

Sources:
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade40.html
http://www.forties.net/entertainment.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_type_of_entertainment_was_popular_during_World_War_2