Author: Catherine A. Craft-Fairchild
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271038209
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
Terry Castle's recent study of masquerade follows Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque to conclude that, for women, masquerade offered exciting possibilities for social and sexual freedom. Castle's interpretation conforms to the fears expressed by male writers during the period—Addison, Steele, and Fielding all insisted that masquerade allowed women to usurp the privileges of men. Female authors, however, often mistrusted these claims, perceiving that masquerade's apparent freedoms were frequently nothing more than sophisticated forms of oppression. Catherine Craft-Fairchild's work provides a useful corrective to Castle's treatment of masquerade. She argues that, in fictions by Aphra Behn, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Burney, masquerade is double-sided. It is represented in some cases as a disempowering capitulation to patriarchal strictures that posit female subordination. Often within the same text, however, masquerade is also depicted as an empowering defiance of the dominant norms for female behavior. Heroines who attempt to separate themselves from the image of womanhood they consciously construct escape victimization. In both cases, masquerade is the condition of femininity: gender in the woman's novel is constructed rather than essential. Craft-Fairchild examines the guises in which womanhood appears, analyzing the ways in which women writers both construct and deconstruct eighteenth-century cultural conceptions of femininity. She offers a careful and engaging textual analysis of both canonical and noncanonical eighteenth-century texts, thereby setting lesser-read fictions into a critical dialogue with more widely known novels. Detailed readings are informed throughout by the ideas of current feminist theorists, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, and Kaja Silverman. Instead of assuming that fictions about women were based on biological fact, Craft-Fairchild stresses the opposite: the domestic novel itself constructs the domestic woman.
Masquerade and Gender
Author: Catherine A. Craft-Fairchild
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271038209
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
Terry Castle's recent study of masquerade follows Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque to conclude that, for women, masquerade offered exciting possibilities for social and sexual freedom. Castle's interpretation conforms to the fears expressed by male writers during the period—Addison, Steele, and Fielding all insisted that masquerade allowed women to usurp the privileges of men. Female authors, however, often mistrusted these claims, perceiving that masquerade's apparent freedoms were frequently nothing more than sophisticated forms of oppression. Catherine Craft-Fairchild's work provides a useful corrective to Castle's treatment of masquerade. She argues that, in fictions by Aphra Behn, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Burney, masquerade is double-sided. It is represented in some cases as a disempowering capitulation to patriarchal strictures that posit female subordination. Often within the same text, however, masquerade is also depicted as an empowering defiance of the dominant norms for female behavior. Heroines who attempt to separate themselves from the image of womanhood they consciously construct escape victimization. In both cases, masquerade is the condition of femininity: gender in the woman's novel is constructed rather than essential. Craft-Fairchild examines the guises in which womanhood appears, analyzing the ways in which women writers both construct and deconstruct eighteenth-century cultural conceptions of femininity. She offers a careful and engaging textual analysis of both canonical and noncanonical eighteenth-century texts, thereby setting lesser-read fictions into a critical dialogue with more widely known novels. Detailed readings are informed throughout by the ideas of current feminist theorists, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, and Kaja Silverman. Instead of assuming that fictions about women were based on biological fact, Craft-Fairchild stresses the opposite: the domestic novel itself constructs the domestic woman.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271038209
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
Terry Castle's recent study of masquerade follows Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque to conclude that, for women, masquerade offered exciting possibilities for social and sexual freedom. Castle's interpretation conforms to the fears expressed by male writers during the period—Addison, Steele, and Fielding all insisted that masquerade allowed women to usurp the privileges of men. Female authors, however, often mistrusted these claims, perceiving that masquerade's apparent freedoms were frequently nothing more than sophisticated forms of oppression. Catherine Craft-Fairchild's work provides a useful corrective to Castle's treatment of masquerade. She argues that, in fictions by Aphra Behn, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Burney, masquerade is double-sided. It is represented in some cases as a disempowering capitulation to patriarchal strictures that posit female subordination. Often within the same text, however, masquerade is also depicted as an empowering defiance of the dominant norms for female behavior. Heroines who attempt to separate themselves from the image of womanhood they consciously construct escape victimization. In both cases, masquerade is the condition of femininity: gender in the woman's novel is constructed rather than essential. Craft-Fairchild examines the guises in which womanhood appears, analyzing the ways in which women writers both construct and deconstruct eighteenth-century cultural conceptions of femininity. She offers a careful and engaging textual analysis of both canonical and noncanonical eighteenth-century texts, thereby setting lesser-read fictions into a critical dialogue with more widely known novels. Detailed readings are informed throughout by the ideas of current feminist theorists, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, and Kaja Silverman. Instead of assuming that fictions about women were based on biological fact, Craft-Fairchild stresses the opposite: the domestic novel itself constructs the domestic woman.
Masquerade and Identities
Author: Efrat Tseëlon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134530714
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
No competition. This book has the advantage of combining diverse fields of knowledge, social theory, fashion theory, art, history, literature, performance and cultural studies. Range of markets for this book. It's topical - it relates to current debates on the politics of identity, the social construction of identity. Covers range of fascinating examples to illustrate the arguments: the film 'The Crying Game', lesbian fashion, fetish fashion, Jewish folk theatre, opera balls in 19th century France.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134530714
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 201
Book Description
No competition. This book has the advantage of combining diverse fields of knowledge, social theory, fashion theory, art, history, literature, performance and cultural studies. Range of markets for this book. It's topical - it relates to current debates on the politics of identity, the social construction of identity. Covers range of fascinating examples to illustrate the arguments: the film 'The Crying Game', lesbian fashion, fetish fashion, Jewish folk theatre, opera balls in 19th century France.
The Aftermath of Feminism
Author: Angela McRobbie
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446200345
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
In this trenchant inquiry into the state of feminism, Angela McRobbie breaks open the politics of sexual equality and ′affirmative feminism′ and sets down a new theory of gender power. Challenging the most basic assumptions of the ′end′ of feminism, this book argues that invidious forms of gender re-stabilisation are being re-established. Consumer and popular culture encroach on the terrain of so-called female freedom, appearing supportive of female success, yet tying women into new post-feminist neurotic dependencies. With a scathing critique of ′women′s empowerment′, McRobbie has developed a distinctive feminist analysis that she uses to examine socio-cultural phenomena embedded in contemporary women′s lives: from fashion photography and the television ′make-over′ genre to eating disorders, body anxiety and ′illegible rage′. A turning point in feminist theory, The Aftermath of Feminism will set a new agenda for gender studies and cultural studies.
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446200345
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
In this trenchant inquiry into the state of feminism, Angela McRobbie breaks open the politics of sexual equality and ′affirmative feminism′ and sets down a new theory of gender power. Challenging the most basic assumptions of the ′end′ of feminism, this book argues that invidious forms of gender re-stabilisation are being re-established. Consumer and popular culture encroach on the terrain of so-called female freedom, appearing supportive of female success, yet tying women into new post-feminist neurotic dependencies. With a scathing critique of ′women′s empowerment′, McRobbie has developed a distinctive feminist analysis that she uses to examine socio-cultural phenomena embedded in contemporary women′s lives: from fashion photography and the television ′make-over′ genre to eating disorders, body anxiety and ′illegible rage′. A turning point in feminist theory, The Aftermath of Feminism will set a new agenda for gender studies and cultural studies.
Masquerade and Gender
Author: Catherine Craft-Fairchild
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271025827
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
Terry Castle's recent study of masquerade follows Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque to conclude that, for women, masquerade offered exciting possibilities for social and sexual freedom. Castle's interpretation conforms to the fears expressed by male writers during the period&—Addison, Steele, and Fielding all insisted that masquerade allowed women to usurp the privileges of men. Female authors, however, often mistrusted these claims, perceiving that masquerade's apparent freedoms were frequently nothing more than sophisticated forms of oppression. Catherine Craft-Fairchild's work provides a useful corrective to Castle's treatment of masquerade. She argues that, in fictions by Aphra Behn, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Burney, masquerade is double-sided. It is represented in some cases as a disempowering capitulation to patriarchal strictures that posit female subordination. Often within the same text, however, masquerade is also depicted as an empowering defiance of the dominant norms for female behavior. Heroines who attempt to separate themselves from the image of womanhood they consciously construct escape victimization. In both cases, masquerade is the condition of femininity: gender in the woman's novel is constructed rather than essential. Craft-Fairchild examines the guises in which womanhood appears, analyzing the ways in which women writers both construct and deconstruct eighteenth-century cultural conceptions of femininity. She offers a careful and engaging textual analysis of both canonical and noncanonical eighteenth-century texts, thereby setting lesser-read fictions into a critical dialogue with more widely known novels. Detailed readings are informed throughout by the ideas of current feminist theorists, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, and Kaja Silverman. Instead of assuming that fictions about women were based on biological fact, Craft-Fairchild stresses the opposite: the domestic novel itself constructs the domestic woman.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271025827
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
Terry Castle's recent study of masquerade follows Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque to conclude that, for women, masquerade offered exciting possibilities for social and sexual freedom. Castle's interpretation conforms to the fears expressed by male writers during the period&—Addison, Steele, and Fielding all insisted that masquerade allowed women to usurp the privileges of men. Female authors, however, often mistrusted these claims, perceiving that masquerade's apparent freedoms were frequently nothing more than sophisticated forms of oppression. Catherine Craft-Fairchild's work provides a useful corrective to Castle's treatment of masquerade. She argues that, in fictions by Aphra Behn, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Burney, masquerade is double-sided. It is represented in some cases as a disempowering capitulation to patriarchal strictures that posit female subordination. Often within the same text, however, masquerade is also depicted as an empowering defiance of the dominant norms for female behavior. Heroines who attempt to separate themselves from the image of womanhood they consciously construct escape victimization. In both cases, masquerade is the condition of femininity: gender in the woman's novel is constructed rather than essential. Craft-Fairchild examines the guises in which womanhood appears, analyzing the ways in which women writers both construct and deconstruct eighteenth-century cultural conceptions of femininity. She offers a careful and engaging textual analysis of both canonical and noncanonical eighteenth-century texts, thereby setting lesser-read fictions into a critical dialogue with more widely known novels. Detailed readings are informed throughout by the ideas of current feminist theorists, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, and Kaja Silverman. Instead of assuming that fictions about women were based on biological fact, Craft-Fairchild stresses the opposite: the domestic novel itself constructs the domestic woman.
The Bedtrick
Author: Wendy Doniger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226156443
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 631
Book Description
"Somehow I woke up one day and found myself in bed with a stranger." Meant literally or figuratively, this statement describes one of the best-known plots in world mythology and popular storytelling. In a tour that runs from Shakespeare to Hollywood and from Abraham Lincoln to Casanova, the erudite and irrepressible Wendy Doniger shows us the variety, danger, and allure of the "bedtrick," or what it means to wake up with a stranger. The Bedtrick brings together hundreds of stories from all over the world, from the earliest recorded Hindu and Hebrew texts to the latest item in the Weekly World News, to show the hilariously convoluted sexual scrapes that people manage to get themselves into and out of. Here you will find wives who accidentally commit adultery with their own husbands. You will read Lincoln's truly terrible poem about a bedtrick. You will learn that in Hong Kong the film The Crying Game was retitled Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis. And that President Clinton was not the first man to be identified by an idiosyncratic organ. At the bottom of these wonderful stories, ancient myths, and historical anecdotes lie the dynamics of sex and gender, power and identity. Why can't people tell the difference in the dark? Can love always tell the difference between one lover and another? And what kind of truth does sex tell? Funny, sexy, and engaging, The Bedtrick is a masterful work of energetic storytelling and dazzling scholarship. Give it to your spouse and your lover.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226156443
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 631
Book Description
"Somehow I woke up one day and found myself in bed with a stranger." Meant literally or figuratively, this statement describes one of the best-known plots in world mythology and popular storytelling. In a tour that runs from Shakespeare to Hollywood and from Abraham Lincoln to Casanova, the erudite and irrepressible Wendy Doniger shows us the variety, danger, and allure of the "bedtrick," or what it means to wake up with a stranger. The Bedtrick brings together hundreds of stories from all over the world, from the earliest recorded Hindu and Hebrew texts to the latest item in the Weekly World News, to show the hilariously convoluted sexual scrapes that people manage to get themselves into and out of. Here you will find wives who accidentally commit adultery with their own husbands. You will read Lincoln's truly terrible poem about a bedtrick. You will learn that in Hong Kong the film The Crying Game was retitled Oh No! My Girlfriend Has a Penis. And that President Clinton was not the first man to be identified by an idiosyncratic organ. At the bottom of these wonderful stories, ancient myths, and historical anecdotes lie the dynamics of sex and gender, power and identity. Why can't people tell the difference in the dark? Can love always tell the difference between one lover and another? And what kind of truth does sex tell? Funny, sexy, and engaging, The Bedtrick is a masterful work of energetic storytelling and dazzling scholarship. Give it to your spouse and your lover.
Masquerade
Author: Alfred F. Young
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679761853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
In Masquerade, Alfred F. Young scrapes through layers of fiction and myth to uncover the story of Deborah Sampson, a Massachusetts woman who passed as a man and fought as a soldier for seventeen months toward the end of the American Revolution. Deborah Sampson was not the only woman to pose as a male and fight in the war, but she was certainly one of the most successful and celebrated. She managed to fight in combat and earn the respect of her officers and peers, and in later years she toured the country lecturing about her experiences and was partially successful in obtaining veterans’ benefits. Her full story, however, was buried underneath exaggeration and myth (some of which she may have created herself), becoming another sort of masquerade. Young takes the reader with him through his painstaking efforts to reveal the real Deborah Sampson in a work of history that is as spellbinding as the best detective fiction.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679761853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
In Masquerade, Alfred F. Young scrapes through layers of fiction and myth to uncover the story of Deborah Sampson, a Massachusetts woman who passed as a man and fought as a soldier for seventeen months toward the end of the American Revolution. Deborah Sampson was not the only woman to pose as a male and fight in the war, but she was certainly one of the most successful and celebrated. She managed to fight in combat and earn the respect of her officers and peers, and in later years she toured the country lecturing about her experiences and was partially successful in obtaining veterans’ benefits. Her full story, however, was buried underneath exaggeration and myth (some of which she may have created herself), becoming another sort of masquerade. Young takes the reader with him through his painstaking efforts to reveal the real Deborah Sampson in a work of history that is as spellbinding as the best detective fiction.
The Masculine Masquerade
Author: Andrew Perchuk
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262161541
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
The Masculine Masquerade explores often-ignored issues of masculinity in the visual arts as well as models and concepts of masculinity in literature, film, and the mass media. Drawing on the work of feminist and gay studies and the work being done in areas of psychology, sociology, and gender studies, the essays analyze the conventional and limited definition of masculinity as a social and cultural construct. They seek to expand that definition to include multiple masculinities and factors such as race, class, ethnicity, and object choice. Helaine Posner, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, examines masculinity in the contemporary visual arts, including the works of Matthew Barney, Mary Kelly, Lyle Ashton Harris, Clegg & Guttmann, Keith Piper, and Donald Moffett. Andrew Perchuk, independent curator and critic, focuses on the art of the immediate postwar period to investigate T. J. Clark's notion that the terminology surrounding the New York School was expressed in the language of sexual difference, with severe consequences for artists whose work could not be inserted into this narrative. Steven Cohan, Associate Professor of English, Syracuse University, looks at postwar film in The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit:Gender Performance and the Representation of Masculinity in North by Northwest. Harry Brod, Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware, traces the history of masculinity as masquerade, from classic conceptions of masquerade as distinctly feminine to contemporary theories of gender as performative. bell hooks, Professor of English, City College, investigates the historical definition of black male sex roles and the commodification of blackness through close readings of the films of Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee, among others. Simon Watney, writer, activist, and critic, considers the current and changing impact of AIDS on the gay male community in "Lifelike": Imagining the Bodies of People with AIDS. Finally, Glenn Ligon employs stereotypic images of black men constructed for white pleasure, drawn from 1970s pornographic magazines, and explores the possibility of recovering and transforming these images into non-racist expressions of pleasure and desire. Distributed for the MIT List Visual Arts Center
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262161541
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
The Masculine Masquerade explores often-ignored issues of masculinity in the visual arts as well as models and concepts of masculinity in literature, film, and the mass media. Drawing on the work of feminist and gay studies and the work being done in areas of psychology, sociology, and gender studies, the essays analyze the conventional and limited definition of masculinity as a social and cultural construct. They seek to expand that definition to include multiple masculinities and factors such as race, class, ethnicity, and object choice. Helaine Posner, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center, examines masculinity in the contemporary visual arts, including the works of Matthew Barney, Mary Kelly, Lyle Ashton Harris, Clegg & Guttmann, Keith Piper, and Donald Moffett. Andrew Perchuk, independent curator and critic, focuses on the art of the immediate postwar period to investigate T. J. Clark's notion that the terminology surrounding the New York School was expressed in the language of sexual difference, with severe consequences for artists whose work could not be inserted into this narrative. Steven Cohan, Associate Professor of English, Syracuse University, looks at postwar film in The Spy in the Gray Flannel Suit:Gender Performance and the Representation of Masculinity in North by Northwest. Harry Brod, Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware, traces the history of masculinity as masquerade, from classic conceptions of masquerade as distinctly feminine to contemporary theories of gender as performative. bell hooks, Professor of English, City College, investigates the historical definition of black male sex roles and the commodification of blackness through close readings of the films of Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee, among others. Simon Watney, writer, activist, and critic, considers the current and changing impact of AIDS on the gay male community in "Lifelike": Imagining the Bodies of People with AIDS. Finally, Glenn Ligon employs stereotypic images of black men constructed for white pleasure, drawn from 1970s pornographic magazines, and explores the possibility of recovering and transforming these images into non-racist expressions of pleasure and desire. Distributed for the MIT List Visual Arts Center
Maiko Masquerade
Author: Jan Bardsley
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520296435
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Maiko Masquerade explores Japanese representations of the maiko, or apprentice geisha, in films, manga, and other popular media as an icon of exemplary girlhood. Jan Bardsley traces how the maiko, long stigmatized as a victim of sexual exploitation, emerges in the 2000s as the chaste keeper of Kyoto’s classical artistic traditions. Insider accounts by maiko and geisha, their leaders and fans, show pride in the training, challenges, and rewards maiko face. No longer viewed as a toy for men’s amusement, she serves as catalyst for women’s consumer fun. This change inspires stories of ordinary girls—and even one boy—striving to embody the maiko ideal, engaging in masquerades that highlight questions of personal choice, gender performance, and national identity.
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520296435
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
Maiko Masquerade explores Japanese representations of the maiko, or apprentice geisha, in films, manga, and other popular media as an icon of exemplary girlhood. Jan Bardsley traces how the maiko, long stigmatized as a victim of sexual exploitation, emerges in the 2000s as the chaste keeper of Kyoto’s classical artistic traditions. Insider accounts by maiko and geisha, their leaders and fans, show pride in the training, challenges, and rewards maiko face. No longer viewed as a toy for men’s amusement, she serves as catalyst for women’s consumer fun. This change inspires stories of ordinary girls—and even one boy—striving to embody the maiko ideal, engaging in masquerades that highlight questions of personal choice, gender performance, and national identity.
Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport
Author: Sonja Erikainen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000766039
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
This book critically explores the history of gender verification in international sport, to show how culture, politics, and science come together to produce "femaleness" and, consequently, the female body as we know it. Tracing gender verification policies and practices in sport since the 1930s till the present, the book shows how and why medical "sex tests" have been used to "verify" women athletes’ femaleness, in ways that both reflect and have shaped broader social and scientific ideas about femaleness in the process. Exploring how geopolitics, gender, class and race relations intertwined with scientific ideas about femaleness and womanhood to shape gender verification, the book shows how sports competitions became a battleground where new and old ideas about sex difference collided. By mapping the social, historical, and material instability of sex and gender, it shows why so much investment has been placed in distinguishing femaleness from maleness in sport and beyond. The book will be of interest to researchers, later-year undergraduate and graduate students in a broad range of areas including gender studies, sports studies, social and historical studies of science and medicine. It will also be relevant to sports policy as it historically and conceptually contextualises gender verification policies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000766039
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
This book critically explores the history of gender verification in international sport, to show how culture, politics, and science come together to produce "femaleness" and, consequently, the female body as we know it. Tracing gender verification policies and practices in sport since the 1930s till the present, the book shows how and why medical "sex tests" have been used to "verify" women athletes’ femaleness, in ways that both reflect and have shaped broader social and scientific ideas about femaleness in the process. Exploring how geopolitics, gender, class and race relations intertwined with scientific ideas about femaleness and womanhood to shape gender verification, the book shows how sports competitions became a battleground where new and old ideas about sex difference collided. By mapping the social, historical, and material instability of sex and gender, it shows why so much investment has been placed in distinguishing femaleness from maleness in sport and beyond. The book will be of interest to researchers, later-year undergraduate and graduate students in a broad range of areas including gender studies, sports studies, social and historical studies of science and medicine. It will also be relevant to sports policy as it historically and conceptually contextualises gender verification policies.
Masked Men
Author: Steve Cohan
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253115874
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
The fifties marks the moment when a heterosexual/homosexual dualism came to dominate U.S. culture's thinking about masculinity. The films of this era record how gender and sexuality did not easily come together in a normative manhood common to American men. Instead these films demonstrate the widely held perception of a crises of masculinity. Masked Men documents how movies of the fifties represented masculinity as a multiple masquerade. Hollywood's star system positioned the male actor as a professional performer and as a body intended to solicit the erotic interest of male and female viewers alike. Drawing on publicity, poster art, fan magazines, and the popular press as a means of following the links between fifties stars, their films, and the social tensions of the period, Cohan juxtaposes Hollywood's narratives of masculinity against the personae of leading men like Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, William Holden, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Rock Hudson. Masked Men focuses on the gender and sexual masquerades that organized their performances of masculinity on and off screen.
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253115874
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
The fifties marks the moment when a heterosexual/homosexual dualism came to dominate U.S. culture's thinking about masculinity. The films of this era record how gender and sexuality did not easily come together in a normative manhood common to American men. Instead these films demonstrate the widely held perception of a crises of masculinity. Masked Men documents how movies of the fifties represented masculinity as a multiple masquerade. Hollywood's star system positioned the male actor as a professional performer and as a body intended to solicit the erotic interest of male and female viewers alike. Drawing on publicity, poster art, fan magazines, and the popular press as a means of following the links between fifties stars, their films, and the social tensions of the period, Cohan juxtaposes Hollywood's narratives of masculinity against the personae of leading men like Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, William Holden, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Rock Hudson. Masked Men focuses on the gender and sexual masquerades that organized their performances of masculinity on and off screen.