Hollywood

Movie Manhood in the Silent Era

Hollywood's complex relationship to masculinity dates back to the silent film era at the beginning of the twentieth century. D. W. Griffith's Civil War epic Birth of a Nation (1915) juxtaposed images of heroic white southern gentlemen with corrupt and handicapped northern men, as well as with stereotyped representations of African-American men, portrayed (by white actors in blackface) as comic fools, political usurpers, and menacing sexual predators. By dramatizing white masculine fears and fantasies of both empowerment and disempowerment, and by circulating racialized constructions of masculinity among mass audiences, Griffith became the first of a lasting off-screen masculine type in Hollywood: the powerful directorial auteur capable of cinematic artistry and overseeing big budgets, complex technologies, and numerous personnel.

On-screen, Hollywood reflected and contributed to body-centered definitions of masculinity of the period. Men's performances were emphatically physical, portraying physical prowess, malleability, vulnerability, and resilience—ranging from the athleticism of Douglas Fairbanks to the overt sexuality of Rudolph Valentino to the physical humor of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Through exaggerated physical movements that created dramatic and comic narratives, these male stars offered viewers compelling, albeit fictional, versions of masculinity. By and large, film images of masculinity depicted standard archetypes, including the morally upright male hero and the hypermasculine villain.

Masculinity in Hollywood's Golden Age

The advent of sound film in 1927 heralded Hollywood's “Golden Age” of the 1930s and 1940s. As the film industry gained increasing cultural power, its efforts to avoid government regulation led to a self-imposed production code in 1930 that ensured its conformity to conservative social conventions and traditional notions of manhood. However, far more ambivalent and contested versions of masculinity were embedded in many film narratives and production processes.

During the 1930s, the experiences of economic depression and world war shaped two of Hollywood's most distinctively masculine genres—Westerns and war films—which showed nostalgic and escapist images of iconic men maintaining self-control in antagonistic environments. While Westerns depicted stoic heroes and antiheroes deliberately and decisively meting out violence in a bygone era, war films depicted men bravely facing the violence and chaos of modern warfare. Gangster and detective films of the noir genre combined elements of Westerns and war films, depicting modern gunslingers attempting to control a hostile and morally ambiguous urban world. Meanwhile, Hollywood's romantic comedies and melodramas portrayed men moving from the masculine independence of bachelorhood to the domesticated manhood of marriage. Such iconic masculine actors as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, James Stewart, and Cary Grant became stars in these genres, while the directors Howard Hawks, John Ford, and John Huston established their masculine filmmaking reputations through their Westerns and war films. Other directors, such as Orson Welles, Frank Capra, and George Cukor, represented an alternative model of male prowess: the sensitive, creative intellectual maverick.

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