(DOWNLOAD) "Interrogations of Masculinity: Violence and the Retro-Gangster Cycle of the 60S (Gangster Movies) (Critical Essay)" by Atenea # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Interrogations of Masculinity: Violence and the Retro-Gangster Cycle of the 60S (Gangster Movies) (Critical Essay)
- Author : Atenea
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 78 KB
Description
American manhood is governed by a sense of exclusion and fear, elements that have been incorporated into many of the films produced in classical Hollywood as well as contemporary Hollywood. The metaphor of the "suit" in 1950s Hollywood films as a representation of manhood symbolized conformity, consumerism, and the American masculine experience. However as Michael Kimmel notes, "by the 1960s American men felt increasingly alienated, stuck in a rut, unable to escape the dull monotony of a cookie-cutter corporate identity, a suit that was ready-made and waiting to be filled" (264). Yet in gangster films from the 1930s into the 1960s, suits replaced the cowboy's Western garb as a metaphor of masculinity. The men in the suits were more than simple corporate clones. They were men of action who engaged in violent and sexual acts, and who took control of their destinies. These men illustrated that it was possible for American white males to be more than weak, timid creatures who feared the influence of foreign powers, the threatening potential of women, and the encroachment of African Americans into the public sphere (Kimmel 6-9). In short, these gangster figures demonstrated a form of masculinity that was without emotion, remorse, or even at times intellectual foresight but by the mid to late 1960s this perception would be questioned. Nevertheless these were and remain the qualities celebrated as exemplar of the American male experience. What was often lacking in the classical Hollywood period was a realistic portrayal of the sexual tension and violence which men may be capable of enacting upon society, especially women. No other genre of film has better represented the desire to capture the feelings of self-interested and selfish men than that of the gangster film.
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