American Nostalgia For The Not-So-Distant Past

The most intriguing aspect of Gary Willis’ prologue is the collective myth of American masculinity over the time period of the 1930s til the 1980s. I’m particularly intrigued with his mention of Ronald Reagan. It’s no secret that he has become something of a patron saint of the GOP in recent elections, and it’s not just about his politics. The image Ronald Reagan projected was a tough-guy, John Wayne-like aura that exuded confidence in the face of fire, much like John Wayne does in Stagecoach. Since then, we have not seen a member of the GOP (or any president, for that matter) exude the same style of masculinity. Sure, George W Bush was “manly” — a Texas rancher is about as close to American Man® as they come. But he was not in control: even members of his party would admit that he did not have the Reagan persona of competency.

In conjunction with this ebb of traditional masculinity since the 80s, the Cohan article is interesting — much like North by Northwest represented the response to the fear of emasculation, I wonder how today’s media represent the current crisis of emasculation in America. Cohan talks about the homoerotic tensions present in the anti-American spies in North by Northwest as adding further threat to the communist — and thus anti-masculine — group represented by Eve Kendall. The conflation of Roger’s masculinity and the success of America in the cold war is clearly not a mistake according to Cohan: “[W]hen Roger beats the effete Vandamm by getting away with Eve and the figurine containing the stolen microfilm, our hero’s triumph equates the revived health of his masculinity with that of his nation.” What I wonder is whether or not this has at all changed since the making of North by Northwest.

Obviously, there has been some shifting in how we define masculinity, or if it can even be defined. Certainly there is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure (but no, not that one!) kind of masculinity today. For instance, you can be the lumberjack archetype, you can be a suit-wearing man who makes his own coffee, you can be a gamer — but a departure from these constructed ways in which it’s OK to be male is not largely accepted. You can wear a suit — but not with a pencil skirt or heels. This kind of conjecture rapidly devolves into huge sweeping statements (WHAT IS GENDER) so I’m not going to tackle that here, but seeing the history of how masculinity has been represented up until now makes me question how far we’ve really come – or where we think we’re going. Are the suit wearing or lumbersexual men of today really all that different from the grey flannel suits of the 1950s or the John Wayne archetype in Stagecoach? 

Jonathan Stoller-Schoff, Blog Post #2