Masked men

by Steven Cohan

When we think of the films of the 1950s, we inevitably remember the confident swagger of John Wayne, the suave sophistication of Cary Grant, and the emotional intensity of Marlon Brando. But today's culture critics see in the decade a period when heterosexual/homosexual dualism came to dominate the representation of American masculinity. Masked Men documents how movies of the 1950s represented masculinity as a multiple masquerade. Hollywood depicted the sexual anxieties of the domesticated breadwinner, the repudiation of wartime homoerotic male bonding, the exhibitionism of muscular bodies, the transvestic connotations of boyishness, and the playboy bachelor apartment. These presentations challenged the postwar ideal of the typical American male, that omnipresent and seemingly invisible Man in a Gray Flannel Suit.