American Cinema and the Construction of Masculinity in Film in the Federal Republic after 1945

TitleAmerican Cinema and the Construction of Masculinity in Film in the Federal Republic after 1945
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2012
AuthorsLeal, Joanne
JournalGerman Life and Letters
Volume65
Issue1
Pagination59-72
Date Published01/2012
Abstract

Since 1945, film in the Federal Republic has maintained an ambivalent relationship to American cinema and its embedded ideologies and nowhere is this more evident than in (West) German film's representations of masculinity. This article focuses on three historical moments when political and social shifts resulted in a problematising of male identities in the Federal Republic: the mid-1950s, the early 1970s and the late 1990s. Cinema responded to a perceived destabilisation of gender norms by exploring constructions of German masculinity in relation to the ambivalently received models of male identity offered by American cinema. With a detailed analysis of three specific examples – Georg Tressler's Die Halbstarken (1956), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Der amerikanische Soldat (1970) and Fatih Akin's Kurz und schmerzlos (1998) – this article investigates the manner in which German cinema engages with these competing conceptions of masculinity and demonstrates the ways in which divergent understandings of gender identity can impact on representations of national and ethnic identity.

URLhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0483.2011.01559.x
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