Hollywood’s Postwar Feminine Masquerades

This chapter examines representations of women and issues of femininity and feminine performance with respect to anxieties about authenticity and passing. A number of Hollywood films featured masculine women who played with categories of masculinity, such as Calamity Jane, Johnny Guitar, Touch of Evil, and Sayonara. Other films, like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Peyton Place, and All about Eve, implied that women were performing femininity or raised the issue of “passing for normal.” The chapter considers how idealized, overly constructed gender representations in Hollywood films reinforced rather than negated the ambiguity of gender and how femininity itself was suggestively constructed as a passing performance. It explains how Hollywood's images of feminine masculinity lent credence to perceptions that gender categories were breaking down and how representations of ambiguous women in Hollywood films refused to focus on anxiety.

“Hiding in Plain Sight”

This chapter focuses on political passing, in which the specter of passing was utilized in Hollywood films produced in the context of the Cold War. Films about political passing called into question who was who and the nature of identity. The notion that somebody could pass politically mirrored fears about racial passing, complicated by postwar obsessions with Communism. The chapter examines how anti-Communist films such as My Son John and Woman on Pier 13 tackle the “enemy within” and portray Communists as caricatures, either gangster-like or hyperintellectual, thus making visible what was supposed to be an invisible threat. It also considers the way anti-Communism in Hollywood exploited anxieties that were linked to postwar ideas about identity.

They Walk among Us

This chapter focuses on science fiction films that featured aliens passing as humans and examines how they tapped into the fears and anxieties about politics and issues of identity in postwar America. In films such as Invaders from Mars, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, friendly neighbors might be alien invaders pretending to be humans. These Hollywood films were of two main categories: those concerned with the external threat of alien invasions, and those that deal with the internal threat of aliens who infiltrated the earth and passed for human. The chapter suggests that aliens passing for human brought to the fore the connections between anxiety about racial passing, Communism, and subversive gender or sexual identities.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter summarizes the book's main themes relating to the many different ways that Hollywood films represented passing between 1947 and 1960, thus casting light on the contradictory discourses about identity that coexisted in postwar American culture. The book has shown how Hollywood embraced the psychoanalytic turn and how representations of passing related to discourse about authenticity and identity went beyond issues of race or racial indeterminacy. Aliens passing as humans, communists passing as Americans, men passing as women and vice versa, or homosexuals passing as heterosexuals were all raised as possible scenarios that sparked a decade of anxiety and fear. The book has brought to the fore broader cultural anxieties about the instability and fragility of categories of race, gender, class, and sexuality—all of which were epitomized by Langston Hughes in his 1952 short story collection Laughing to Keep from Crying.

Passing as Social Strategy

This chapter focuses on representations of racial/ethnic passing in Hollywood films produced in the late 1940s. It examines how postwar filmmakers used their medium to frame passing as a viable social strategy, rather than a sign of an internalized confusion about identity, and to elevate the “social problem” or “message” movies to new levels of prestige and popularity. These films dealt with various themes, including alcoholism, female insanity, racism and racial prejudice, prison reform, death penalty, and anti-Semitism. The chapter analyzes how race and racial identities were constructed in Crossfire and Home of the Brave, not only as a counterpoint to discussions of racial passing in films, but as a way of showing the trajectory of pathological figures in Hollywood films, from twisted psychosis wrought by racial prejudice (late 1940s) to the twisted psychosis wrought by racial passing (late 1950s).

“Both Body and Meaning Can Do a Cartwheel”1

This chapter examines the crisis of masculinity as represented in Hollywood and on film. Evolving representations of masculinity were framed by the psychoanalytic turn in Hollywood, the objectification and eroticization of male bodies, the dominance of method acting, and questions about the nature of identity. These images uncoupled the stable categories of gender and sexuality, giving rise to more nuanced and anxiety-ridden representations of masculinity. The chapter considers how postwar Hollywood films charted a perceived breakdown of secure gender categories and by implication, a breakdown of sexuality. It discusses how “crisis of masculinity” films produced ambiguous masculine ideals, epitomized by the postwar “sigh guys.” Films that explore the passing guises of masculinity, such as The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Rebel without a Cause, Vertigo, and Some Like It Hot, are analyzed.

Passing as Identity Crisis

This chapter examines how passing in Hollywood films that were produced in the late 1950s changed from being represented as an accepted external social strategy to one that reflected a psychologically motivated identity crisis. This is evident in films like Island in the Sun and Imitation of Life, which were portrayed as a pathological psychological failure to accept an imagined authentic identity. The chapter attributes this shift to a change in attitudes toward passing as the civil rights movement, the rise of black stars including Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge, post-passing narratives, and the psychoanalytic turn in Hollywood redefined how Americans understood race. It suggests that passing evolved into a sign of a deeper internal psychological disability and became marginalized and relegated to unsympathetic and/or supporting characters. It also considers how anxiety about racial ambiguity was framed as a crisis about sexual deviance and masculinity.

Hollywood’s Passing Contexts

This chapter explores how concepts about identity changed after World War II by focusing on cultural contexts which affected the ways that Hollywood films were produced and consumed. In particular, it considers the rise of psychology, cultural anthropology, and the culture of the Cold War. It discusses the idea that identities were malleable and how it coexisted with discourses about authenticity and “identity crisis.” It also shows how Hollywood reflected and promoted atomic and Cold War fears, identity anxiety, and the rise of psychoanalytic discourse. The chapter suggests that all the divergent ideological strands and cultural beliefs that characterized the postwar period, including Cold War fears of an “enemy within” and the proliferation of identity studies, had influenced Hollywood representations of racial, gender, sexual, and political identities on-screen as well as audience interpretations of those representations.

Introduction

This book examines the contradictions and anxieties of passing in Hollywood films during the postwar era. It shows how the postwar anxiety about passing extended to virtually every facet of identity, whether it was women passing as men, blacks passing as whites, gays passing as straight, Jews passing as gentiles, communists passing as good Americans, or even aliens passing as humans (and vice versa). By analyzing films in the postwar years, the book shows why anxieties about passing resonated on so many levels in the long 1950s. It looks at representations of racial/ethnic passing in movies produced in the late 1940s and how the specter of passing was utilized in films produced in the context of the Cold War. Finally, it discusses the crisis of masculinity as represented in Hollywood and on film as well as issues of femininity and feminine performance with respect to anxieties about authenticity and passing.