Of Treason, God, and Testicles

Kathleen Starck, a cultural studies scholar, has written a monograph that ably showcases how masculinities were coded in popular culture during the early Cold War. Because the lived experiences and sociological studies of Anglo-American masculinities have already received treatment, Starck pursues a different path, investigating how early Cold War popular culture mediated the general anxieties of a Communist takeover into cinematic representations. Starck follows an established periodization of the Cold War and considers its first stage to have lasted nearly twenty years, from 1948 to 1966. During the so-called first Cold War, the conflict's infrastructure and fundamental dynamics were established. The détente of the late 1960s then reshaped the logic of the superpower standoff.Although Anglo-American Cold War gender constructs in popular culture have gotten due attention from scholars such as Tony Shaw, James Gilbert, and Russell Meeuf, Starck adds a new note to the existing scholarship by focusing on the dynamics underlying Anglo-American political masculinities. She investigates masculine models tied specifically to the world of politics, which includes a variety of actors, such as professional politicians, party members, and military professionals, as well as civilians involved with political causes and organizations. Starck demonstrates that popular culture expressions of the early Cold War era were anything but static, as they morphed over time and adapted to changing domestic and international contexts. The movies of the late 1940s and early 1960s were distinct, the former dealing with fears of Communist infiltration, and the latter adopting a more critical stance toward the Cold War and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. But even as cinematographic trends changed, the initial cinematographic treatments of the Cold War rarely fully disappeared from the country's cultural repertoire. The fear of fifth-columnists continued to coexist with the fear of nuclear Armageddon; the reflexive celebration of Cold Warriors coincided with the rejection of the same hypermasculine and militaristic masculine model.The book features nine chapters, five of which are dedicated to analysis of films that form the core of Starck's argument. By investigating a broad range of masculine heroes—from foreign spies to domestic traitors, from Cold Warriors to brave men of the cloth—Starck reveals a certain stability of the period's representation politics. Featuring close parallel readings of comparable British and US films, Starck convincingly shows that the logic underpinning political Anglo-American masculinities proved remarkably consistent during this era. Starck shows that, more often than not, gender conformity proved more crucial than ideological conformity and that filmmakers could ignore political ideology for the sake of the positive performance of masculinity. In short, during the tense years of the early Cold War, gender conformity trumped ideological purity. For instance, the correct gendering of the male protagonist was used by both the militant anti-Communists and the pacifists. The clearest example of this trend emerges when comparing the 1952 film Big Jim McLean, starring John Wayne, and the 1966 feature The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!, starring John Phillip Law. On the one hand, the two movies advance opposing messages: Big Jim McLean aims to convince the audiences that Communists are dastardly creatures who should not be trusted. The Russians Are Coming! not only humanizes the enemy but makes clear that Americans and Russians are not all that different in terms of their fundamental values. On the other hand, both films feature protagonists who exhibit the same blend of gender-appropriate traits: military masculinity, virility, bodily strength, and physical attractiveness. Both Wayne and Law embody a traditional kind of masculinity that places a premium on men's physical strength, their sex appeal, and their role as protectors of children and the “weaker sex.” Regardless of the political message directors advanced, cinematic protagonists had to hew closely to the normative masculine model. Thus, the gendering process was more important than the ideological one, and it showed that gender was more central to filmmakers and audiences than the Cold War conflict, which became a sort of a backdrop for the era's gender politics.Overall, Of Treason, God and Testicles is a welcome contribution to a growing field of critical studies of men and masculinities, especially because it lays bare the interconnectedness of gender, sexuality, class, and religious identity, as well as national and chronological context. British and U.S. early Cold War political masculinities were, essentially, a fusion of the period's cultural panics. The fear of the Soviet Union brought to the surface anxieties regarding various social issues: that women, as mothers, were becoming overly dominant in both the domestic and the political spheres (i.e., Momism); that the populace had become detached from its Judeo-Christian moorings; that tough, plain-speaking, working-class yeomen had become supplanted by effete, upper-class, overeducated weaklings. This “masculinity crisis” resulted in the stabilization of the traditional masculine trope in both national cinema industries.Although Starck shows that Anglo-American Cold War cinematography was linked in terms of the themes directors explored, she is also careful to observe the differences between the two allies. Despite being bound together in their struggle against the Communist threat, the two countries approached this threat from contrasting angles. British films tended to be less overtly anti-Communist, displayed less of a sense of the Red Scare hysteria, and did not glorify the military-industrial complex to the same extent. Finally, when compared to Hollywood, British features tended to be less anti-intellectual. Because British cinema tended to downplay the Cold War or treat it subtly, the British screen ultimately never produced a full-blown Cold Warrior prototype à la John Wayne in Big Jim McLean.Scholars interested in the cultural politics of the early Cold War era will find Starck's monograph illuminating. Her case studies are instructive, and her analysis is thought-provoking

Cold war · Political science · Politics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies