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In the face of the massive economic disruptions of the 1930s, both Hollywood and political organizations scrambled to articulate versions of American liberal and democratic creeds that would win adherents, but they did not do so in the same way. Hollywood never mounted a strong defense of union power in the decade; the working people on the screen were seldom the committed labor activists or the determined strikers found on the pages of proletarian novels, who knew exactly that it was strong industrial unions that were the answer to the problems of capitalism in the thirties. But neither did Hollywood offer an uncritical view of liberal capitalism . Rather, it took a middle ground by offering features that affirmed both the need for individuals to explore their personal dreams and the reality of economic and political exploitation in the nation as well as the requirement that greater measures of fairness and cooperation be implemented . Thus, it explored issues pertaining to liberalism and personal longings when it presented movies about gangsters, boxers, and female factory workers and related tales of how unregulated capitalists had caused the Depression in the first place. When it offered images of striking miners, displaced farmers, and women who were exploited by men, it strongly suggested that ordinary people were often victimized and in need of greater measures of justice in their lives.1 Under the emblems of the New Deal and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), union leaders and political officials sought to pull workers away from identities grounded in ethnicity, race, skill, and region and to mold them into a collective force for working-class democracy . Thus, they were more committed to social democracy than was Hollywood, but they invested less of an effort in pushing for the realization of personal goals. They supported a democratic vision of a nation 1 POLITICAL CROSS-DRESSING IN THE THIRTIES ONE where working people could not only hope to participate in the exercise of political power more than they did in the twenties but could expect some form of reward for their years of toil and sacrifice. In other words, they had a right to share in the wealth of a democratic and capitalistic society more than they had in the past. But CIO politics was not without its prejudices. In this political culture workingmen stood above women, and family heads stood above all others. And while a democratic sense of sharing power and a respect for the rights of individual citizens were notions that could be found both in the movies and in politics, the balance between democracy and liberalism was not quite the same in each realm. In film, more attention was devoted to the problem of the individual and the extent to which he (and especially she) could be free of economic distress and moral obligations—even as moral standards were often defended at the end of many stories. In the political world, the expectations were more about the need to restrain individualism—whether it was in the hands of working men, free-wheeling capitalists, or women, who were of secondary importance to unionists and New Dealers. Hollywood also sought to wean people away from older identities, but it was more likely to do so under the sign of the individual than of the union or the state. Some democratic-minded films were more likely to explore the fate of individuals within the context of their social worlds and the idea that just futures were desirable if not always possible. Feature films that were more liberal, however, narrowed the frame of reference considerably and pictured the individual as living in a world that was severely more circumscribed. Movies expended some effort at reaf- firming the legitimacy of democratic claims, not so much by endorsing the CIO and the New Deal—although a feature like Gabriel Over the White House (1933) suggested the need for powerful government intervention into the economy—but by acknowledging the wide range of personal turmoil and wants in the minds of males and females and the possibility that they might be realized in some way. In other words, Hollywood could not discuss democracy without pondering the fate of liberalism —its central question. Thus, Hollywood did a better job than the CIO or the New Deal of envisioning life outside the orbit of large-scale organizations and of picturing private desires, especially the longing to escape rather than solve the problems of working-class life. It realized what Raymond...

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