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Conclusion
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Conclusion Even before the war broke out in Europe, the United States had created at least two broadly popular figures, one from motion pictures, the other from popular music, who personified the young male on the brink of what had been traditionally thought of as manhood: Both seemed devoid of the toughness of what was then thought of as conventional masculinity and were of middling height and physique. Unlike Rudolf Valentino a generation before, Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra excited the romantic adoration not of grown women but of adolescent girls; yet these two celebrities never threatened the masculinity of male audience members as Valentino had, perhaps because of their youth. Thus, their popularity was not confined to the girls who pined for them but extended to movie fans and music lovers in general, who embraced them as well. One might argue, then, that a younger alternative to the he-man solidity embodied and enacted by older, more mature film stars and musical crooners had already taken hold in the United States and that even if the country had not entered the war, this new construct of masculinity would have become a serious competitor for the more established masculinities. Of course, America did enter the war, and its affect on masculinity remains indisputable: Even as those on the home front wept for and extolled the virtues of the “boys” overseas, the nation as a whole was obliged to refer to them as “fighting men.” The pervasive imagery of these young but adult combatants, of their strength, courage, and competence, may have been repeated ad nauseum simply to dispel the reality that America was once again sending children into battle. Only after the war did the popular medium of film offer a variety of narratives that showed the physical and emotional casualties, who were sometimes still in their teens. Perhaps the combination of the wartime remaking of manhood and the postwar revelation of that manhood’s vulnerabilities , was most influential in constructing a masculinity that was neither physically nor emotionally threatening to other males. Rooney and Sinatra may have been popular and likeable, but the young vets were not only both but they were also ennobled by their experience. 321 322 MALE BEAUTY Possibly the fact that Marlon Brando, in his first film appearance, had, in addition to his muscular body, handsome face, and compelling personality, a major disability, allowed male spectators to accept his almost inescapable beauty. Similarly, Montgomery Clift, who presented a haunted presence before the camera, and James Dean, who performed as if driven by some terrible inner need, transcended the usual boundaries that men in cinema audiences had set for their responses to what they observed on the screen. Clift and Dean, along with Brando, inspired the problematic homosocial/ homosexual response of identification: Male spectators frequently wanted to be like the male characters portrayed by these actors. The distance between the caustic, elusive wartime homosexual poet of The Glass Menagerie and the gay bodybuilder and college professor who posed nude in the year of the Stonewall riot for Jim French’s Colt Studios, seems at first far greater than the twenty-five years that separated them. Yet the line leading from one to the other is discernable, even direct, enough. If Tom Wingfield is not in himself beautiful, then his father clearly was, at least physically. This is verified by the photograph Amanda has hung on the wall, which serves as a shrine to the beauty and also the treacherousness of masculinity. (Tennessee Williams’s insistence that the household icon bear the image of the actor playing Tom is perhaps a cruel comment on how what passes for male beauty is not as appealing when viewed up close.) Although Laura’s fondness of Jim seems to make him appear beautiful in her eyes, her less sentimental brother notes his supposed comrade’s flaws, even as Tom’s appraisal of how Jim perceives him—as an oddly fashioned dog—would suggest that Tom himself has little patience with the possibility of male beauty, in spite of his implied attraction to men. Tom Lee, however, is a far more ambiguous figure, for he is created to represent a masculine male who pretty much lacks masculine characteristics. Although Robert Anderson makes it plain that such characteristics are arbitrary and even false markers of gender, he fails to address the homosexual panic, fueled apparently by the attractive nudity of a good-looking teacher displayed during a homosocial interaction, which at first...