NATION, NOSTALGIA AND MASCULINITY: CLINTON/SPIELBERG/HANKS by Molly Diane Brown ...

367 Pages·2009·1.56 MB·English

NATION, NOSTALGIA AND MASCULINITY: CLINTON/SPIELBERG/HANKS

by
Molly Diane Brown
B.A. English, University of Oregon, 1995
M.A. English, Portland State University, 1998

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh

2009
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
ARTS AND SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND FILM STUDIES

This dissertation was presented

by

Molly Diane Brown

It was defended on
May 14, 2009
and approved by
Marcia Landy, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Film Studies
Adam Lowenstein, PhD, Associate Professor, Film Studies
Brent Malin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Communication
Dissertation Advisor: Lucy Fischer, PhD, Distinguished Professor, Film Studies

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Copyright © by Molly Diane Brown
2009
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NATION, NOSTALGIA AND MASCULINITY: CLINTON/SPIELBERG/HANKS

Molly Diane Brown, PhD
University of Pittsburgh, 2009

This dissertation focuses on masculinity in discourses of nostalgia and nation in popular films
and texts of the late 20th century’s millennial period—the “Bill Clinton years,” from 1992-2001.
As the 1990s progressed, masculinity crises and millennial anxieties intersected with an
increasing fixation on nostalgic popular histories of World War II. The representative masculine
figures proffered in Steven Spielberg films and Tom Hanks roles had critical relationships to
cultural crises surrounding race, reproduction and sexuality. Nostalgic narratives emerged as way
to fortify the American nation-state and resolve its social problems. The WWII cultural trend,
through the specter of tributes to a dying generation, used nostalgic texts and images to create
imaginary American landscapes that centered as much on contemporary masculinity and the
political and social perspective of the Boomer generation as it did on the prior one. The conceit
of Clinton’s masculinity is used as the figural link between the male bodies represented in such
popular 1990s films as Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and The Green Mile. Additional chapters
focus on Tom Hanks’ star persona, the notion of boyhood, and the nexus between pop cultural
imagery and representations of nostalgia.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................8.
1.1 INTRODUCTION TO PRELUDES ................................................................ 20
2.0 CULTURE WAR AND NINETIES NOSTALGIA ................................................. 23
2.1 PRELUDE I: NATIONALIZING TH E “G REATEST” PICTURE A ND
GENERATION ................................................................................................................... 23
2.1.1 Culture War and the Generation “Gap:” F ashioning Uniformity in the
Body Politic ................................................................................................................. 31
2.1.1.1 Nostalgic Acts and the Public Sphere ................................................ 33
2.1.1.2 The 1990s Culture Wars ..................................................................... 50
2.1.1.3 Who Wore Khakis? .............................................................................. 56
3.0 BILL CLINTON AND POLITICAL NOSTALGIA .............................................. 65
3.1 PRELUDE II: BOY’S NATION AND LOST FATHERS ............................. 65
3.1.1 Nostalgic Discourse: The Presidential Body and National Affect ............. 76
3.1.1.1 Presidential Sexuality ......................................................................... 76
3.1.1.2 Clinton’s Audience .............................................................................. 94
3.1.1.3 America’s Body Politic ....................................................................... 99
3.1.1.4 Clinton’s Empathy ............................................................................ 101
4.0 STEVEN SPIELBERG AND THE NOSTALGIC “BOY” .................................. 122
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4.1 PRELUDE III: NATION, FAMILY AND THE BOY SCOUT ................... 122
4.1.1 The Blockbuster and Nostalgic Meaning:The Spielberg text and “Adult”
Visions of Boyhood ................................................................................................... 136
4.1.1.1 Part 1: The Auteur-star .................................................................... 137
4.1.1.2 Part II: Nostalgic National Acts and the Blockbuster ................... 157
4.1.1.3 Part III: The “man-boy” in Amistad ................................................. 171
5.0 TOM HANKS AND NOSTALGIA FOR EVERYMAN ...................................... 185
5.1 PRELUDE IV: “EVERYMAN” IN UNIFORM ............................................ 185
5.1.1 You’ve Got White Male: Tom Hanks’ Body ............................................. 206
5.1.1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 206
5.1.1.2 Big Boy ............................................................................................... 215
5.1.1.3 Sleepless (and sexless) in Seattle and Philadelphia ........................ 225
5.1.1.4 Apollo 13: Body Rockets ................................................................... 239
5.1.1.5 You’ve Got White Male .................................................................... 246
6.0 WWII NOSTALGIA (CLINTON/SPIELBERG/HANKS) .................................. 260
6.1 PRELUDE V: WORLD WA R II “C OMMEMORATION” AND F ETAL
“COMBAT” ...................................................................................................................... 260
6.1.1 “The Spare Parts of Dead G.I.s:” Masculine Metastasis and the use of the
Maternal in Saving Private Ryan ............................................................................. 274
6.1.1.1 I. Introduction ................................................................................... 274
6.1.1.2 II. Fetality .......................................................................................... 282
6.1.1.3 III. Triangles ...................................................................................... 290
6.1.1.4 IV. Metastasis .................................................................................... 297
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6.1.1.5 Afterword ........................................................................................... 307
7.0 NOSTALGIA AND THE SUFFERING MALE BODY: CONCLUSIONS ....... 309
7.1 PRELUDE VI: EXECUTION AND THE BLACK MALE BODY ............ 309
7.1.1 Impeachment: T he Gr een M ile, Wh ite M asculinity, and S entimental
Shame ………………………………………………………………………………323
7.1.1.1 Clinton and the (Southern) Nation .................................................. 325
7.1.1.2 Spielbergian themes and Nostalgia .................................................. 335
7.1.1.3 Hanks’ Suffering Body and Masculinity ......................................... 338
7.1.1.4 Afterword: Shame and connections to WWII ................................ 346
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 350

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1.0 INTRODUCTION
This dissertation focuses on masculinity in discourses of nostalgia and nation in popular films
and texts of the late 20th century’s millennial period—the “Bill Clinton years,” from 1992-2001.
The Clinton years are popularly characterized (most recently by Hillary Clinton’s presidential
campaign) as a pe aceful e ra that r epaired R epublican damage and launched a f lourishing
domestic and global economy. Clinton’s 1992 win was supposed to re-energize the Democrats
and a tone f or t he l iberalism t hat many pa rty bi gwigs he ld r esponsible f or t heir s treak of
presidential losses since 1968—aside from Carter’s ineffective stint. When Clinton accepted the
nomination in 1992 he claimed to offer a choice that was not “conservative or liberal . . . not
even Republican or Democrat. It is new” (Wadden 12). As a New Democrat, Clinton was
expected t o c oncentrate on t he p ains a nd pr oblems of t he “ forgotten” m iddle c lass whose
interests ha d been eclipsed for de cades by their pa rty’s “bleeding heart” f ocus on social
inequality, minority groups, and hot button issues like gay rights and abortion. The failure of
democratic liberalism (to win presidencies) secured Middle America and its mainstream, rather
than minority citizens as the new focal point. This democratic shift away from a liberal agenda
was one of the ways that ordinary white males, and their seemingly neglected interests, retained
center position on the political and cultural stage in the 1990s. The loss of several Democratic
seats in the 1994 election was attributed in part to “angry white males” whose needs had been
ignored due to Clinton’s purported focus on minorities.
Though the forgotten middle class contained a populace of diverse citizens, white males
emerged in cultural representations as one of its significant contingents. Without histories of
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discrimination or adversity, white middle class males lacked the “victim” status that secured
political mobilization in the 1990s “culture wars.” Instead the era opened white males to overt
political and cultural acknowledgement of a privilege that previously had gone unquestioned.
Carol J. Clover argued in 1993: “the white male is the great unmarked or default category of
western culture, the one that never needed to define itself, the standard against which other
categories have calculated their difference” (145). Clover made this argument about the character
D-FENS (Michael Douglas) in the neo-noir film Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993), an
emblematic 1990s white male anxiety film. D-FENS goes on a defensive rampage throughout the
city where he confronts (and harasses) minorities and women though he sees h imself as t he
actual “victim”—one the audience is encouraged to identify with. Though a vigilante criminal,
he becomes sympathetic due to his victimization: by c ity traffic, by his mid-level corporate
position, by being sold a fast-food burger that fails to resemble its advertised image, and most of
all, by hi s wife who divorced him because he expressed anger. The default white male is the
central facet of the 1990s American nation, first as embodied by the leadership figure of Clinton,
and second, in the ways he was “imagined” to relate to the collective nation.
As C lover points ou t, by t he e arly 1990s , w hite m ales were r ebelling a gainst their
normative interpellation, as average, standard, healthy, powerful and privileged. Their imagined
suffering was in response to the “guilt,” shame, and anxiety that the culture wars ignited. With
limited “identity” in accusations as oppressor, white males became the oppressed. In the popular
fantasies of the 1990s, white males are victims—in that sense, their bodies and their masculinity
become c entral i n representations of t heir c orporeal, as w ell as psychological, vi ctimhood.
Clinton’s representational status aligned two ideological emblems: the American head-of-state
and the archetypal white male Boomer, to become the symbolic embodiment for the nation-state.
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Clinton’s new “sensitivity,” portrayed him as the ultimate good guy i n popular representation:
empathetic, feminist, fair to minorities and a “victim” of conservatives, as well as the press.
Like all eras, the 1990s had its widespread instances of masculinity in “crisis.” Anxieties
over the impending millennium occurred alongside the decade’s culture wars, including public
discussions that questioned race, class, gender and sexuality and often rose to levels of panic in
the media. Inaugurated in 1960s counterculture movements and honed in the academy’s canon
debates in the 1970s and 1980s, the culture wars entered the mainstream in the 1990s. They
brought to the surface conflicts over “identity” that attempted resolution through multicultural
acceptance and political correctness. These conversations on “diversity” were often expressed in
a paranoid way by right-wing idealists, as cultural “progress” doomed to cause social decline or
conflict by upsetting “tradition.” Increasingly in the public sphere, suffering became a measure
of social value, with public groups contending for narratives of adversity and heroism. Possible
ideological change was t aken as a t hreat t o social order because t he “special i nterests” of
marginalized groups were often demonized and entangled with millennial paranoia and alarm
over i mpending “ disasters” s uch a s Y 2K ( Harding 17) . The na tion w as gr ipped w ith t he
contemporary experience of a c ulture a t w ar (whether re al or im aginary): A IDS/HIV a nd
contagion, t he pr esidential i mpeachment, t he O .J. upr oar, G ulf War S yndrome, do mestic
terrorism (WTC, Oklahoma City, Atlanta Olympics, abortion clinics, the “Uni-bomber,” school
shootings, hate crimes, etc.), along with race riots and sex scandals. These domestic “wars”
occurred amidst, and allegedly due to, the heated contestations of identity politics. Social politics
over i dentity a nd publ ic a cknowledgement o f di scriminatory hi stories e merged i n popul ar
representations that reflected the frenzy in both culture and politics.
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