Creating the Couple : : Love, Marriage, and Hollywood Performance / / Virginia Wexman Wexman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Wexman, Virginia Wexman,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2022]; ©1993
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.) :; 189 halftones

Who decides how, when, and where Americans fall in love and get married? Virginia Wexman's acute observations about movie stars and acting techniques show that Hollywood has often had the most powerful voice in demonstrating socially sanctioned ways of becoming a couple. Until now serious film critics have paid little attention to the impact of performance styles on American romance, and have often treated "patriarchy," "sexuality," and the "couple" as monolithic and unproblematic concepts. Wexman, however, shows how these notions have been periodically transformed in close association with the appearance, behavior, and persona of the stars of films such as The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Way Down East, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Sunset Boulevard, On the Waterfront, Nashville, House of Games, and Do the Right Thing. The author focuses first on the way in which traditional marriage norms relate to authorship (the Griffith-Gish collaboration) and genre (John Wayne and the Western). Looking at male and female stardom in terms of the development of "companionate marriage," she discusses the love goddess and the impact of method acting on Hollywood's ideals of maleness. Finally she considers the recent breakdown of the ideal of monogamous marriage in relation to Hollywood's experimentation with self-reflexive acting styles. Creating the Couple is must reading for film scholars and enthusiasts, and it will fascinate everyone interested in the changing relationships of men and women in modern culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- PART I Introduction: The Movies as Social Ritual -- 1. Romantic Love, Changing Marriage Norms, and Stars as Behavioral Models -- PART II Patriarchal Marriage and Traditional Gender Identities -- 2. Star and Auteur: The Griffith-Gish Collaboration and the Struggle over Patriarchal Marriage -- 3. Star and Genre: John Wayne, the Western, and the American Dream of the Family on the Land -- PART III Companionate Marriage and Changing Constructions of Gender and Sexuality -- 4. The Love Goddess: Contradictions in the Myth of Glamour -- 5. Masculinity in Crisis: Method Acting in Hollywood -- PART IV Epilogue: Beyond the Couple -- 6. The Destabilization of Gender Norms and Acting as Performance -- Illustrations -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX