Screening Insurrection: the Containment of Working-Class
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SCREENING INSURRECTION: THE CONTAINMENT OF WORKING-CLASS REBELLION IN NEW DEAL ERA HOLLYWOOD CINEMA A Dissertation by GALEN JAMES WILSON Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Anne Morey Committee Members, Juan Alonzo Sally Robinson Robert Shandley Head of Department, Nancy Warren May 2014 Major Subject: English Copyright 2014 Galen James Wilson ABSTRACT In my dissertation I explore the ways in which New Deal era Hollywood cinema represented the growing spirit of collective action that defined the 1930s. Specifically, I examine the ways film redirected the collective impulse of the radical left by positioning a strengthened heteronormative family as the path to national economic renewal. Drawing upon archival sources as well as cultural historians such as Richard Pells and Michael Denning and scholars of masculinity such as Michael Kimmel and R.W. Connell, I contend that the cinema of this era reinforced the national myth of the couple as the “proper” American path to economic renewal and represented collective action as being in direct conflict with the family. Beginning with Hollywood’s representation of radical collectives in the 1930s, I argue that the film industry vilified working-class collective action by equating it with mob justice and suggesting that masculine collectivity was inherently destructive to the heteronormative couple. Rather than reflecting the spirit of economic empowerment through collective action, these films, like the New Deal Administration itself, suggested that the proper path to national economic renewal was through a renewal of masculinity and the heteronormative family. I explore figures associated with subversive masculinity and collectivity during the New Deal era: the hobo and the outlaw, and explores the ways in which these figures’ subversiveness was contained and assimilated to the New Deal capitalist state. Tramping, long associated with a radical break from industrial capitalism and heteronormativity, became redefined as a temporary right of passage during which the masculine individualist reestablished his manhood before restoring his economic fortunes and establishing a stable romantic couple. Similarly the outlaw figure shifted from the working-class gangster rebelling against capitalism to the aristocratic outlaw, seeking merely to restore the proper capitalist system. ii Finally, I examine the ultimate containment of the nascent working-class collectives of the 1930s and 1940s by analyzing Hollywood’s World War II era production. By looking at these films it is possible to see the ways in which the spirit of radical collective action was finally reincorporated into the capitalist hegemony to preserve rather than overthrow the system. iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my partner, Cara, who has ended up watching more films about U.S. labor conflict than she ever wanted to. Her support has made the long days and longer nights of research much more bearable. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Anne Morey, whose guidance and kindness has made the difficult process of dissertating from half-way across the country much smoother than it could have been. I would also like to thank my entire committee, Dr. Sally Robinson, Dr. Juan Alonzo, and Dr. Robert Shandley, as well as the late Dr. Jim Aune, who have all provided vital support and advice not only during the dissertation process but my entire graduate career. I would also like the thank the numerous friends I made while at Texas A&M as well as my family and friends back home in Pennsylvania who helped to keep me grounded and provided me with the support to persevere during the darker moments of the process. Finally I would like to thank my parents, without whose unwavering support none of this would have been possible. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ...................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: DECLARATIONS OF INTERDEPENDENCE ............. 1 Notes........................................................................................................ 16 CHAPTER II “YOU CAN’T REASON WITH A MOB”: THE RISE OF RADICAL COLLECTIVISM IN AMERICA AND ON SCREEN ........................................................ 17 Notes........................................................................................................ 83 CHAPTER III HOME ON THE MAIN STEM: THE HOBO AS DISPLACED WESTERN HERO ................................................................................................................ 88 Notes........................................................................................................ 136 CHAPTER IV “I AIN’T SO TOUGH”: THE REINCORPORATION OF THE OUTLAW AS CAPITALIST HERO.................................................................................... 139 Notes........................................................................................................ 200 CHAPTER V “THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP”: THE WAR EFFORT’S APPROPRIATION OF MILITANT LABOR................................................... 203 Notes ........................................................................................................ 263 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION: THE BEST YEARS OF THE COLLECTIVE ................. 266 WORKS CITED.................................................................................................................... 271 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: DECLARATIONS OF INTERDEPENDENCE “We were challenged with a peace-time choice between the American system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of diametrically opposed doctrines—doctrines of paternalism and state socialism. The acceptance of these ideas would have meant the destruction of self-government through centralization of government. It would have meant the undermining of the individual initiative and enterprise through which our people have grown to unparalleled greatness.” —Herbert Hoover, “Principles and Ideals of the United States Government,” 1928 “The adjustment we seek calls first of all for a mental adjustment, a willing reversal of driving, pioneer opportunism and ungoverned laissez-faire. The ungoverned push of rugged individualism perhaps had an economic justification in the days when we had all the West to surge upon and conquer; but this country has filled up now.” —Henry Wallace, “A Declaration of Interdependence,” 1933 One year before the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Herbert Hoover demonstrates the still strong adherence to rugged individualism and self-sufficiency that had long defined the American character; five years later, at the beginning of the New Deal era, then Secretary of Agriculture (and future Vice President) Henry Wallace demonstrates what constituted the beginnings of a potential break from that tradition. For Wallace and many within the Roosevelt Administration and American society at large, the future economic renewal depended upon planned economies and the collectivization of economic and political forces in groups such as trade unions and government agencies. The economic crisis of the 1930s did not, of course, introduce the concept of collective action to American society; unionization and radical labor action had occurred within the industrial landscape since the late-1800s, but never on the scale witnessed during the years between 1932 and 1947. Whether it was tens of thousands of WWI veterans descending upon Washington D.C. in the spring of 1932, longshoremen laying siege to San Francisco in the West and textile workers spreading industrial rebellion up and down the 1 East Coast in 1934, or autoworkers seizing the means of production in Flint, Michigan in 1936, during these years the working-classes proved themselves willing to organize and take radical collective action on a scale never before seen in American history. While the working classes were organizing like never before, the above epigrams illustrate the tension created by this shift in the zeitgeist. Even in the words of a supporter of collectivization like Wallace the acknowledgement of the nation’s pioneer past suggested something had been lost; moreover, the rhetoric of “driving,” “rugged,” “surge,” and “conquer” suggests an active, masculine past in contrast to a more passive present. It was this long history of linking masculinity with capitalism and self-made manhood that, perhaps more than anything else, made it so difficult for the nation’s nascent collectivism to grow. If American manhood had long been defined in terms of one’s ability to make a life for himself and his family, where did that leave the workers economically dependant upon collective actions such as strikes? Perhaps partially due to this conflict with traditional concepts of American masculinity, by 1947 the radical class-based collective spirit would largely disappear, replaced by a post-war economic individualism supported by a largely de-radicalized labor movement. My central purpose in