Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 6-17-2019 11:00 AM More than a Spasm, Less than a Sign: Queer Masculinity in American Visual Culture, 1915-1955 Thomas D. Baynes The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Sprengler, Christine The University of Western Ontario Co-Supervisor Bruhm, Steven The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Art and Visual Culture A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Thomas D. Baynes 2019 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Baynes, Thomas D., "More than a Spasm, Less than a Sign: Queer Masculinity in American Visual Culture, 1915-1955" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6238. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6238 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This research considers the contribution of visual culture to queer masculinity among white American men during a profound reorientation both in popular understandings and the practical conditions of eroticism between men. From about 1915 to 1955 a pragmatic libidinal economy centered on the theatrical effeminacy of “fairies” was displaced by one founded on the presumption of strongly delineated and relatively fixed hetero- and homo- sexual identities. Although medical discourses about queerness had been developing since the middle of the Nineteenth Century in Europe, what Americans of the opening decades of the twentieth century knew about queerness they learned unsystematically from hearsay, the observation of local people and practices, and visual culture. Photography and film built on existing representational conventions, such as those developed in painting, illustration, theatre and nightlife, but the voyeuristic position of the spectators of films and photographs provided a special liberty to look at men, fetishistically or critically, and imagine recreating their gestures in the medium of one’s own body. Gesture is understood here as the aestheticization of self-presence by means of the movement or disposition of the body and its props. Gestures articulate a selfhood that enjoys a conditional freedom in its relation to the social world while being subject to the structures of meaning it inherits and the operation of discipline. Through fine-grained analyses of queer gags in Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick comedy and nude figure studies by George Platt Lynes, this research argues that visual culture provided an apprenticeship in and theory of queer masculinity as a set of gestures. This study supplements the scholarly literature on Charlie Chaplin by foregrounding aspects of his star text that key audiences to recognize the masculinity of his signature Tramp as queer and cataloguing his use of dance, drag, and accident to provide a figure for homoeroticism in slapstick. It also significantly extends the existing critical literature on the photography of George Platt Lynes by considering camp, surrealism, and glamour as aspects of a decades- long engagement with the phenomenal texture of life as a middle-class queer American man. Keywords ii Charlie Chaplin; George Platt Lynes; Gesture; Visual Culture; Comedy; Camp; Surrealism; Glamour; LGBT; Masculinity iii Acknowledgments My doctoral studies and this research were supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships Program doctoral fellowship with additional support through the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplements Program. I also received support from the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program. I am truly grateful to live in a country and a province that recognizes the value of supporting education and research in the humanities. Firstly, I need to thank my fantastic supervisor, Dr. Christine Sprengler. In addition to the insightful and practical feedback Dr. Sprengler shared throughout my research, her enthusiasm for my project and encouragement carried me along on several occasions when I felt overwhelmed by the job in front of me. I would like to thank Dr. Bridget Elliott for supervising my studies and the framing of this project during the first three years of my program. I benefitted immensely from the coursework I undertook with Dr. Elliott and her patient and thoughtful strategic advice. Heartfelt thanks go also to Dr. Steven Bruhm who provided stimulating challenges that improved my analyses of several key images and concepts , and whose careful editorial review saved me days of tedium. I thank Dr. Sarah Bassnett for her review and suggestions that helped me strengthen the connection between George Platt Lynes and pictorialism. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Joy James and Dr. Thomas Waugh for agreeing to examine this dissertation and providing expert commentary. I would not have been able to complete the research that informed this dissertation without the support and assistance of Liana Zhou and Shawn C. Wilson, Director and Assistant Director of the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections and the cheerful and professional staff of the reading room. I also received essential support from the staff of New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure permission from George Platt Lynes’s estate to reproduce the images I discuss in this document. I hope to include these photographs in future publications. In the meantime, interested readers and researchers can reach out to the excellent and helpful staff at the Kinsey Institute Special Collections to request digital reproductions using the object identifiers noted in the List of Figures. iv In closing, I want to acknowledge the sustaining love and encouragement of my partner, Dr. Brian Johnson. Research and writing are difficult and sometimes frustrating, but Brian made sure they were not lonely, in addition to helping me refine my arguments with his insightful questions and comments. Of course, thanks also to my parents, friends and colleagues, many of whom seem to have developed a sixth sense about when and how to ask about my degree progress without drawing too much attention to the sad pace of my progress. Aside from Brian, my most important source of personal support during this project was my late dog, Bull. He did not live to see the completion of my doctoral studies, but thanks to him, I did! v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 What is a Gesture? .................................................................................................. 9 1.2 Chaplin ................................................................................................................... 13 1.3 George Platt Lynes ................................................................................................. 15 2. Charlie Chaplin: A Queer Little Fellow........................................................................ 25 3. That Zany Tramp .......................................................................................................... 47 3.1 Zany Times............................................................................................................. 48 3.2 Choreographies: Boxing and Dancing as Counterpoint ......................................... 62 3.3 Drag ........................................................................................................................ 77 3.4 Accidental Queerness and the Kinked Line ........................................................... 90 3.5 City Lights .............................................................................................................. 95 4. Photographic Gestures ................................................................................................ 111 5. Camp Gestures ............................................................................................................ 125 5.1 Camping Out ........................................................................................................ 132 5.2 Reordering Aesthetic Priorities ............................................................................ 136 6. George Platt Lynes’s Surrealism ................................................................................ 144 6.1 Screens ................................................................................................................. 152 6.2 Doubling ..............................................................................................................