Hollywood's Portraits of the Artist as a Kept Man

Joakim Nilsson

Joakim Nilsson Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Keywords: Male artist, post World War Two Hollywood films, masculinity, gender roles in film

Abstract

Since the early 19th Century, the male artist has been both celebrated as a heroic figure who represents self-expression and freedom from traditional work and a figure whose financial dependence of a patron undermines his masculinity. In the USA after World War Two, men faced increasing suburbanization and consumerism, and often longed for the rebellious freedom represented by artists like Jackson Pollock, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. But in the post-war Cold War culture, those who rebelled were threatened with the label of communist or homosexual. Focusing on three films made after World War Two--Humoresque (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and An American in Paris (1951)--the article explores the portrayal of the male artist as a "kept man," and discusses visual and narrative elements in each film that work to reinscribe traditional gender roles. Specifically, each film uses a love triangle between the artist, an older, wealthy, female patron who threatens the artist's masculinity and artistic integrity, and a younger, more traditionally feminine woman who, by the end of the film, will help the male artist reassert his traditional masculine role.

Author Biography

Joakim Nilsson, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Joakim Nilsson completed his PhD at the University of Alberta. He previously taught at Pierce College and Simon Fraser University, and now teaches in the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His teaching and research interests focus on representations of masculinities in American literature and film, and in medieval literature. He is currently working on an article exploring issues of gender and sexuality in the film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).