Masculinities in Flux: on Alternative and Conventional Male Ideals in Swedish Film and Society in the 1930s

The proposed project aims at exploring the tension-laden interface between cinematic and socio-political discourses and representations of masculinity in Sweden in the 1930s.

These two spheres – cinema and politics – together served at negotiating and constructing a variety of opposing masculine ideals that have come to have a bearing on the gender system (or contract) that indeed still is at play today, in times of increasing neoliberal and populist forces.

The first sphere made alternative, often feminine coded masculinity possible and desirable for the (female/queer) audience, whereas the other sphere – characterized by the popular notion of Sweden as an ideal ´Folk Home´ – emphasized the need for a traditional masculinity in terms of men as fathers and husbands.

Following a poststructuralist framework, these conflicting ideals are interpreted as interdependent, and as necessary for any real gendered change to happen: It is in their dynamically conflicting relationship that the inherent mobility of gender, but also of sexuality and sex, can be exposed and problematized.

Via contextualizing and reading specific films (and film stars) in conjunction with analyzing of a variety of political, literary and journalistic texts and discourses, the project explores how the masculinity was being constructed, negotiated, and interpreted in relation to the gender discursive field that popular film and the Social Democratic politics during the 1930s together constituted.