Men in Gray Flannel Suits. Troubling Masculinities in 1950s America
Introduction
1“The father” belongs to the most powerful concepts in American history. Since the foundation of the republic, being a caring and responsible father, protector, and provider, has been declared the most important part of every man’s existence and the ultimate object of his longing. More than that, as embodiment of responsibility, reliability, and rationality, “the father” has been not only the seemingly “natural” head of his family, but he has also been defined as cornerstone of the liberal republic and its social and political order. By stressing the interdependence of individual, familial, and social/national well-being, politicians from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton, Newt Gringrich, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have re-enforced the notion that men have to live up to the ideal of good fatherhood to be good republican citizens. From the American Revolution to the Reagan Revolution and beyond, functional families with fathers and mothers were deemed “the fundamental building block of our society.”[1]The quote is from the congressional debate about the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” Congressional Record. 104/2, Vol. 142, No. 102, July 11, 1996: 7441-47. Introductions to the history of families and fatherhood in America are provided by Cott, Public Vows; Griswold, Fatherhood in America. Critical studies about the focus on the family and its interdependence with the political organization of U.S. society are for instance offered by Kann, The Gendering of American Politics.; Yazawa, From Colonies to Commonwealth.; Martschukat, “Vaterfigur und Gesellschaftsordnung um 1800.”; Adam,“The Defense of Marriage Act and American Exceptionalism.” and May, “`Family Values´: The Uses and Abuses of American Family History.”
2Recent scholarship in the field of social and cultural history has convincingly argued that this concept of responsible fatherhood has been immensely powerful, persistent, and normalizing over the centuries, for instance by pointing out that the stigmatization of black men as deficient fathers and their continuous exclusion from political, economic, and cultural resources are two sides of the same coin (Finzsch; Estes). The compelling normativity and longevity of this father-and-family-nexus is all the more astonishing since the nuclear family with breadwinning father and homemaking mother has hardly ever represented the household arrangements of a majority of Americans. That is why historian Stephanie Coontz named her most influential book on the history of American families “The Way We Never Were.” In her study, Coontz argues that the current American obsession with family values and the constant invocation of the seemingly traditional family as embodiment of a better past has contributed to the creation of a nostalgic myth which, after all, strengthens existent power structures and social stratifications along the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
3However, as Coontz also stresses, if there ever was a period in American history when the normative ideal of the nuclear family and real life came close, it was the 1950s. Accordingly, in today’s intense culture war about family values, the 1950s are often glorified as years of an ideal society, carried by a strong white middle-class perfectly organized in nuclear families, consisting of men and women leading their lives as married couples according to their supposedly natural determinations defined by their sex.
4After the Great Depression and World War II, the re-solidification of American society seemed to require the re-invocation of the gender stereotypes of breadwinning father and homemaking mother. “Building a straight state” was the paramount object of American postwar politics (Canaday). As historians Elaine Tyler May and Kyle A. Cuordileone have argued convincingly, the upcoming conflict with the Soviet Union and the penetrating nuclear scare gave this drive towards a family centered heteronormative society further momentum – a society that consolidated itself by excluding everybody non-heterosexual, non-white, non-normalized. According to Elaine Tyler May, “the nuclear family in the nuclear age” was one of the most powerful images of the 1950s (May, Homeward Bound).
5Yet, as I will show in my article, even with regard to the family centered 1950s, historical scrutiny confounds easy answers. Therefore, in the first part of my essay, I will discuss how this seemingly natural lifestyle and the corresponding gender stereotypes were culturally shaped by an array of discursive enunciations (in the social sciences, in magazines, film, literature etc.) and a vast number of social and political practices. Second, complementary to historian Joanne Meyerowitz’ argument that American 1950s society was less straight than it seemed on the surface (Meyerowitz, Sex Wars; Meyerowitz, Transnational Sex 1280), my closer look at the 1950s focus-on-the-family will make the assertion that the breadwinning father was the undisputed hegemonic male stereotype of the age, a contentious one. Even if we focus on white heterosexual middle-class men, a conflict between differing norms of masculinity has to be attested: On the one hand, the restoration of the father to the leading position in the family promised to stabilize post- and cold war-America, on the other hand critics bemoaned a loss of virility among the fathers of the 1950s. A fear of masculine decline permeated American society, caused by the conformist urge and the obviously limited options of suburbanized and corporate life. Talk about a “crisis” among heterosexual white men was everywhere, and this supposed crisis was perceived as a crisis of America at large: of its strength and stability. These antagonisms between different male stereotypes captured something quintessential about America at that time, and both, the caring, responsible father as well as the strong-minded man who pioneered the continent and built American greatness, were deemed indispensable for America’s stability and survival.[2]For a study on white middle-class men in 1950s America see Gilbert, Men in the Middle. The troubling masculinities in 1950s America will take center stage in the second part of my essay. This will be exemplified by an analysis of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, a 1950s book and movie, whose protagonist Tom Rath (Gregory Peck) epitomized the American suburbanite who felt overpowered by the requirements being addressed to him as a man.