Men in question: rethinking white masculinity after the sixties

Abstract

The social and political movements of the 1960s created a contemporary crisis in white masculinity. The civil rights, women's liberation, and counterculture movements all challenged traditional notions of white masculinity by shattering conventional paternal authority, creating men as violators and no longer protectors, and causing deep personal insecurities in men's lives. Creators of both literary and cinematic representations before 1980 recognized the destruction of traditional white masculinity and the crisis therein, and their works suggest a need for men to rethink masculinity in order to reform it. Later, authors and directors reflect the 1980s ideas of white masculinity, white rewriting the history of the crisis as a way to reconstruct a more traditional ideology of white masculinity for a new society. By examining the representations of paternal authority and the issues that accompany it, such as responsibility and honesty, the image of men as violator and later the return to the protector rote, and individual versus collective disorientation, changes within the depictions of the contemporary crisis in white masculinity emerge in novels and films.