Masculinity in the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema

Swedish society underwent great changes during the first decades of the 1900s and the new consumption and entertainment culture came under fire. Children and youth—but also women and the working classes—become symbols of the forces breaking down traditional structures and values. These groups were also identified as the principal audience for the new film medium. Hence, during the silent era, film culture interacted with society at large, filling the screen with contradictory images of diverging masculinities and gender/ethnic relations. In fact, film culture became one of the most important arenas where new gender relations could be articulated.
This book covers Swedish film culture throughout the 1920s. It is the first in-depth exploration of Swedish silent film culture that goes beyond the small number of canonized films of the “Swedish Golden Age” that have been discussed as “art” for nearly 100 years. The study is based on extensive research and takes all Swedish feature films produced in the 1920s into consideration, together with a large number of source materials that include fan and trade magazines, manuscripts, censorship records, government reports and some 900 film reviews.

Tommy Gustafsson is an associate professor at the Department of Film and Literature, Linnaeus University, Sweden. He has previously published articles in Cinema Journal, Film International and Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and is the coeditor (with Pietari Kääpä) of Transnational Ecocinema: Film Culture in an Era of Ecological Transformation.

Tommy Gustafsson
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 260
Bibliographic Info: 32 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9478-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1712-1
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Preface 1

Introduction 3

1. Swedish Society and Film Culture During the First Decades of the 20th Century 21

2. An Enemy of Civilization: Children and Youth 41

3. Men with Emotions: Fatherhood and Love 77

4. Sexuality and Popularity: Queer Moments and Gösta Ekman’s Androgynous Masculinity 116

5. Among Savages and Wild Beasts: Racial Stereotypes and Ethnicity 149

Conclusions 215

Chapter Notes 223

Bibliography 240

Index 249