Global Cinema

Valentino: A Fashionable Model of Masculinity

Within NYC's Hedonistic Culture of commodity consumption, Valentino embodied a fashionable model of masculinity based on youth, personality, success, perfectibility, and self-improvement. Different from the one-sided figures of the "Christian gentleman" or the "masculine achiever", the Italian film star personified a compound ideal of modern lover, untiringly pursuing pleasure, elegance, and recreation while exuding an exotic and primitive physicality.

Valentino's talent for dance and his love of fine clothing were well attuned with a growing urban bachelor subculture that incited men to regularly attend the city's dance halls, nightclubs, and movie palaces and to consume almost religiously the same mass-circulating fashion magazines. In these real and imaginary venues, dreams of lavish lifestyles and consumer fantasies could be unleashed.

What Valentino's sexualized icon opened was, as Mark Lynn Anderson notes, a "queer space for the reception of...

"mass culture" – A control and discursive space that does not require its individual adherents (including Valentino) to be, secretly or not, queer. Instead, this space spoke a subversive and sensationalistic language of looser sexual mores, linked to the unruly social world of public amusement and mass leisure – from dance clubs, vaudeville, burlesque, and moving pictures – intersecting with the city's immigrant and working-class neighbourhoods. The same idiom was spoken in Hollywood, which, since the mid-1910s, has often been described as "Babylon". In the 1920s, however, the familiar Hollywood scandals acquired strong racial connotations: More than Anglo-American performers, stars like Bara, Moore, Garbo, Negri, and Valentino could exhibit an expanded and more-daring range of sexual behaviours – on and off screen. The intersection of racial and narrative dynamics within American cinema resonated with 19th century eroticized black stereotypes and coon.

songs and, of course, with turn-off-the-20th-century immigrant characterizations pervading the New York vaudeville scene. For titillating characters who "did not share the precepts of Victorian culture" regarding sexual tensions between men and women immigrants characters were highly preferred. Giorgio Bertellini in "Masculinity, Racial Identity, and Politics among Italian Americans in 1920s New York City" writes: "In America national belonging was required for public recognition. To this purpose, the Italian Catholic Church, the ethnic press, and urban popular entertainments such as opera, theatre, and imported Italian historical films, all echoed a proud sense of patriotic allegiance. Italianness became a cluster of humanistic values and a deposit of timeless history and artistic excellence that American industrial modernity could not erase. These practices affirmed a distinction from American culture and way of life but also their necessary inclusion within the realm.

of western civilization". International stardom = one of the way cinema has attracted and constracted audiences = part of creating products that can be attractive and sold -> stars started to deal with style, public image (questions of identity + the bringing to the screen of some of the most burning questions of the social and political landscape -> the start of the international stardom and the start of immigration in the USA go hand in hand with the rise of Hollywood at the end of WWI with the import of European stars in the USA) -> Films of the classical period try to homogenize the audience -> Hollywood was promoting an ideology of democracy, of white middle class and patriarchal society -> problem = society was continuously being remade because of immigration (Polish, Italian and Jews had the majority of influence) -> so are they or can they be integrated in the USA society, will the way of life change? + not so hidden question of whiteness and social-darwinism is

questioned (the strongest races survive) because white people are the strongest in that society (and polish, italian and jews were not considered fully white also in terms of the law) -> different shades of white = off white (like off Broadway = less prestigious). Es.: Pola Negri = not her real name (idea of blackness but she was polish) -> first name = Apolonia + passionate about the italian poet Negri -> though it was hard to say she was polish, it was obvious she was european and of a sofisticated kind + also associated with more negative qualities in the context of immigration = idea of vamp = stereotype of a woman who’s searching for and sucking away the energy of the men that she seduces = woman and vampire + intersection with sex and reproduction -> figure symbolizing anxiety and fears about new immigrants corrupting and preventing the reproduction of the white society of the USA because of mixed relationships = stealing the sperm of the nation (es.: Theda Bara) -> figurecome segue:

of the female vampire = threat to the nation and not just the men she seduces. Pola Negri was used as a way to continue the stereotype of the vamp through the figure of an exotic artist through her roles in her films and her images in magazines -> her career started with great promise (first european star with exoticism and sofistication) but ended with a failed americanization and her return to Europe -> she had too different values and lifestyle (The vamp = fear of lack of assimilation of immigrants) -> the Film “Hotel Imperial” does a parallel with Pola Negri’s life and her idealized americanization though it’s not set in the USA but in the story she manages to change (she’s criticized in magazines for not being able to do so-> she didn’t conform to the idea the stardom had for her). She worked with Ernst Lubitsch and came to the USA in the same period -> they were both hired by Paramount -> the strategy of importing actors and directors goes

hand in hand with the strategy of exporting films but also with the homogenization of internal audiences in the USA -> different audiences were treated as one and standardized on the white puritan model

Advertisments in magazines were connected with the stars the magazines were talking about (ex.: advertisment of nail polish is connected with Pola Negri and it speaks to flappers who would take inspiration from the Pola Negri’s films)

Idea of “Structured polysemies” = Richard Dyer says that star-images contain a multiplicity of meanings and affects -> the problem with Pola Negri was that the industry wasn’t able to impose its ideology + her looks were too european and melancholic = she stood between two different stereotypes = the victorian model and the modern flapper (but she was also none of these two)

Pola Negri was criticized very negativly after her short relationship with Charlie Chaplin and the one with Rudolph Valentino and when he died she demonstrated very

publicly hergrief (not in the "american respectable way") -> she was thoughtnot be part of a certain good american femininity and not able toachieve love in her life or to accept the imposed models ofsocietyFilm "Passion" -> women who work are presented as a threat tosociety -> Pola Negri = figure of an audacious woman = Mme.DuBarry = negative character with multiple lovers -> conflict withthe notion of the star who works and promotes values so when PolaNegri wanted to be an integral part of the industry she created ahuge contradiction that the studios were not able to resolveShe returned in Europe in 1928 because of failed americanization-> it is thought to be caused by inauthenticity, her not beingable to really show herself publicly but actually the reality isshe coudn't be cateogrized in a stereotypeCase study complementary to Pola Negri = Rudolph Valentino =Immigration from southern Europe + consolidation of publicindustry through thecreation of stars (attraction of the movies in American and immigrant audiences)

On one hand discourse of immigrant's poverty but on the other hand a perception of racial difference (italians = biologically inferior -> ex.: inability to respect the law and oversexualized -> they couldn't contain themselves) -> gangsters' film with mafia stereotype + Cesare Lombroso's theories to distinguish a criminal by some biological traits

Traditions and entertainments specifically for the Italian community (complex and energetic life in Little Italy, NY) with the reproduction of the spatial configuration of Italy with people from different regions separated in different spaces = Recreation of cultural practices and social behaviors that recreated the sensations of the homeland -> Negative stereotypes of Italian community

An article by Giorgio Bertellini says 1920s Italian-American community in NY had 2 main stars = Benito Mussolini and Rudolph Valentino = 2 different models of

Mascolinità -> Rudolph Valentino funerale = in un momento di conflitto tra fascisti e antifascisti (che sostenevano che Valentino fosse lui stesso antifascista -> cittadinanza americana + fidanzato di Pola Negri) È nato a Castellaneta (Puglia) e poi è andato negli Stati Uniti come ballerino e poi come attore -> la sua cittadinanza americana è stata vista come un tradimento (ma ha scritto a Mussolini che è rimasto fedele alle sue origini) -> Valentino non era una rappresentazione ideale dell'ideologia fascista ma era la rappresentazione fisica di non essere americano e allo stesso tempo non inferiore = ideologia del fascismo negli USA Mussolini si presentava come figlio di un fabbro con autodisciplina e un uomo fatto da sé = popolare e apprezzato negli USA e presente nel sistema di intrattenimento degli USA + popolare tra gli immigrati perché precludeva di essere considerato un cittadino inferiore a causa della capacità di governare se stessi, i loro istinti sessuali, morali e fisici June Mathis, MaryPickford and Douglas Fairbanks all met Mussolini and had a personal relationship with Valentino -> Mathis wrote the first Valentino’s film = The four horsemen of the Apocalypse Same sets of questions for Mussolini and Valentino:

1. Are italians fully white?
2. What do we do with the association between italianness and a certain decadence with the present?
3. What is the perception of the right model of masculinity within the clash with modern society?

->different answers “The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Rex Ingram (1921):

1. The adventurer Madariaga conquers a land in a new world (Argentina but we can imagine it as the USA) and he installs a system like the one with slaves but he cannot have a heir + chaos outside the new world and order inside -> he has 2 daughters