Gender and sexuality in Weimar modernity
Subtitle: film, literature, and "new objectivity"
By: Richard W. McCormick.
Publisher: Palgrave
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York; Basingstoke
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Motion pictures -- Germany -- History.; Sex role in motion pictures.; German fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Sex role in literature.
Description: Richard McCormick takes a fresh look at the crisis of gender in Weimar, Germany through an analysis of selected cultural texts, both literary and film characterized under the label "New Objectivity." The New Objectivity was marked by a sober, unsentimental embrace of urban modernity, in contrast to Expressionism's horror of technology and belief in "auratic" art. This sensibility was gendered as well as contradictory: while associated with male intellectuals, New Objectivity was best symbolized by the New Woman they feared (and desired). Moving skillfully crom Caligari to Dietrich, McCormick traces the crisis of gender identities, both male and female, and reveals how a variety of narratives of the time displaced an assortment of social activities onto sexual relations. -- from back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliography and index.