History 305

Devine

Spring 2011

Gaylyn Studlar, “Optic Intoxication”: Rudolph Valentino and Dance Madness

1. Beyond studio hype, why was Valentino so controversial during the 1920s? How did his popularity with women – he was called a “woman-made man” – challenge traditional notions of masculinity and femininity?

2. Many considered Valentino effeminate, but he was not simply dismissed as a “sissy” or “mollycoddle;” rather, he was seen as sexually threatening or dangerous. Why was this the case?

3. What aspects of the “new man” (which Valentino came to embody) were especially concerning to cultural critics of the 1910s and 1920s? What do their specific criticisms of the “new man” reveal about broader cultural and social anxieties of the period?

4. Why did many women welcome the “dance madness” of the 1910s while many guardians of traditional culture associated dance with “vice” and “savagery”? What role did the display, liberation, and celebration of the body play in all of this? Why was women’s search for pleasure (through dancing) of such concern?

5. By the 1910s, how had women’s standards for judging men changed? How did these changing standards get linked to concerns about “race suicide” and nativism? Why was it ok for men to be attracted to “ethnic” women like Theda Bara, but not for women to be attracted to “ethnic” men like Valentino?

6. Studlar argues that in films such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the male lead (Valentino) undergoes a transformation – from terrorizing brute to tender lover (similar to the male heroes in romance novels). Why is this process important? How does it help explain such characters’ popularity with women?

7. How publicity outlets like fan magazines help enhance Valentino’s popularity with women and while fueling men’s disdain for him? How did they also try to undercut or demystify Valentino’s allure so as to remind women of their duty to preserve the “purity” of the Anglo-Saxon race?

8. Studlar notes that during the 1910s and 1920s, society embraced the “cult of the body,” admiring male muscular physicality and athleticism. Yet Valentino, who was both athletic and muscular was not considered “manly.” Why not?

9. How did Valentino’s skill as a dancer contribute to his success as a movie star? How did his talent for gracefully moving his body facilitate his “transformation” from a brute or a rapist to a tender lover that women could nurture?

10. Why did Valentino’s later films try to transform him into a “regular guy”?

11. According to Studlar, how did Valentino, the graceful yet muscular dancer, reconcile masculinity and femininity?