New Hollywood and Countercultural Whiteness : Affective Affinities and the Politics of Male Expressivity

Abstract

This book uses the New Hollywood as a case study for affective and discursive transformations of white masculinity between the 1950s and the 1970s. It identifies a subject position of countercultural whiteness that emerged during that period as a response to a widely diagnosed affective deficit within US society. This subject position was politically promiscuous and ultimately helped pave the way for a revitalization of conservative forces.