Research Catalog

Title

Gay artists in modern American culture : an imagined conspiracy / Michael S. Sherry.

Author

Sherry, Michael S., 1945-

Publication

• Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2007]
• ©2007

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

292 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "Gay men played a prominent role in defining culture in mid-twentieth-century America. Icons such as Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Montgomery Clift, and Rock Hudson defined much of what seemed distinctly "American." Yet their sexuality, even though few were "out," caused significant anxiety during a time of rampant antihomosexual attitudes. Michael Sherry examines the tension between the nation's dependence on and fear of the cultural influence of gay artists."
• "Long before gay liberation shattered public silence about homosexuality in the 1970s, says Sherry, gay people - particularly artists and entertainers - were the object of intense public interest. Most of it was hostile: the contradiction between the nation's dependence on gay men for much of its cultural development and the revulsion of many Americans toward them yielded a stream of conspiracy thinking. Sherry places conspiracy theories about the "homintern" (the homosexual international) taking control and debasing American culture within the paranoia of the time that included anticommunism, anti-Semitism, and racism."
• "Sherry suggests that gay conspiracy theories of this era have drawn little critical attention because they met little overt resistance at the time. He argues that gay artists helped shape a lyrical, often nationalist idea of American modernism that served the nation's ambitions to create a cultural empire and win the Cold War. Their success made them valuable to the country's cultural empire but also exposed them to rising antigay sentiment sometimes voiced at the highest levels (by President Richard Nixon, for example). Only late in the twentieth century, Sherry concludes, did suspicion slowly give way to an uneasy accommodation of gay artists' place in American life."--Jacket.

Subjects

• Homosexuality > United States
• Arts, American > 20th century
• Homosexuality and art > United States > History > 20th century

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [239]-270) and index.

Contents

Introduction: Nixon, myself, and others -- Discovery -- Explanation -- Frenzy -- Barber at the met -- Aftermath.

ISBN

• 9781469628417
• 1469628414
• 9780807831212
• 0807831212

LCCN

2006039795

OCLC

• ocm76864472
• 76864472
• SCSB-1449709

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library