Gender Flux: Transatlantic Influence on Fashioning the Cross-dresser in American Silent Cinema

Abstract

From the post-Victorian era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934, European theater and film played a significant role in the temporal conditional, sociocultural acceptance of gender fluidity in the USA. My claim is that during a time period that spanned between approximately 1906 and 1934, the popularization of female/male impersonators served as a transgressive force that propelled a meaningful dialogue surrounding social tolerance. The selection of films in this article represents an attempt to narrow the vast field and introduce the strongest evidence to substantiate my assertion. Each film reveals a direct link to a European artistic tradition; all cast the cross-dresser as protagonist; costume/fashion plays a central role in characterization; and finally the narratives demonstrate a socially progressive point of view regarding the negotiation of gender roles. Through detailed film sequence readings and costume and cultural analysis, I conduct an examination of these North American pivotal silent motion pictures and their antecedent British, French, German, Italian, and Spanish artistic influences. In order to better understand the complex political climate simmering beneath the artifice of twentieth-century drag, this article will also contextualize these texts within the social crisis that erupted as a result of modernity.

KEYWORDS:

• cross-dressing
• silent cinema
• gender
• fashion/costume
• cultural studies
• modernity
• film studies
• theater