He's All Man

""He's All Man" is John M. Clum's insightful, biting, and characteristically humorous analysis of the central myths of American manhood that have been propagated by Hollywood films and dramatized by our major playwrights. In the politically incorrect way he dared to ask "What happened to gay irony?" in Something for the Boys, Clum now dares to ask the explosive question "What is the vision of the American Male that Hollywood has sold us?" "He's All Man" examines the ways in which homoeroticism has been part of the myth of American manhood, wrapping itself around cowboy, soldier, and gangster legends as they fuse to create a picture of the quintessential American male. From Audie Murphy to The Sands of Iwo Jima and The Maltese Falcon, Clum takes us on a tour of the roughs, the toughs, and the fluffs that swagger, strut, and pirouette their way through the Hollywood Masculinity Machine and the ways in which gay filmmakers have bought into the Hollywood vision of manhood and romance. Just as Something for the Boys raised hackles and caused controversy over Lorenz Hart's lyrics and Ethel Merman's lungs, "He's All Man" will surely do the same for Edward G. Robinson's cigar and Marlon Brando's t-shirt."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of LGBTQ+, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.