Date of Award

May 2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

First Advisor

Tami M. Williams

Committee Members

Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Gilberto Blasini, Ann Ciasullo

Keywords

Delinquency, Gender, Masculinity, New Queer Cinema, Reagan Era, Youth Film

Abstract

With the rise of multiplexes, cable television, and video rental stores, the 1980s became a golden age for youth cinema in the U.S. While many scholars have researched this decade’s youth films, much of that attention is focused on the films of John Hughes and his collaborators, whose work mostly follows affluent teenagers enjoying high school traditions. This dissertation fills gaps in youth cinema scholarship by examining the period’s delinquent films. By studying six delinquent films released between 1983 and 1991, this project looks to the understudied connection between 1980s delinquent films and 1990s New Queer Cinema. In contrast to the often overlooked political and social engagement of Generation X, this dissertation argues that delinquent films provide a space for audiences to navigate the broad cultural recasting of gender norms in the Reagan Era. The chapters are arranged chronologically and follow some recurring actors and filmmakers, such as Matt Dillon and River Phoenix, Francis Ford Coppola and Gus Van Sant. The first chapter historicizes U.S. delinquent films from the 1950s through the 1970s and identifies delinquent cinema’s unique conventions and iconography. The second chapter analyzes how the tender homosociality of Coppola’s The Outsiders and Rumble Fish are stark departures from the era’s hard-bodied action heroes. The chapter also explores how their casts became teen idols adored by young women. Chapter three explores how Stand by Me and Running on Empty critique the myth of androgynous fatherhood in the 1970s and 1980s. The final chapter examines how director Gus Van Sant recontextualizes heterosexual teen icons as queer figures in Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, pointing toward New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that we still wrestle with the Reagan Era’s harsh gender boundaries, bringing to bear 1980s masculinity on today’s shifts in cultural identity amongst youth.

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