Duce/Divo Masculinity, Racial Identity, and Politics among Italian Americans in 1920s New York City

This article compares the politics and masculinity of two Italian men—political leader Benito Mussolini and immigrant film star Rodolfo Valentino—who in the early 1920s arguably became the first important media “stars” for New York’s growing Italian American population. Rather than mere icons of a p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of urban history Vol. 31; no. 5; pp. 685 - 726
Main Author Bertellini, Giorgio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Thousand Oaks, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2005
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
American history
Celebrities
Celebrity
Dictatorship
Ethnicity
European Cultural Groups
Fame
Gender roles
Identity
Immigrants
Italian Americans
Italians
Masculinity
Mussolini, Benito
New York
New York City, New York
Politics
Racial identity
Social values
U.S.A
Urban history
Valentino, Rodolfo
Valentino, Rudolph
New York City New York
film stardom
Mussolini
Italian Americans
masculinity
Valentino
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Summary:This article compares the politics and masculinity of two Italian men—political leader Benito Mussolini and immigrant film star Rodolfo Valentino—who in the early 1920s arguably became the first important media “stars” for New York’s growing Italian American population. Rather than mere icons of a predetermined and “given” Italianness, the two men’s simultaneous popularity, representing such differing political beliefs and embodying such starkly different masculine ideals, points to the complexity of the “Americanization” of urban Italian Americans in the 1920s. Mussolini’s new, heroic manhood offered immigrants an opportunity to celebrate stereotypically male and American values in a self-consciously Italian form. Despite the totalitarianism and racism of the Fascist regime, the Duce’s iconic modernity contributed to his depoliticization. Likewise, Valentino’s exotic, sophisticated, and explicitly vulnerable masculinity participated in the restructuring of gender relationships in the United States. American and Italian American commentators were apparently more nervous about the gender-bending and apolitical yet also vaguely anti-Fascist divo than they were about the Fascist dictator.
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ISSN:0096-1442
1552-6771
DOI:10.1177/0096144205275981