Gregory A. Daddis. Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines .
2022; Oxford University Press; Volume: 127; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ahr/rhac409
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
ResumoRarely do military historians venture into studies of gender and its cultural representation. In his fine new book, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines, Gregory A. Daddis takes the leap, bringing his expertise in US military history to bear on the study of male adventure magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. The result is a terrifically illuminating exploration of how an ideal of martial manhood was hyped in what Daddis calls “macho pulps,” and consequently, “how masculinity was broadcast during the Cold War era” (2). With titles such as Man’s Conquest, Man’s World, Valor, For Men Only, Stag, Battle Cry, Man’s Epic, True Action, Battlefield, All Man, action magazines offered readers opportunities to imagine bravely vanquishing foreign foes and exerting power over those vanquished and those saved. Stories of daring wartime battles, intrigues and special operations, luridly colorful illustrations, advice on maintaining male health, vigor and potency, exposés of urban and suburban vice and wild sexual excess filled the pages of macho pulps. In combat tales, power and military might was sexually and racially supercharged. As gutsy, virile American warriors fought their enemies and rescued native peoples from tyranny in the name of the free world, they enjoyed the pleasures of exotic local women whom they take as their just reward. Macho pulps offered up nothing less than toxic hypermasculinity. This is Mickey Spillane, juiced up on the battlefield.
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