{"id":{"repo_id":"cambridge","oai_identifier":"oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/377287"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/cambridge/oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/377287","repository":{"repo_id":"cambridge","name":"Cambridge University","base_url":"https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Types in Transition: The Evolution of the Working Man in New Hollywood Cinema","abstract":"Beginning in the late 1960s and lasting for around a decade, The New Hollywood era of American cinema represented a significant shift in both filmmaking style and practice. While scholars have traditionally located this break in either industrial or auteurist terms, Types in Transition argues that the quintessence of New Hollywood cinema can be found in its treatment of character types. The notion of ‘types’ had been acknowledged in early film scholarship but not fully confronted until critics began to deconstruct them right as New Hollywood assumed form. I recover this long-overlooked body of typic theory in order to re-examine the era using the very critical framework which differentiated it in the first place. Indeed, while New Hollywood’s revisionism has often been seen in terms of genre, this thesis locates that impulse instead in the era’s revision of dominant character types, a revision that I argue was part of a much larger trend towards changing notions of masculinity and labour in the era. The 1970s saw deep conflict in American culture over these two concepts: the peak and decline in union activity, the increased presence of women in the workforce, and evolving ideas over what constituted labour made these previously firm categories a newly contested space. By analysing a number of films released across the decade, I show that New Hollywood experimented with, altered, and often discarded ‘working male’ types that had been well-established and unchanging in decades prior. Following an introduction that recuperates the importance of the typic criticism of the 1970s, each body chapter examines the cultural foundations and significance of a specific New Hollywood type. Chapter 1 shows how ‘the hustler’ in New Hollywood became symptomatically alienated from his labour on screen in a cycle of ‘nostalgia’ films. Chapter 2 investigates how the hegemony maintained by the ‘union man’ throughout Hollywood history came undone at the end of the 1970s via films that foregrounded women’s experiences in labour organisation. Chapter 3 traces the figure of the ‘vengeful dad’ from his origins in wider cultural movements which reaffirmed the dad’s importance in the nuclear family unit. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the work of journalists on screen, inextricably linked to both the nationalistic and industrial powers of the press in Classical Hollywood, was upended by the transmissive possibilities of television in New Hollywood. Finally, the Conclusion demonstrates the semiotic possibilities of types can extend far beyond the boundaries of New Hollywood.","abstract_html":"Beginning in the late 1960s and lasting for around a decade, The New Hollywood era of American cinema represented a significant shift in both filmmaking style and practice. While scholars have traditionally located this break in either industrial or auteurist terms, Types in Transition argues that the quintessence of New Hollywood cinema can be found in its treatment of character types. The notion of ‘types’ had been acknowledged in early film scholarship but not fully confronted until critics began to deconstruct them right as New Hollywood assumed form. I recover this long-overlooked body of typic theory in order to re-examine the era using the very critical framework which differentiated it in the first place. Indeed, while New Hollywood’s revisionism has often been seen in terms of genre, this thesis locates that impulse instead in the era’s revision of dominant character types, a revision that I argue was part of a much larger trend towards changing notions of masculinity and labour in the era. The 1970s saw deep conflict in American culture over these two concepts: the peak and decline in union activity, the increased presence of women in the workforce, and evolving ideas over what constituted labour made these previously firm categories a newly contested space. By analysing a number of films released across the decade, I show that New Hollywood experimented with, altered, and often discarded ‘working male’ types that had been well-established and unchanging in decades prior. Following an introduction that recuperates the importance of the typic criticism of the 1970s, each body chapter examines the cultural foundations and significance of a specific New Hollywood type. Chapter 1 shows how ‘the hustler’ in New Hollywood became symptomatically alienated from his labour on screen in a cycle of ‘nostalgia’ films. Chapter 2 investigates how the hegemony maintained by the ‘union man’ throughout Hollywood history came undone at the end of the 1970s via films that foregrounded women’s experiences in labour organisation. Chapter 3 traces the figure of the ‘vengeful dad’ from his origins in wider cultural movements which reaffirmed the dad’s importance in the nuclear family unit. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the work of journalists on screen, inextricably linked to both the nationalistic and industrial powers of the press in Classical Hollywood, was upended by the transmissive possibilities of television in New Hollywood. Finally, the Conclusion demonstrates the semiotic possibilities of types can extend far beyond the boundaries of New Hollywood.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Whitaker, Harrison"],"institution":"University of Cambridge","degree_name":"Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)","degree_level":"Doctoral","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Bitney, Joseph","Boddy, Kasia"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2024,"date_issued":"2024-06-14","date_published":"2024-06-14","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:11Z","subjects":["Cinema","Hollywood","New Hollywood","Labour","Masculinity","1970s","Film"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":["https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/7b3f8d0b-4233-45c6-8cf1-edef8903feef/download","https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.114150","outbound_label":"DOI","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.doi"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Bitney, Joseph","Boddy, Kasia"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Whitaker, Harrison"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2024-06-14"]},{"key":"dc:publisher.institution","label":"Dc Publisher Institution","values":["University of Cambridge"]},{"key":"dc:relation.isreferencedby.uri","label":"Dc Relation Isreferencedby URI","values":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/377287"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationlevel","label":"Dc Type Qualificationlevel","values":["Doctoral"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationname","label":"Dc Type Qualificationname","values":["Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Cinema","Hollywood","New Hollywood","Labour","Masculinity","1970s","Film"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/7b3f8d0b-4233-45c6-8cf1-edef8903feef/download","https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/"]},{"key":"dc:rights.embargodate","label":"Dc Rights Embargodate","values":["2025-12-10"]},{"key":"dc:rights.embargotype","label":"Dc Rights Embargotype","values":["embargo"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.114150"]},{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/97e7abb9-cbc6-4030-aa1c-f58b4c503d7e/download"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Beginning in the late 1960s and lasting for around a decade, The New Hollywood era of American cinema represented a significant shift in both filmmaking style and practice. 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The 1970s saw deep conflict in American culture over these two concepts: the peak and decline in union activity, the increased presence of women in the workforce, and evolving ideas over what constituted labour made these previously firm categories a newly contested space. By analysing a number of films released across the decade, I show that New Hollywood experimented with, altered, and often discarded ‘working male’ types that had been well-established and unchanging in decades prior. Following an introduction that recuperates the importance of the typic criticism of the 1970s, each body chapter examines the cultural foundations and significance of a specific New Hollywood type. Chapter 1 shows how ‘the hustler’ in New Hollywood became symptomatically alienated from his labour on screen in a cycle of ‘nostalgia’ films. Chapter 2 investigates how the hegemony maintained by the ‘union man’ throughout Hollywood history came undone at the end of the 1970s via films that foregrounded women’s experiences in labour organisation. Chapter 3 traces the figure of the ‘vengeful dad’ from his origins in wider cultural movements which reaffirmed the dad’s importance in the nuclear family unit. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the work of journalists on screen, inextricably linked to both the nationalistic and industrial powers of the press in Classical Hollywood, was upended by the transmissive possibilities of television in New Hollywood. 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The notion of ‘types’ had been acknowledged in early film scholarship but not fully confronted until critics began to deconstruct them right as New Hollywood assumed form. I recover this long-overlooked body of typic theory in order to re-examine the era using the very critical framework which differentiated it in the first place. Indeed, while New Hollywood’s revisionism has often been seen in terms of genre, this thesis locates that impulse instead in the era’s revision of dominant character types, a revision that I argue was part of a much larger trend towards changing notions of masculinity and labour in the era. The 1970s saw deep conflict in American culture over these two concepts: the peak and decline in union activity, the increased presence of women in the workforce, and evolving ideas over what constituted labour made these previously firm categories a newly contested space. By analysing a number of films released across the decade, I show that New Hollywood experimented with, altered, and often discarded ‘working male’ types that had been well-established and unchanging in decades prior. Following an introduction that recuperates the importance of the typic criticism of the 1970s, each body chapter examines the cultural foundations and significance of a specific New Hollywood type. Chapter 1 shows how ‘the hustler’ in New Hollywood became symptomatically alienated from his labour on screen in a cycle of ‘nostalgia’ films. Chapter 2 investigates how the hegemony maintained by the ‘union man’ throughout Hollywood history came undone at the end of the 1970s via films that foregrounded women’s experiences in labour organisation. Chapter 3 traces the figure of the ‘vengeful dad’ from his origins in wider cultural movements which reaffirmed the dad’s importance in the nuclear family unit. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the work of journalists on screen, inextricably linked to both the nationalistic and industrial powers of the press in Classical Hollywood, was upended by the transmissive possibilities of television in New Hollywood. 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