Lusty Rebels and Lonely Men: Interrogating 1950s Masculinity in the Films of Nicholas Ray
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis explores depictions of masculinity in three 1950s films directed by Nicholas Ray. The male characters depicted in In a Lonely Place (1950), The Lusty Men (1952), and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) fall victim to the inherently performative nature of hegemonic masculinity. Each film deals with a different arena of masculinity relevant to 1950s audiences, namely World War II, the Old West, and the growing car-centric suburbs. The postwar struggle for veterans to adjust to domestic life and the violent effects of post-traumatic stress are embodied by Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place. The rodeo men in The Lusty Men are performers themselves, and they struggle to reconcile their rugged Western masculinity with an increasingly suburban United States. Lastly, the feminine nature of performative masculinity is seen in both father and son in Rebel Without a Cause, a film that, like The Lusty Men, aligns manhood with extremely violent feats of physicality. The readings of these films are guided by a framework for sex and gender as theorized by Judith Butler and include the tracking of several male behaviors across each film. I argue that the actions and fates of the men in these films are intrinsically tied like the performative link between sex and gender as described by Butler, and that the hegemonic masculinity that allowed middle-class American white men to thrive was also ultimately responsible for their societal downfalls as depicted by Nicholas Ray.
abstract: This thesis explores depictions of masculinity in three 1950s films directed by Nicholas Ray. The male characters depicted in In a Lonely Place (1950), The Lusty Men (1952), and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) fall victim to the inherently performative nature of hegemonic masculinity. Each film deals with a different arena of masculinity relevant to 1950s audiences, namely World War II, the Old West, and the growing car-centric suburbs. The postwar struggle for veterans to adjust to domestic life and the violent effects of post-traumatic stress are embodied by Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place. The rodeo men in The Lusty Men are performers themselves, and they struggle to reconcile their rugged Western masculinity with an increasingly suburban United States. Lastly, the feminine nature of performative masculinity is seen in both father and son in Rebel Without a Cause, a film that, like The Lusty Men, aligns manhood with extremely violent feats of physicality. The readings of these films are guided by a framework for sex and gender as theorized by Judith Butler and include the tracking of several male behaviors across each film. I argue that the actions and fates of the men in these films are intrinsically tied like the performative link between sex and gender as described by Butler, and that the hegemonic masculinity that allowed middle-class American white men to thrive was also ultimately responsible for their societal downfalls as depicted by Nicholas Ray.
author: Bishop, David M.
keywords: masculinity, performativity, Nicholas Ray, Film and Media Studies
date published: 2026-08-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:38:47Z
provider: Chapman University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Chapman University