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Anhedonia: Gender and the Decline of Emotions in American Film, 1930–
Author(s) -
Lyman Stanford M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
sociological inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.446
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1475-682X
pISSN - 0038-0245
DOI - 10.1111/soin.1990.60.1.1
Subject(s) - disenchantment , hollywood , pleasure , sociology , dialectic , aesthetics , middlebrow , gender studies , movie theater , film studies , psychoanalysis , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , history , art history , art , law , philosophy , neuroscience , politics , political science
An interpretive study of Hollywood films from 1930 to 1988 suggests a hypothesis about gender relations. Employing the mythopoetic conception of male‐female relationships that is found in the legends of Ariadne and Theseus, the study proposes a diachronic unfolding of the dialectic of love and freedom. In the process, a disenchantment sets in revealing anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. This dysdaemonic picture provides an illustration and commentary on American norms of achievement, marital fidelity, conjugal relations, and child rearing. The rise and fall of the Ariadneac mystique offers one way to read Hollywood films in terms of the sociology of the emotions. Future research is suggested to test the hypothesis and to explore the relationship between its thematic and socio‐cultural life in America.