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We Boys Together: Teenagers in Love Before Girl-Craziness
Teenage boys are wild about girls.When their hormones kick in at puberty, they can think of nothing else, and that"s the way it has always been-- right? Wrong. Before World War II, only sissies liked girls. Masculine, red-blooded, all-American boys were supposed to ignore girls until they were 18 or 19. Instead, parents, teachers, psychiatrists, and especially the mass media encouraged them to form passionate, intense, romantic bonds with each other. This book explores romantic relationships between teenage boys as they were portrayed before, during, and immediately after World War II. The author takes the reader through a rich landscape of media -- sci fi pulps, comics, adventure stories, tales of teen sleuths, boys' serial novels, wartime bestsellers, and movies populated by many types of male Boys Next Door, Adventure Boys, Jungle Boys, and Lost Boys. In Hollywood movies, Boys Next Door like Jackie Cooper, Ronald Sinclair, and Jimmy Lydon were constantly falling in love, but not with girls. In serial novels, Jungle Boys like Bomba, Sorak, and Og Son of Fire swung through the trees to rescue teenage boys, not teenage girls. In comic strips and on the radio, Adventure Boys like Don Study, Jack Armstrong, and Tim Tyler formed lasting romantic partnerships with other boys or men. Lost Boys like Frankie Darro, Leo Gorcey, and Billy Halop starred in dozens of movies about pairs of poor urban teenagers sticking together, with never a girl in sight.
- GenresNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 8, 2014
A very interesting premise is ruined an absurd level of queer interpretation, beyond what could be reasonably expected.
The author asks us "Why is it that before the 1940s, young teenage boys weren't girl crazy?" He points to many pop cultural examples of the time, and breaks them down into three types; the Boy Next Door,The Lost Boy, and The Adventure Boy. The BND is a wholesome, all american kind of boy, while the lost boy is the roguish ethnic from the street. The Adventure Boy wrestles with danger in exotic lands. What's common to many of these examples is a focus on boys having relationships or friendships with each other, and treating girls like an afterthought if at all.
This is a good thesis, and the author really lays down the examples. However, it's marred by a level of queer interpretation that makes everything homosexual. Everything.
I don't doubt that some of the relationships were such, but the constant making everything reflect homoromantic relationships cheapens the book. He talks about not wanting to see old media through postmodern eyes, and does exactly that by seeing every instance of a shirtless boy as latent homoromance, or simple friendship or emotional intimacy as rejecting heteroromantic norms. You can argue for subtext on a basic level, yes, but everything is erotic or leering or blatant in the book. An example would be how he treats Horatio Alger; I read Ragged Dick, and while you could maybe make the point that Dick and his young fellow bootblack make sort of a quasi-family, he's never described in anywhere near homoromantic terms. I can't help but think the author is not distancing himself enough from the material to look at it in the context of its era.
Again, it's not the idea that homoromantic relatonships might have occurred in the past in media, or that girl-craziness was de-emphasized due to the new concept of adolescence that had been created due to the industrial revolution. It's more that the author is so focused on the idea of homoromanticism that it pervades through the book even when common sense would think that other interpretations or ideas might have been equally valid. Taking your shirt off may be a sign of a gay director's ideas on fetish fuel, or it may just be what boys did before the idea of it having a sexual component became widespread in American culture.
It's sad because I otherwise enjoyed the book, both for its documenting of old literature and shows, and for the hints of how adolescence made difficulties for teenagers and their relationships with girls. But the focus of the author on interpreting everything through a queer culture lens harms the book to the point of eye-rolling. I don't think the hidden idea of an Arcadia where men were free to love other men really is ingrained in the culture he covers as much as he seems to think it is.
The author asks us "Why is it that before the 1940s, young teenage boys weren't girl crazy?" He points to many pop cultural examples of the time, and breaks them down into three types; the Boy Next Door,The Lost Boy, and The Adventure Boy. The BND is a wholesome, all american kind of boy, while the lost boy is the roguish ethnic from the street. The Adventure Boy wrestles with danger in exotic lands. What's common to many of these examples is a focus on boys having relationships or friendships with each other, and treating girls like an afterthought if at all.
This is a good thesis, and the author really lays down the examples. However, it's marred by a level of queer interpretation that makes everything homosexual. Everything.
I don't doubt that some of the relationships were such, but the constant making everything reflect homoromantic relationships cheapens the book. He talks about not wanting to see old media through postmodern eyes, and does exactly that by seeing every instance of a shirtless boy as latent homoromance, or simple friendship or emotional intimacy as rejecting heteroromantic norms. You can argue for subtext on a basic level, yes, but everything is erotic or leering or blatant in the book. An example would be how he treats Horatio Alger; I read Ragged Dick, and while you could maybe make the point that Dick and his young fellow bootblack make sort of a quasi-family, he's never described in anywhere near homoromantic terms. I can't help but think the author is not distancing himself enough from the material to look at it in the context of its era.
Again, it's not the idea that homoromantic relatonships might have occurred in the past in media, or that girl-craziness was de-emphasized due to the new concept of adolescence that had been created due to the industrial revolution. It's more that the author is so focused on the idea of homoromanticism that it pervades through the book even when common sense would think that other interpretations or ideas might have been equally valid. Taking your shirt off may be a sign of a gay director's ideas on fetish fuel, or it may just be what boys did before the idea of it having a sexual component became widespread in American culture.
It's sad because I otherwise enjoyed the book, both for its documenting of old literature and shows, and for the hints of how adolescence made difficulties for teenagers and their relationships with girls. But the focus of the author on interpreting everything through a queer culture lens harms the book to the point of eye-rolling. I don't think the hidden idea of an Arcadia where men were free to love other men really is ingrained in the culture he covers as much as he seems to think it is.
Displaying 1 of 1 review