London School of Economics
3rd Hellenic Observatory PhD Symposium
14th - 15th June 2007
‘What a Greek Man had to do’. Studying,
Remembering and Representing Masculinity,
Gender Relations and Family Structures in
Greece from the End of the Civil War (1949) until
the Colonels’ Coup d’ Etat (1967)
Achilleas Hadjikyriacou
European University Institute,
Florence
Research aims
• To investigate the way that masculinity and
gender relations were experienced in urban and
rural societies.
• To explore representations of male identity and
gender relations in Greek cinema 1950- 1967.
• To explore the impact of cultural transfers in the
form of modernisation on the society and its
representations on screen.
Main research questions (1)
• How are masculinity and gender relations in urban and
rural societies described by social anthropologists,
sociologists, and social historians?
• How do films of the period 1950-1967 represent the
male in urban and rural societies?
• In which ways has Hollywood influenced the
representation of young males in the Greek Cinema?
Main research questions (2)
• How did members of urban and rural societies
experience gender issues at the time?
• How did these people interact with cinematic
representations?
• What do people who had been involved in the
Greek cinema industry have to say about gender
representations?
Main issues addressed
• Matters of behaviour
• Images
• Structure of the family
• Male- female spheres
• Public- private spheres
• Modernity- Tradition
• Hegemonic- Subordinate masculinities
General comments
Existing bibliography
• Large British- US literature on masculinity in films
provides the theoretical background.
• Most writers lack historicity.
• No previous research in masculinity and gender relations
in Greek cinema.
Sources for analysis
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Films
Film critiques from newspapers and magazines
Posters and other advertisements
Literature from the fields of anthropology and sociology.
Oral testimonies
Main parts of Paper (1)
• Chapter 1: Analysing cinema: the interaction between
films and audiences. Theories, methods and examples of
gender representation and reception
i. What kind of man is he? What kind of man am I?
Representing masculinity in the cinema.
ii. Did man create Hollywood or Hollywood created man?
Representations of masculinity in post-war American
Cinema.
iii. ‘Film history has been the history of boys
photographing girls’. Feminism and Psychoanalysis in film
theory.
Main parts of Paper (2)
• Chapter 2: Masculinity and gender relations in
rural Greece as pictured by social
anthropologists. A literature review.
• Chapter 3: Can Oral History provide insights into
the analysis of gender issues?
Main parts of Paper (3)
• Chapter 4: An introduction to the productions of
‘Greek Hollywood’ 1950-67. Genres, themes,
star-system, representations and the audience
• Chapter 5: Representations of Masculinity and
Gender Relations in Stella (1955) and
Mandalena (1960)
Comments-Questions-Suggestions