The Hollywood Beach Party Genre and the Exotification of Youthful White Masculinity in Early 1960s America

Abstract

In the early 1960s, a wave of extremely successful Hollywood surfing and beach party films captivated the imagination of American teenage cinema audiences. This essay analyzes the Hollywood beach party cycle as part and parcel of the exotification of youthful white masculinity, a phenomenon that has received no scholarly attention to this date. Films like Gidget (1959), Beach Party (1963), Blue Hawaii (1961), or Ride the Wild Surf (1964) represented their male protagonist, the surfer, as a natural, rugged, and rebelliously masculine type unspoiled by domesticity and suburban conformity. While being exceedingly white, the figure of the surfer evidences postwar America’s ongoing fascination with racial difference. The surfer’s superior manliness depended on his association with the exotic. Simultaneously, however, it was this very association that threatened both the surfer’s masculinity and his whiteness.