Breaking Barriers: Empowering American Disabled War Veterans in the Face of Stigmatization in Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Abstract

[eng] The aftermath of the Second World War in the United States was marked by 600,000 men returning home with long-term disabilities. This was, among many others, one of the main factors that destabilized the conception of masculinity and its representation in the United States. This phenomenon, however, was not limited to WWII but also influenced by subsequent conflicts such as the Cold War and the Vietnam War. The struggles that disabled veterans underwent when trying to achieve societal expectations led them to feel emasculated. Why did disabled veterans prove unable to fit the hegemonic masculinity discourse’s ideals and how did they challenge and redefine this concept? This question will be answered throughout this paper, using as an example the film Born on the Fourth of July (1989). This case study is important in that it challenged the standard narrative that fostered among veterans the duty of abandoning their wartime identities with the final goal of becoming good breadwinners, fathers and husbands. Notwithstanding, veterans who were injured both physically and psychologically could not achieve employment, marriage and family support as breadwinners. This dissertation is significant given the fact that it exposes the issues regarding how masculine gender and sexuality are enacted in traditional ways in the United States during the last half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, a special emphasis will be put on the disruptive perception of American exceptionalism (De Tocqueville 1945, 440) and its influence on the notions of sex, gender expression, and hegemonic masculinity. The dissertation, therefore, will have the ultimate aim of disentangling the historical intersection between masculinity and disability in the US’ post-war society. All this information considered, the project will illustrate how and to what extent disabled veterans in post-war society negotiated and shaped their identities in the public and the private sphere.