Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"If You Have No Men, You Have No War!”: A Critical Overview Of Edgar Selwyn's Men Must Fight (1933), Ryan R. Copping

Cinesthesia

ABSTRACT: Edgar Selwyn’s Men Must Fight (1933) is an obscure yet culturally relevant science fiction drama. An atypical film from its era, the movie has an unusual subject for a Classical Hollywood film- gender socialization. The film didactically argues that wars are inevitable because men are inherently violent, and that, conversely, world peace world occur if women were in power, a possibility that appears to be regrettably impossible. It is also remarkably prescient in predicting that World War II would begin in 1940, only one year off from the German invasion of Poland. This paper combines a close content analysis …