Hmmm. I wonder if there's a way to relate "representations of the Depression as a threat to performance of masculinity in screwball comedies of the 1930s" to modernism. I don't know much about modernism post, oh, 1925 or so, although I gather the generally-accepted ending date is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1945 or even 1950. (Well. Assuming you aren't one of the people who think it's still going on, anyway. The border between modernism and post-modernism seems particularly fluid.)