Women in film: representation and roles

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THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN FILM: HIS GIRL FRIDAY, SEMI-TOUGH & FLIRTING WITH DISASTER

The history of women in the cinema can be traced back to the early days of film production, beginning ca. 1896 with films by director Alice Guy Blache, such as "The Cabbage Fairy" and "The Bewitched Fianc?." With the advent and popularity of the so-called "silent era" of film production, women began to be depicted as various stereotypes, such as "damsels in distress," weak-minded, timid city girls and impoverished "white trash," while men played an overwhelming majority of lead roles, usually as heroic figures who rescue these "damsels" from a plethora of dangerous situations. In a study of one hundred films released between 1930 and 1940, part of the "Golden Age" of American cinema, "eighty percent focused on the love/hate of a man with a good/bad girl, while fifty percent had the good/bad girl opposing another bad girl" (Doane 134). Likewise, another study showed that between 1930 and the 1970's, four types of roles for women were dominant in the American cinema-first, "The Pillar of Virtue," a good example being Hattie McDaniel as the morally stout housemaid in 1939's Gone With The Wind; second, the "Glamour Girl" like the sex goddess Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or the German "bombshell" Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus; third, the usually sexually frustrated "Emotive Woman" such as the sexual vixen Elizabeth Taylor in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and lastly the "Independent Woman," two prime examples being Katherine Hepburn in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and Jane Fonda, the stalwart prostitute in Klute. 2 In the 1950's, when cinema began to "reaffirm male dominance and female subservience by showing women as mere sex objects" (Manchel 235), the contempt generated by film producers for showing strong, powerful women was at its peak, yet by the mid 1970's this had evolved into pure sensationalism by subverting women into true sexual objects with a focus on their sexual appetites and physical attributes. In contrast, by the mid 1960's, the feminist movement in America had begun to be greatly concerned with how women were being portrayed in the cinema. Several important studies have shown that women were restricted to motherly family roles while men were shown to be masters of their own destinies. Ally Acker points out that "men were employed, had careers and were doing something outside of the home" (257) as contrasted with women who were totally dependent on the strengths and abilities of their male partners. In relation to the three films as examples of old and new roles for women in the cinema, namely His Girl Friday (1940), starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, Semi-Tough (1977) with Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh and Flirting With Disaster (1996), starring Ben Stiller and Patricia Arquette, the movie genre of the "film noir" seems most appropriate as a focal point for this discussion of women in film. This genre was "made up of thrillers produced in the 1940's and 50's, shot in black and white, with female stars who used their attractiveness to manipulate men" (Doane 188). Film noirs like Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck as a manipulative married woman and Sunset Boulevard starring Gloria Swanson as a washed-up, dominating silent film star, are good examples of how leading ladies ensnared leading men via their relentless attempts to 3 "satisfy their own desires which often threatened the stable roles of marriage, family and female submissiveness" (Manchel 174). However, recent feminist views have maintained that the women in these film noirs are outside the standard acceptance of femininity. By using their sexuality to overwhelm their male counterparts, these women gained power and used it to "get what they want," usually in the form of revenge, money or sexual satisfaction. These traits of the strong, powerful woman also influenced the audience through what is referred to as a gender blind construct or that which blinds the dominant cultural definitions of pleasure and desire so as to show that women are also sexual predators. In the role of Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday, a screwball comedy directed by the great Howard Hawks, Rosalind Russell portrays a star reporter whose great desire is to quit the newspaper business. But her amoral and manipulative editor Walter Burns, played to the hilt by Cary Grant who just happens to be her ex-husband, does everything in his power to thwart her. Hildy's fianc?, played by Ralph Bellamy, is thrown in the mix as a bumbling insurance man. The film noir traits associated with Hildy are easily understood-a sexually repressed woman with needs and desires of her own who will stop at nothing to attain her goal, all the while juggling the men in her life like so many pieces of fruit. In director Michael Ritchie's comedy Semi-Tough, the female lead, played by Jill Clayburgh as Barbara Jane Bookman, the daughter of the owner of a football team, becomes involved in a love triangle with Burt Reynolds as Billy Clyde Puckett and Kris Kristofferson as Shake Tiller, two professional football players and the best of friends. 4 Since both men are in love with the same woman, one must attempt to be the dominant admirer, in this case Burt Reynolds who tries to break up the relationship between Barbara and his best friend in order to win her for himself. Yet Barbara, as a result of her activities in self-improvement via her guru, takes on the attitude of the film noir-ish manipulative "Independent woman" with the consequence being complete anarchy in relation to the love struggles of her "jock" pursuers. With the film Flirting With Disaster, a comedy/drama directed by David O. Russell, the main female lead, played by Patricia Arquette as the beautiful Nancy, the wife of Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller), a similar love/hate triangle as in His Girl Friday and Semi-Tough, serves as the main focal point. But unlike these two other films, the third member of this triangle is a woman, an even more beautiful doctor-in-training, Tina Kalb, played by Tea Leoni. As is typical of most modern-day "screwball" comedies, the main characters are faced with many dilemmas which attempt to undermine the true motives of the two women, such as the inclusion of gay characters and the suggestion that Mel is only a simple-minded, dysfunctional idiot. Yet with a closer look, the two women are truly part of this fim-noir attitude of the dominant females who will do everything in their power to achieve their goals of sexual superiority. As shown by these three examples, the roles of women in the cinema, starting back in the early silent days and continuing into the present, are ever changing and are constantly presenting new dimensions which need to be explored, especially in the ways women develop cinematic relationships and how they interact with one another. 4 SOURCES CITED Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present. New York: Continuum, 1991. Doane, Mary Ann, et al. Re-vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984. Manchel, Frank. "The Feminist Approach." Film Study: An Analytical Bibliography. 4 vols. Rutherford, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1990.