So it’s crucial to Wasson’s gloss on things that right at the start he can say that “There was always sex in Hollywood, but before Breakfast at Tiffany’s, only the bad girls were having it.” Isn’t it pretty to think this?And let me start by showing some pity for David Thomson because he misses the point and misses it badly. I do the same from time to time myself. Anyway, here is the very next sentence he writes:
Now, it is true that before 1961 (and for a few years afterwards), movies did not dare show sex.Thomson then goes on to argue that the sex in other films, although not portrayed, was clearly implied. Which is true enough but isn't what Wasson claimed. If we go back and read what he cites from Wasson. Wasson's point is not that sex wasn't clearly implied but that only bad girls were having it. And Thomson pretty much makes Wasson's points in the examples he gives. Here are the first two such examples from Thomson:
- It is apparent and painful that Shirley MacLaine is having sex with Fred MacMurray in The Apartment, yet her character, Fran Kubelik, is doing her best as a person.
- Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) has sex just before the first scene in Psycho, and while she will steal $40,000 on the spur of a foolish moment, she still is decent.
The next example is a little more plausible, Grace Kelly as she appears in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Kelly is certainly stunningly beautiful in both those movies. The scene where she whisks into the bathroom in Rear Window—entering a little frazzled and coming out perfect—is marvellous film-making, Hollywood magic at its best, but it is hardly a realistic portrayal of womanhood. And Kelly is a secondary to the male lead character in both those films. In general, Hitchcock's women tend to be minor characters, victims or both.
Who is next? Why Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Great movie that but Stanwyck plays a character who seduces a man into helping him kill her husband. Hardly a role model. Thomson also mentions Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Stanwyck's character is in that movie to make a fool of the man and his values not to exemplify womanly virtue. To the contrary, The Lady Eve, like Cosi Fan Tutte, suggests that all women are bad.
The final example is Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday but the key thing here is that Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns were married and, in a shockingly Catholic turn, they discover that they still are married and that their divorce has done little to change that. In any case, it is the previously existing marriage here that justifies the sexuality in a good girl. (This was popular conceit for Hollywood, I can think of The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story and Adam's Rib just off the top of my head and there must be more.)
With the exception of Hildy Johnson (a type I will have to return to one day) these women are all either bad (and not bad in a good way) or sad. No woman would pick any of them as role models to emulate. They just might pick Holly, not for reasons that are entirely admirable, but they certainly are easy to understand. And, as promised, I'll list them in my
A final thought on Thomson. The women in Hitchcock films certainly were often beautiful but Hitchcock's relationships with women were, what's the correct euphemism, shall we say complicated. "Complicated" being a nice way to say the man was a bit of a misogynist who seems to have gotten more satisfaction of portraying beautiful women as victims in highly artificial movies than actually having meaningful relationships with them in real life.
Didn't the Hayes Office have something to do with that, and the Legion of Decency? I had heard that one of their stipulations was that movies couldn't show someone who did bad things (like unmarried women having sex) come out on top or be portrayed sympathetically.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't really on the topic, but I had a discussion several years ago with a friend who noted that before Feminism, there were much better movie roles for women--both comedy and drama--and women were portrayed as strong and competent, unlike much of what we see today. He compared actresses like Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell (who was a devout Catholic and CT native), Margaret Sullavan, Myrna Loy, to people like Melanie Griffin, Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz--girls really. I think he had a point. I can't think of anyone today with the exception of Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, maybe one or two others, who rise to the level of the great actresses of the '30s and '40s. But the world was at war in the '30s and '40s and women were very much a part of the war effort. The '50s and peacetime let women revert to their traditional feminine role, e.g., Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn. Just a thought.
The Hayes Code and Legion of Decency certainly reinforced these values but the overwhelming majority of Americans were on their side.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is no different in the novels of the era which were under no such restrictions. These were the values of that era.
Your second point is a good one and there was quite some stir a while ago among feminist critics who noticed that the same is true of Mad Men. The women of the earlier era did seem stronger and more independent.
That's right, they were the values of that era, and the literature of the time reflected those values also. Do you think that Grace Metalious' Peyton Place was the beginning of a shift because the tawdry--and bawdy--heroines were able to redeem themselves?
ReplyDeleteI think the feminists thought of all women back then as diminutive stay at home housewives, largely because Betty Friedan universalized her own experience (topic for another discussion). When I went to undergraduate school in a suburb of NYC I was surprised that some of my class mates had mothers who had worked in NYC all the while my friends were growing up because the families needed the 2nd income. I had one friend whose mother worked in advertising--first for Y&R then for Benton & Bowles. Not high-level jobs by any means, but she wore heels and hat and gloves to work every day, and I think she ended up as an account rep, like Campbell and Cosgrove.
Peyton Place was an amazingly prophetic novel. It's funny because the elite not only of the era but of the next few decades mocked it but it was a much better predictor of where society was headed than anything any intellectuals of the time produced.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, I would argue that The Preppy Handbook was a better indicator of where life was headed after the Carter years than anything anyone praised by the New York Times produced.
I agree, and I think Lisa wrote Preppy as a satire. Both Preppy Handbook and Peyton Place were prophetic, but you have to wonder to what degree were they both self-fulfilling prophecies, i.e., to what degree did those books point society in those directions? Peyton Place sought to show how under the facade of the quaint proper New England town lurked a lot of what was then considered sordid behavior. And Lisa was mocking the preppies, yet people really did take it as a manual of how to BE a preppy! Sort of like what happened when Norman Lear presented Archie Bunker as a satire, but then became something of a folk hero. Maybe it boils down to the age old question, does art imitate life or does life imitate art?
ReplyDeleteNightline had a light-hearted segment tonight on Lisa Birnbach's new book "True Prep." Her thesis is that "preppy" is back (I didn't know it was ever out). She explained why in these times of economic uncertainty the Preppy style is comforting, and that everyone can acheive it. The segment was shot on Nantucket and she "made over" the male reporter. He came out of the dressing room looking the way I've dressed since high school, blue blazer, striped shirt, and lighter colored pants. This is how most of the men I work and socialize with here in CT dress. Its classic, and will never go out of style. And its easy to figure out which is the appeal for me. She said that everyone can be well-dressed without spending a fortune, well-spoken, polite and well-mannered, and I agree with that. BTW, the original Complete Preppy Handbook sold 2.3 million copies. Yup, all the way to the bank.
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