Domesticating the screen goddess
Jul. 6th, 2005 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkThe Lady Eve DVD came this week. And I will name it squishy and it will be mine. It is mine. Ha! It’s *so* good. The pacing, the economy, not a line, not a scene wasted. And although most of the characters are either completely clueless or criminally amoral you love them all.
Even Freud knew better than to analyse a joke so I won’t do that but the film did spark off some thoughts relating to various recent discussions of the dearth of strong female characters on screen. Mainly because Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Eve is in many ways such a shining example of a talented and independent woman, vibrantly and sympathetically portrayed. She runs rings around Henry Fonda’s ‘Hopsy’ for the entire film, she effortlessly out sharps her fellow card sharps whenever she feels it necessary. She decides what she wants and sets out to get it and when it doesn’t work out she just picks herself up to take the most brilliant imaginable revenge. Then chooses to forgive him because he’s just so beautifully dumb but why not? Dumb, beautiful, well-intentioned and rich is a pretty adorable combination in a man. Nevertheless, I have to admit her status as an iconically strong woman is undermined by several factors.
Firstly the film is ‘just’ a comedy, it operates within the skewed universe of ‘funny’, where real world rules don’t apply. Thinking about it aren’t intellectually and/or morally superior females an almost stereotypical feature of the American sitcom even now? Marge in The Simpsons, Lois in Malcom in the Middle, Samantha in Bewitched. It’s great to have them and lord knows an improvement on the likes of Wendy Craig in Butterflies or Felicity Kendall in The Good Life but a funny ghetto is still a ghetto.
Secondly, although Stanwyck’s portrayal of the character never gives the impression that she’s lost to love, in the last five minutes her story does suddenly revert to the usual romantic convention. Hilariously, and while taking one last pot shot at the Hayes code but in the end it’s still girl meets boy, girl gets boy and that’s all girl should want. In this the movie is simply very typical of its period. Vicki Lester will henceforth be known as Mrs Norman Maine and even Dorothy decides that all she really wants is to be a good girl and go home. In Janine Basinger’s wonderful book on women’s films (A Woman’s View) she claims that the audience was able to see through these last minute reversals and simply appreciate the great female stars like Crawford and Davis having a ball for the bulk of the film. We do that now, it’s easy to see through the tricks of another generation with hindsight but back in the day? Do modern audiences just read the Bridget Jones films/books as affectionate parodies?
One corollary of Dorothy’s decision is that she leaves the leadership of Oz to her male companions. Which brings me to the last of my feminist quibbles with Eve, the fact that although its heroine clearly has the brains to take charge she never attempts to do so overtly. Sure she's no ditsy Susan (Bringing up Baby). She plays her mark mercilessly and is happy to be one of the boys in the professional gamblers and conmen club but she never has to step up and explicitly take charge. I think it’s here that the likes of Buffy and Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect may really herald the beginning of something new. If you squint hard, strong women characters have actually been around in one form or another for a long time. Jane Eyre was resilient and Becky Sharpe was clever. Scarlett O’Hara proved to be both and by the end began to see that there were more things to give a damm about than Rhett or even Ashley. Nevertheless, women overtly wielding power in a man’s world, is a new thing on screen. And I suppose, with a few rare and therefore permissible exceptions, a relatively recent development in real life.
Even Freud knew better than to analyse a joke so I won’t do that but the film did spark off some thoughts relating to various recent discussions of the dearth of strong female characters on screen. Mainly because Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Eve is in many ways such a shining example of a talented and independent woman, vibrantly and sympathetically portrayed. She runs rings around Henry Fonda’s ‘Hopsy’ for the entire film, she effortlessly out sharps her fellow card sharps whenever she feels it necessary. She decides what she wants and sets out to get it and when it doesn’t work out she just picks herself up to take the most brilliant imaginable revenge. Then chooses to forgive him because he’s just so beautifully dumb but why not? Dumb, beautiful, well-intentioned and rich is a pretty adorable combination in a man. Nevertheless, I have to admit her status as an iconically strong woman is undermined by several factors.
Firstly the film is ‘just’ a comedy, it operates within the skewed universe of ‘funny’, where real world rules don’t apply. Thinking about it aren’t intellectually and/or morally superior females an almost stereotypical feature of the American sitcom even now? Marge in The Simpsons, Lois in Malcom in the Middle, Samantha in Bewitched. It’s great to have them and lord knows an improvement on the likes of Wendy Craig in Butterflies or Felicity Kendall in The Good Life but a funny ghetto is still a ghetto.
Secondly, although Stanwyck’s portrayal of the character never gives the impression that she’s lost to love, in the last five minutes her story does suddenly revert to the usual romantic convention. Hilariously, and while taking one last pot shot at the Hayes code but in the end it’s still girl meets boy, girl gets boy and that’s all girl should want. In this the movie is simply very typical of its period. Vicki Lester will henceforth be known as Mrs Norman Maine and even Dorothy decides that all she really wants is to be a good girl and go home. In Janine Basinger’s wonderful book on women’s films (A Woman’s View) she claims that the audience was able to see through these last minute reversals and simply appreciate the great female stars like Crawford and Davis having a ball for the bulk of the film. We do that now, it’s easy to see through the tricks of another generation with hindsight but back in the day? Do modern audiences just read the Bridget Jones films/books as affectionate parodies?
One corollary of Dorothy’s decision is that she leaves the leadership of Oz to her male companions. Which brings me to the last of my feminist quibbles with Eve, the fact that although its heroine clearly has the brains to take charge she never attempts to do so overtly. Sure she's no ditsy Susan (Bringing up Baby). She plays her mark mercilessly and is happy to be one of the boys in the professional gamblers and conmen club but she never has to step up and explicitly take charge. I think it’s here that the likes of Buffy and Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect may really herald the beginning of something new. If you squint hard, strong women characters have actually been around in one form or another for a long time. Jane Eyre was resilient and Becky Sharpe was clever. Scarlett O’Hara proved to be both and by the end began to see that there were more things to give a damm about than Rhett or even Ashley. Nevertheless, women overtly wielding power in a man’s world, is a new thing on screen. And I suppose, with a few rare and therefore permissible exceptions, a relatively recent development in real life.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 09:19 am (UTC)Unless they were Garbo as Queen Christina (but she Gives Up Her Throne For Lurve, as I recall, and contrary to the historical record) or Marlene Dietrich as Catherine the Great. But that's probably a rare exception, and Queens are Allowed. K Hepburn approaches it (being a successful lawyer, sportswoman - love the gender skewing in Pat and Mike! - etc) but tending to be compromised by the romantic conventions of the genre.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-06 01:51 pm (UTC)