SR.1-'.TlO CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a ~ubstantial extent has been dCC~pted for the award of any other degree or diploma ot a university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text.
(Si · SUMMARY
In this project report, I argue that one of the foundation stones of sexism in our society, is the promulgation by the Clergy, of the Biblical Genesis Two story of the creation, as the Truth - and their lack of any mention of the first story of the creation, which is of equal authority. In the first story of the creation, God created men and women as equals, therefore, the argument that equality for men and women is natural, is just as valid as the sexist argument that men and women were created different in their nature and roles by God. The sexist ideology of Genesis Two is not only promoted by the church, but by our system of education and shapes society's attitude to women.
Because of the influence of the church, the Christian view of Harriage, based on the ideology of the Adam and Eve story, is reflected in Hollywood films on Harriage between 1934 and the late 1960's, while the Production Code was in force.
I compare the image and role of women in four Hollywood films on Harriage up to 1970, with the image and role of women in some of those films after 1970, when the Production Code has been relaxed and the Women's Movement has gained momentum.
Hy conclusion is, that because of influence of Feminism, there has been a change in the role and image of women and sexual stereotypes, which has led to a reduction of sexism in some Hollywood films on marriage after 1970. MARRIAGE IN SOME HOLLYWOOD FILMS:CHANGING ASPECTS OF SEXISM
INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Biblical Stories of the Creation CHAPTER TWO The church and sexism
CHAPTER THREE What is Marriage? CHAPTER FOUR Education and sexism CHAPTER FIVE The Production Code CHAPTER SIX Marriage in Four Hollywood Films up to 1970 CHAPTER SEVEN Feminism and Film CHAPTER EIGHT Marriage in Some Hollywood Films after 1970 CHAPTER NINE Conclusion
APPENDIX 1
INTRODUCTION
In "The Paradox of the Harry Marriage" written in the early 1970's, Jessie Bernard states that a substantial body of research, supports Durkheim's conclusion, that the regulations imposed on the woman by marriage are always more stringent than those imposed on men. Women lose more than they gain from marriage. Where married women judge themselves as happy, Bernard asks "how happy.is the happy housewife?" studies have shown, she says, that overall, more married women than single women were reported to be passive, phobic and depressed. Almost three times as many married as single women showed severe neurotic symptoms. Twice as many married women as married men have felt that a nervous breakdown was impending. Many more women than men experienced psychological anxiety, physical anxiety and immobilization. Many more wives than husbands mentioned their physical appearance as a shortcoming, reflecting the enormous emphasis put on youth and beauty among women in our society. ( 1)
In Australia, according to Bettina Arndt, a 1981 study by the University of Melbourne, found that married women were less satisfied than single people or married men. Working women reported higher well-being scores in all areas of their lives.(2)
Nevertheless, the traditional marriage is still held out as the ideal state for women by the Church. This is supposed to 2 be reflected in Hollywood Films on Marriage 1940 to the late
Nineteen Sixties, when the Production Code was enforced.
Hollywood films at this time were subject to a strict code of morality which reflected Christian values. The Christian values as they pertain to human nature and sexuality are based on the assumption that the story of the Creation of Adam and Eve is true, and secondly, that it is the only story of the Creation in the Bible.
In the first four chapters, I try to show that though both these assumptions are incorrect, they have a tremendous influence in our society's attitude to women.
As Merlin Stone says, "In the struggle to achieve equal status for women, in a society still permeated by the values and moralities of Judaic-Christian beliefs (which have penetrated deeply into even the most secular aspects of our contemporary civilisation) we soon realize that a thorough examination of this creation legend alongside its historical origins, provides us with vital information. It allows us to comprehend the role that contemporary religions have played in the initial and continual oppression and subjugation of women - and the reasons for this."(3)
The influence of this myth is reflected in the image and role of women in Hollywood films on Marriage while the Production Code was in force.
The films I have chosen, however, though they are supposed to support traditional and family values, contain an element of revolt, which becomes progressively stronger in each film. 3
The films to which I give special attention are:
1. "A Letter to Three Wives", (1949). 2. "The Marrying Kind", ( 19 52) . 3. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", (1966). 4. "Diary of a Mad Housewife", (1970.
I have included "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'?", an adaption of Edward Albee's play, because it most clearly illustrates the frustration and dissatisfaction in what has been described as a "familiar" American Marriage.
"Diary of a Mad Housewife" constitutes what I consider to be a "bridge" between the role and image of the traditional wife and husband in Hollywood films on Marriage, and the new kind of wife and husband in some of those films after 1970. These films which I have chosen for discussion are:-
"An Unmarried Woman", (1978); "The Last Married Couple in America", (1980); "Kramer v. Kramer" (1979); and "Mr. Mum", ( 19 8 3) ; "Hannah and Her Sisters", (1986).
The dissatisfaction with traditional marriage shown in these films, reflects the dissatisfaction with traditional marriage in American society which was brought to light in America after the publication of Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique in 1963.(4) 4
Dissatisfaction with traditional marriage has also been shown by some women in a survey carried out by the advertising agents, John Clemenger, in Australia in 1985.(5)
Equality for men and women in marriage is not contrary to God's will. The foundation stone for equalitarian marriage also exists in the Bible. 5
INTRODUCTION NOTES
1. Barnard, J., "The Paradox of the Happy Marriage" from Gorwick, V. and Moran B. (eds.) Women in a Sexist Society, studies in Power and P{owerlessness, New York 1972, p. 149.
2. Arndt, B., Private Lives, Australia, 1986, p. 50.
3. Stone, M., The Paradise Papers. The Suppression of Women's Rites, London, 1976, p. 2.
4. Friedan, B., The Feminine Mystique, Great Britain and Australia, 1963.
5. Preston, Y., "The Unhappy Majority, Housewives who want to Work", S.M.H., 11.9.84, p. 1. 1
CHAPTER ONE: THE BIBLICAL STORIES OF THE CREATION
It is not generally known that there are two separate versions of the Creation in the Bible.
In Genesis one, according to the authorised King James version (and the revised standard version) V.26. "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth'.
V.27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
V.28. And God blessed them, and God said to them 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth'."
One explanation for the two versions of the Creation is given by Theologian Bruce Vawter, who explains that the Semitic historical method (which differs from the Anglo-Saxon method) consisted in laying parallel versions of the same story side by side, often retaining the original thoughts and expressions even though they conflicted. He says, that though Genesis is a historical book, not everything in it is history. It reflects the time in which it was written and what the authors intended to teach us. The story of Adam and Eve reflects the position of Women at that time, when under 2 the law of Moses, woman was (in theory at least) the chattel of her father and then of her husband. Gentiles accepted women's inferior social position and sought to justify it on the ground that women were the source of all evil and suffering.Cl)
Another explanation is given by Edmund Leach, who states that all human societies have myths, which express a reality which could not have been observed, in terms of phenomena which can be observed. (In this instance, the "reality" is, the coming into existence of human beings, and the "phenomena" which could be observed, was the coming into existence of pots made out of clay.) The very essence of a myth is its non rationality, because it is to be accepted by faith, not reason. To the believer, myth conveys messages which are the Word of god. It is common in all mythological systems, to find that all important stories occur in several versions.(2)
Anthropologist Liz Wooley, has analysed the story of Adam and Eve, in the same way in which Levi-Strauss analyses our society's thought processes in his works. Strauss found, that our society's thought processes, have properties common to all thought processes in other societies, and these common properties, are revealed in the systems of mythology. Wooley found that the story of Adam and Eve has many features common with all mythological thought.(3)
According to Ida Raming, Genesis 1 ls a later story than Genesis 2. It presents a further stage of development. It directs the anthropological pictures of Genises 2 to their roots, to its doctrinal content. The same thing ls true 3 concerning the origin and equivalence of the two sexes. Raming points out that Jesus says nothing whatever about the origin of women in man, nor about any derived, inferior existence of women. He specifically rejects one-sided right of divorce for the husband, and regards women as equal persons, having a claim on equal rights.(4)
The status of woman in a Western Patriarchy is rationalised by reference to a vast store of Judeo-Christian experience and writing - not simply the stories in the book of Genesis. However, Men of God who oppose the Sex Discrimination Bill and other legislation which seeks equality of treatment for women (and other men and women who oppose the entire rationale of such bills), do so on the basis that God created men and women "naturally" different in role and nature.
James Oram, the newspaper columnist, is of the opinion that the Festival of Light, led by the Rev. Fred Nile, for instance, is using lies to oppose an equal rights convention put forward by the United Nations. The United Nations wishes to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women but, Oram says, Mr. Nile and the Festival of Light do not wish to do so because in their own words, "the traditional roles of men and women are developed from the Bible, particularly the Genesis record with the Creation of Adam and Eve and the institution of marriage, fatherhood, motherhood and the family".(5)
As Molly Haskell says, "The big lie perpetrated on western society is the idea of women's inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behaviour that merely to recognise it 4
is to risk unravelling the entire fabric of civilization".(6)
She says that men too are victimised by the lie. "Secretly they must won~er how they came to be entitled to their sense of superiority if it is to these 'inferior' creatures they owe the debt of their existence."(7)
In Haskell's opinion, the film industry in Hollywood was dedicated, for the most part, to reinforcing that lie and keeping women in their place. As audiences generally were not interested in seeing, and Hollywood was not interested in portraying, a smart and ambitious woman as a popular heroine, as a woman who could compete and possibly win in a man's world would go against the grain of prevailing notions about the female sex. Haskell says that a movie heroine could only act on the same power and career drives as a man if in the end they took second place to the sacred love of a man.
Otherwise she forfeited her right to that love.(8)
Women, in an industry dominated by men, were shown in stereotyped roles of mothers, martyrs, vamps, sex kittens and love goddesses. As men, convinced that women were put on earth for their benefit, ,._ · were uncomfortable with the notion that women have sexual needs and desires of their own, women were portrayed as the positive "virgin" figures or the negative "whore" figures. This split reflected the dualism between body and soul based on the Genesis 2 myth which was reinforced by the Production Code.
Majorie Rosen stresses that the importance of the narrow mindedness of the Moguls of Universal, Fox Film Corporation,e"h., 5 should not be under estimated. They were all Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, or first generation children who subscribed to the Southern European ethic in which woman was either a madonna or whore, "a mother to be revered while she stirred the chicken soup but discarded if she succumbed to an unsanctified libido."(9)
Feminism has challenged this view of women's sexuality and also what is the "proper" place for women. In Molly Haskell's view anyone who feels that the cause of Women's Liberation is just and irreversible, is justified in searching history for clues both to the present and the future. In her words, "What we are in the midst of is less suggestive of a revolution, which knows at least ideally, where it is going, than of an earthquake, an upheaval whose end is nowhere in sight. At stake is nothing less than the hierarchy of Western civilisation which posits God, Man, Woman, and Child in descending order of importance."(10)
This hierarchy exists because the Church adopted the Adam and Eve version of the Creation as the basis of its teachings. No such hierarchy exists in the first version of the Creation where God is both Male and Female and men and women were made in God's image and at the same time.
Why is it that the Genesis One story is completely ignored as the word of God when it is of equal authority?
The Clergy would have no difficulty in recognising the equality of women or in permitting contraception, abortion, divorce, married priests, and the ordination of women 6 priests, if they based their beliefs on Genesis One, instead of on Genesis Two. This they would find difficult to do, as the whole doctrine of the church is built on the foundation stone of the truth of the story of Adam and Eve, which gives rise to the theory of "Original Sin". If the church had adopted the first story of the Creation, where men and women were created at the same time, and in the image of God, and told to "Go forth and multiply", how could the Church believe in a male God who sent his only son into the world to save us from sin? What sin? In addition, the whole economy of the catholic church is based on the second version of the Creation. It has provided it (in the past at least) with a large pool of unpaid workers in the form of nuns and priests. As Catholics were not allowed to read the Bible for themselves, but had to accept the Church's teachings on Faith, it has been easy for the Church to suppress the Genesis One version.
Many people still feel that women's proper place is in the home, because they have been taught that this is so, by those who believe that God has made the choice for women. Men do not have the motivation to understand the power and influence of the story of Adam and Eve, as it seems to operate in their favour. As Eva Figes states:-
"When it comes to the external norms that relate to the position of men and women in society, their relationship to the outside world and to each other, the male half of the population has had little enough motivation to stand aside and analyse the accepted body of opinion at any one time. By 7 questioning it, he has and had nothing to gain and everything to lose; he would lose not only social and economic advantages, but something far more precious, a sense of his own superiority which bolsters his ego both in his public and his private life."(7) 8
CHAPTER ONE NOTES
1. Vawter, B., Path through Genesis, London, 1957.
(Introduction).
2. Leach, E., Genesis as Myth and Other Essays, London, 1969, p. 7.
3. Wooley, E., "Adam & Eve as Myth" Sydney, May 1975 (Unpublished Paper).
4. Raminq, I., The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood: Divine Sex or Sex Discrimination? U.S.A. 1976, p. 107.
5. Oram, J., Daily Mirror, July 19th, 1983.
6. Haskell, M., From Reverence to Rape, New York, 1974,p. 1, The Treatment of Women in Movies. 7. Ibid., p. 2.
8. Ibid., p. 4.
9. Rosen, M., Popcorn Venus, New York, 1973, p. 112.
10. Haskell, M., From Reverence to Rape, New York, 1974,
p. xiii.
11. Fiqes, E., Patriarchal Attitudes, London, 1978, p. 21. 9
CHAPTER TWO: THE CHURCH AND SEXISM
Barbara Thiering, in her book, Created Second? Aspects of Women's Liberation in Australia, states that the Christian Church in Australia, both Catholic and Protestant, is one of the main agencies of reinforcing the low status of Australian women. Christian women are supposed to live vicariously through their husbands and children and are led to believe that this is part of their marriage commitment. Even withiri the Church, Thiering says, women are treated as the servant class of society and denied equality of opportunity.Cl) Theiring believes that fulfillment of a woman's feminity leads to loss of humanity, due to lack of identity and social isolation, and loss of self esteem due to a lack of a sense of personal achievement.(2)
Religious promotion of Creationism, based only on the second version of the Creation, has led to Sexism, Misogyny, Gynophobia and Androcentrism. The Church, by basing its doctrines on the truth of the story of Adam and Eve, has divided Christians from themselves, body from soul, men from women. The doctrine of Original Sin has made sexuality, (symbolised by the eating of the apple), the supreme evil and women the cause of all human suffering.
The Church has given women social power as mothers, but by making Mary a Virgin Mother, the Church has taken away her sexuality and separated all women in "Virgin Marys" and "Eves" - the good and the bad. (The Virgin birth as the central tenet of the catholic faith has given rise to 10 hysterical reactions over the showing of Godard's "Hail Mary" in many countries.)
Why does the Church focus entirely on the second version of the creation? Through ignorance, fear of women, the wish to keep power in the hands of men or economic necessity? Two thousand years ago, the positive elements of belief in this myth may have outweighed the negative elements but now, science has rendered it obsolete.
The Republic of Ireland, where the church is very powerful, is the only country in Europe with a total ban on divorce. Yvonne Preston says, in a newspaper article on this subject, that the catholic Church in Ireland, which can grant dissolutions of marriage, maintains that giving this power to the State would have a destabilising effect on marriage.CJ) One woman (supporting divorce) interviewed on television before the referendum said, "you can't stop death by banning funerals", but the Church does not seem to acknowledge the implications behind this statement, or else chooses to ignore them.
In France, also a catholic country, women could not dispose of their own salaries till 1907 and could not own their own cheque books till 1970. Women were not given the vote till 1944. The law prohibiting abortion was not repealed till 1974 and the last woman to be executed for abortion was in 1945. The sale of contraceptives was not legal till 1967.
Grantly Dick-Read in his book Childbirth Without Fear, states that the translation of the Bible to the effect that woman, 11 because of her sin, was condemned to a multitude of sorrows and pain (especially in bringing forth her children) had a very great influence on Christian communities. When Simpson first used anaesthesia in 1847, he was told that to prevent pain in childbirth was contrary to religion and the express command of the Scrlptures.(4)
Dick-Read ls of the opinion that childbirth is not meant to hurt and that the pain is caused through fear and tension. "Fear, Tension and Pain are three evils opposed to the natural design, which has been introduced in the course of civilisation by the ignorance of those who have been concerned with preparations for and attendance at childblrth."(5) How much of this "ignorance" is based on belief in the story of Adam and Eve?
Even Simon De Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex, has had a great influence on the Women's Movement, believed that women were an "inferior caste". This reflected her upbringing. With a pious Catholic mother and an unbelieving father in her background, she at the same time both accepted the tenets of the Catholic Faith and rebelled against them. In her own life, she avoided the consequences of being a woman in a patriachal society but not marrying and by not having children.
The basis for equality exists in the Bible. one does not have to be an Atheist or a Communist in order to support the principle of equality for men and women. However in some socialist countries including East Germany, where the story of Adam and Eve has been expressly exposed as a myth and as 12 an instrument of social control, women and men have an equal right to an equal education. In Norway, for instance, girls are expected to be able to do anything that boys can do, right from primary school.(6)
Women, in those counries are educated to be whole persons. They are not simply steered towards a career in marriage. 13
CHAPTER TWO NOTES
1. Thiering, B. I Created Second? Aspects of Women's
Liberation in Australia. Australia 1973, p. 19.
2. Ibid., p. 15.
3. Preston, y., "What god Jolneth in Ireland, stays
Joined", Sydney Morning Herald, June 28th, 1986, p. 18.
4. Dick-Read, G., Childbirth Without Fear. The Principles
and Practice of Natural Childbirth, London, 1950, p. 2.
5. Ibid., p. 2.
6. See Appendix 3. 14
CHAPTER THREE:
WHAT IS MARRIAGE?
The Christian view of marriage is enshrined in Australia in S.43(a) of the Family Law Act 1975 which refers to the institution of marriage as "the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others voluntarily entered into for life".
This definition was originally given by Lord Penzance in an English case Hyde v. Hyde more than a hundred years ago. Under Church law at that time and even today, marriage was and is, regarded as a lifetime commitment. As the English Divorce Law had been in operation since 1858, legally this definition was incorrect even at the time it was made.Cl) Certainly as the growing divorce rate shows, it is not an adequate definition of marriage today and as Hutley J.A. observed in a 1982 case Seidler v. Schallhofer, "s.43 of the Family Law Act is propaganda which is contradicted by other provisions in the Act". His Honour, in that case, defines marriage as "an arrangement terminable by either party on one year's separation, really one year's notice, as a separation might be fictitlous".(2)
For many years, it was considered that in order to be a marriage, the relationship had to be between a man and a woman. In recent years however homosexual couples have sought to formalise their relationship with a marriage ceremony, but these marriages are not legally recognised.
Till 1984, in N.S.W., men who took the myth of Adam and Eve 15 to its natural conclusion, shunned women altogether and turned to other men for sex and comfort were liable to be imprisoned for 14 years.
Living together in a de facto marriage is generally considered a modern phenomenon, but as carol Adams points out, living together without a formal marriage ceremony was quite common among poor couples living in cities a century ago. Marriage at that time was a partnership, in which husband and wife had their separate roles; the man was the provider and the woman ran the home and brought up the children. In the 1870's married women in England won the right to work outside the horn and in 1882 a wife could own her own property and could keep her own earnings.(3) The concept of marriage was starting to change, but nearly a century later, the Church's view on marriage has still not changed. In "Lovers and Other Strangers" directed by Cy Howard (1969), (with Gig Young and Clovis Keachman as the parents of the bride) the Catholic attitude to marriage is given by the bridegroom's mother (played by Beatrice Arthur). "A wedding is such a joyous event, the joining of two people together, through thick and thin, in a union of spiritual goodness for ever and ever, that only God can put asunder."
Betty Friedan points out in her new book, "It took, many centuries of social evolution, technological revolution, to disturb 'the changeless fact of Eve'. That immutable, overshadowing definition of woman as breeder of the race, once rooted in biological, historical necessity only became a mystique, a defence against reality as it denied the 16 possibilities and necessities of growth opened by women's new life span in advanced technological soclety".(4)
The "over shadowing definition of woman as breeder of the race", has not changed in the eyes of the Church.
The wedding, celebrating the beginning of a marriage, is viewed in Western society as probably the most important day in a woman's life. Whereas it used to signify the commencement of living together, now many couples live together first and then have a wedding ceremony. Barthes writes " ... the big wedding of the bourgeoisie which originates in a class ritual (the display and consumption of wealth), can bear no relation to the economic status of the lower middle class but through the press, the news and literature, it slowly becomes the very norm as dreamed, though not actually lived, by the petit-bourgeois couple".(5)
In the "Father of the Bride" directed by Vincent Minelli (1950), Joan Bennett as the wife says to her husband (played by Spencer Tracy), "A wedding - a church wedding is what every girls dreams of. A bridal dress, orange blossoms, the music - ls something lovely for her to remember all of her life and something for us to remember too."
In "Lovers and Other Strangers", almost two decades later, the intended bride's father says to his future son-in-law: "maybe if you had a sister, you'd understand about mothers and daughters and weddings. Weddings aren't planned a few months ahead. Weddings are planned from about the time the 17
girl is six. Susan went to her first masquerade party at eight - dressed as a bride."
How many little boys would choose to go to a masquerade party dressed as a bride groom? The mystique of the wedding seems to apply only to fem.ales. Even today the wedding ceremony continues to be a major attraction. Contrary to the films and stories which depict the wedding as the beginning of married bliss forever after, however, the rising divorce rate, is proof that this is not the case. Hollywood promoted a romantic fantasy of marital roles and marital bliss which does not accord with reality.
Linton writes "All societies recognise that there are
occasional violent emotional attachments between persons of
opposite sex, but our present American culture is practically
the only one which has attempted to capitalise on these, and
make them the basis for marriage. The hero of the modern
American movie is always a romantic lover, just as the hero
of the old Arab epic is always an epileptic. A cynic may
suspect that in any ordinary population, the percentage of
individuals with a capacity for romantic love of the
Hollywood type was about as large as that of persons able to
throw genuine epileptic fits."(6)
The Psychologist, Candida Peterson, is of the opinion that
although the American culture's emphasis on romantic love as
the basis for marriage may be misplaced, research has shown,
that time has an equally corrosive effect on carefully
planned marriages and those based on long acquaintance.
Love's cooling cannot be blamed solely upon sexual boredom, 18 or disillusion with media fantasies, even though these factors may play a part. She says, that for the average couple, the process of disenchantment follows a gradual decline from the honeymoon to the tenth or twentieth anniversary. However, where couples share interests and experiences and communicate in an open and honest manner, their marriage becomes more meaningful as time goes on. In order for this to happen, the couple must "outgrow unrealistic romantic attitudes and shed out-moded prejudices and stereotyped sex roles".(7)
The family is an integral part of society, and parenting seems to be a human instinct. Psychiatrist Anthony Stevens says that although different cultures favour different kinds of family, all societies support family ties of one sort or another, where at least one man and at least one woman care for children - whether they be their own or not. "It seems, therefore, that the family is an expression of archetypal functioning; its very universality and persistence indicates that the family is biologically e~tablished as a species specific characteristic and that it is only secondarily modified by cultural or ecological factors as to the indigenous form that it takes."(8)
In his chapter on The Family, Stevens gives examples of two experiments which failed to eliminate the traditional family pattern. In Russia soon after the 1917 Revolution, in spite of the fact that free love was accepted and divorce was made easy, the majority of Russian people stayed married and continued the traditional family life. In Israel, where 19 complete equality and freedom from sex roles was the aim, initially women drove tractors, if they wished, and men stayed home, cooked, and did the laundry, if they wished. Within a generation, there was almost a return to traditional sex roles. This was because, once a woman became pregnant, she could no longer do heavy work for long hours, and once the babies were born, their mothers wanted to be with them. Gradually, the customary family structure was restored.
Does this mean that egalitarian marriage is not possible?
Shelley Phillips is of the opinion that Maternal or Paternal instinct appears to be induced by actually nurturing the infant. Research indicates that it is just as apparent in men as in women when they are as much exposed to infants as mothers are. It is only because in our society, preference is given to the mother-dominated infant rearing, that men are not happy with this role. In the opinion of Shelley Phillips, the best adjustment to the problems of child rearing is probably equal parenting.(9)
It is very rare to see equal parenting on film. It is also rare to see a man doing the cooking on film. What is usually portrayed, is the woman cooking and serving the meals to husband and children sitting at the table (even if she is obviously pregnant), after which meal, everyone leaves the mess for her to clean up. Many men love their babies; many men love to cook; many women love to work outside the home. Traditional sex roles are not genetic as the Church would have people believe. 20
Further evidence that traditional sex-roles are.not genetic is provided by Margaret Mead. In her study of mountain tribes in New Guinea, Mead found that temperamental attitudes such as passive receptivity and aggression were set up as a masculine pattern in one tribe, and a feminine pattern in another, and concluded that there was no justification for regarding such aspects of culture as historically sex linked.(10)
Perhaps the polarisation between men and women, in our society, is also culturally determined?
The question is, in Betty Friedan's words "How do we transcend the polarisation between women and women and between women and men, to achieve the new human wholeness that is the promise of feminism, and get on with solving the concrete, practical, everyday problems of living, working and loving as equal persons?"(ll) The answer is in education. 21
CHAPTER THREE NOTES
1. Nygh, P., Guide to the Family Law Act 1975, p. 17,
Australia 1982.
2. Seidler v. Schallhofer 1982, 2 NSW LR, p. 100.
3. Adams, Ordinary Lives - A Hundred Years Ago, London
1982, p. 97.
4. Freidan, B., The Second State, London 1982, p. 37.
5. Barthes, R., Mythologies, p. 141 Granada 1973.
6. Linton, R., The Study of Man, 1936, Quoted in
Berscheid, E. & Walster, E., Interper_sonal Attraction
USA, 1969, p. 195.
7. Peterson, c., Keeping Love Alive, Australia, 1983, p. 178.
8. Stevens, A., Archetype - A Natural History of the Self,
London 1982, p. 81.
9. Phillips, s., "Mother Daughter Relationships", Sydney
1982, p. 8.
10. Mead, M., Male and Female, U.S.A. 1950, p. 59.
11. Friedan, B., The Second Stage - London, 1982, p. 47. 22
CHAPTER FOUR
EDUCATION AND SEXISM
The Macquarie Dictionary (Australia 1982), defines "SEXISM" as "N. The upholding or propagation of sexist attitudes" and "SEXIST" as "adj. of an attitude which stereotypes a person according to gender or sexual preference rather than judging on individual merits. 2. Of or pertaining to sexual exploitation or discrimination, especially in advertising, language, job opportunities, etc". (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Third edition 1973, does not define "sexism" or "sexist" at all.)
The report to the Schools commission 1975 found that girls were disadvantaged in Australian schools and that education was sexist. ( 1)
In England, research on girls in education both in primary school and in High School shows they are still disadvantaged because of their sex according to the book, Schooling for Womens work: "··· it is clear from almost all the chapters that the reproduction in schooling of gender categories, of class, of sexual division of labour, of the relations of patriarchy, plays a significant part in the maintenance of the subordinate position of women in our society, whether in paid work, public life or the family".(2)
Thus Madeleine MacDonald in the chapter "Socio-Cultural Reproduction and Women's Education" explores the work of Althusser, Bowles and Gintis and finds that the initial premise in their works is, that education plays a central 23 role in reproducing the capitalist mode of production.· Schooling girls for domesticity, may be one of the ways of keeping women as a reserve army of cheap unskilled workers, providing the biological reproduction of the race, and providing nurturance for the men of the working class.
Even in the middle class, despite the overt equality and equal opportunity available to women, the hidden curriculum perpetuates the ideology of women primarily as wives and mothers. Where schools are more career oriented, girls still seem to be guided by male and female teachers into what are considered "feminine" professions. Women in the Media, including Hollywood Films, are shown in "feminine" roles. Cultural beliefs about what is "normal" for males and "normal" for females is of greate relevance to all forms of education, as it structures values, attitudes, expectations and actions.
According to Harris" what we would expect to find in any society (to varying degrees of course) would be a situation where the conflicting interest groups held relative degrees of power and force and where each interest group wanted the society to function in a way that, at least, served its own particular interests.(3)
Psychologist Amram Scheinfeld is of the opinion that the true human being is one who combines both "feminine" and "masculine" virtues. Some women have the initiative and drive to develop their talents and have the need to achieve. Some men are kind and tender and home loving, and caring and gentle with their children. The mere labelling of traits as 24
"masculine" and "feminine" does not give either sex exclusive rights to th~m.(4)
Dr. Geneveive Lloyd has studied philosophers from Plato to De Beauvoir and has found that when they write about differences between mind and body, reason and nature, or reason and passion, they use distinctions between Male and Female. Many of these philosophers affirm the equality of the sexes, but when they talk about rationality and reason, they use the Male/Female metaphor. Traditional thought still reinforces powerful cultural stereotypes.(5)
How different are men and women in nature? John Nicholson says that in this century, where it has been possible to measure intelligence reliably and accurately, it has been found that men and women are very similar in natural ability, and apart from the sexual differences, there is very little difference between men and women.(6) Many women do not develop their natural ability for different reasons. Nicholson says, that one reason that girls do not take Maths and Science at secondary school, for instance, is because of the importance adolescents attach to gender. As girls are anxious to establish their "feminity" they do not take "masculine" subjects. They take "feminine" subjects like languages or biology, where their success will not be felt as a threat by the boys. Nicholson says that in all "masculine" subjects the waste of women must be an important consideration. Girls do better at Science and Maths in single sex schools, but Nicholson suggests that the social drawbacks of single sex schools may outweigh the educational 25 advantages. The better solution may be to have subjects which have a "masculine" or "feminine" image taught in single sex classes by a same-sexed teacher. He says that girls contemplating a career in Science need to see other girls, their friends as well as their teachers, suceeding at it, and they should be allowed to do so without the distraction or disapproval of boys.(7)
One may add, that girls contemplating a car~er in Science, need also to see women in films succeeding, not only in Science, but also as Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers and University Professors. Film is a most important educational tool as it provides role models. For instance, Patricia Palmer has found in her study, that adolescent girls use television to make sense of their lives, even more than they use school. While school deals mainly with information and events, T.V. deals with relationships, values and feelings and the consequences of behaving in certain ways. For many girls, the relationship with T.V. programs and characters is more intense and meaningful than their relationship with their teachers and the world of school. Girls copy not only the gestures of T.V. characters they see as successful, but their hair styles and make up-as well.(8)
It is very significant that the Catholic Education Office has issued a paper in which it states: (a) Creationism should not be taught in Catholic schools; (b) A literal interpretation of the Bible is not acceptable; (c) The concept of evolution of man and other primates is beyond serious dispute. 26
This paper is to be distributed to all teachers in Sydney's
343 Catholic Schools. The CEO is responsible for providing guide-lines on religious instruction for Catholic schools in
Sydney. Not all members of the Church agree with the CEO's decision. The Newman Graduate Association opposes the CEO's statement because "it is unscientific and not in line with
Christian teaching".(9) The manner in which women are portrayed in Hollywood films on Marriage in the future, may well depend on which view prevails. 27
CHAPTER FOUR NOTES l. Report to the Schools Commission "Girls, School and Society", Australia 1975, p. 3.
2. Deem, R., (ed) Schooling for Women's worth, London 1980,
p. 11.
3 • Harris, K., Education and Knowledge, London 1980, p. 64.
4. Scheinfeld, A., Women and Men, London 1947, p. 196.
5. Mayhrhofer, D., "Sex Stereotype Roots Go Deep", S.M.H.,
8 October, 1986, p. 17.
6. Nicholson, J., Men and Women: How Different are They?,
New York 1984.
7. Ibid, p. 94.
8 • Susskind, A., "To Learn about life, girls turn on TV",
S.M.H., 20 October, 1986.
9. Barratt, A., "Church Tells Schools the World was Not
Made in six Days", S.M.H., 1 November, 1986, p. 3. 28
CHAPTER FIVE THE PRODUCTION CODE
Molly Haskell is of the opinion that until the Production Code went into full force, between 1933 and 1934, women were conceived of as having sexual desire, without being considered freaks. Women were allowed to initiate sexual encounters, to pursue men, even to exhibit certain "male" characteristics without being labelled "unfeminine". For example, Lubitsch's film "Design for Living" (1933), would not have passed the censor after 1934, she says.
"the number of sacred cows gaily demolished by the film - Pre-marital virginity, fidelity, monogamy, marriage, and, finally, the one article of even bohemian faith, the exclusive, one-to-one love relationship - is staggering".(l)
Criticism of film on the ground of morality, led to the formation in 1922 of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Organisation (M.P.P.A.), known as the Hays Office. TheHays Office was pernicious. First, it intervened before a film was made. Scripts had to be approved before filming began. Morality was codified and reduced to a set of absurd rules. Couples, even if married on the film, could not be shown in bed together.
In 1934, the Catholic Legion of Decency was founded and when Joseph Breen of that organisation, joined the M.P.P.A., the Production Code with its strong puritanical attitude was strictly enforced. " the Production Code was something else again. In specifying the no-no's of cinema, it covered, 29 with meticulous prurience, every conceivable offence to God, Mom and Man; the words and actions it prohibited are only now making their way back into movies, with a vengeance all the greater for having been so long suppressed".(2)
The Production Code made marriage in film sacrosanct and made women conform to approved standards of family responsibility and motherhood. Marriage was every woman's goal. A man who was sexually interested in a woman first had to marry her. Molly Haskell says "Far from being a straight-jacket imposed from without, the Production Code expressed, and reinforced, the instincts latent in the American psyche at its most romantic, puritanical, immature, energetic, and self deluding; and the fear, implied by the very zeal of its moralism, that without such restraints the precarious edifice of civilization would collapse."(3)
Even though the Production code, in supporting traditional marriage, was trying to protect the woman and the family, Haskell says, the great popularity of the "Woman's Film", proved how much rationalization was needed to reconcile women to marriage, and that research has shown that men more than women had most to gain from marriage American style.(4)
An example of the enforcement of this code is "Mildred Pierce" directed by Michael Curtiz (1945). This film concerns a woman who separates from her first husband, starts a successful restaurant business and has an affair with a rich playboy. The story is told in three flashbacks. The first segment of the film sets up a murder which the narrative explains and solves. The reconstruction of 30
Mildred's life is necessary in order that the detective may get to the truth of the matter and solve the murder. The film's resolution therefore depends on solving this -particular "woman question".
According to Thomson, "The film works in the classic way of the women's picture, asking us to admire and be moved by Mildred's attempt to be independent, only to suffer a viscious daughter, unworthy men, and the cold comfort of money. But beneath this form there lurks the suspicion that her ideal is misguided".(5)
In Hollywood films at this time, the "woman question" was solved by returning the woman to her proper place, otherwise she is punished. In Mildred Pierce, Mildred is punished for her affair, by her younger daughter's death. She is punished for leaving the kitchen and becoming a successful business woman, by her elder daughter's behaviour. In the end, Mildred is restored to her "proper place" by being re-united with her former husband. Her daughter is punished for her passion for her mother's lover. She is arrested for murdering him, and Mildred's attempt to protect her daughter, by taking the blame, fails.
Thomson is of the opinion that "Mildred Pierce" is significant because of this woman's definition of a good life. In hindsight, he says, Mildred Pierce becomes a piece of social criticism more subtle than the Director of Warner Bros. recognised.(6) 31
Traditional wives are not expected to work outside the home.
Only in the films of George Cukor were the fixed sex roles in marriage really challenged in the 1940's and 1950's. In his film "Adams Rib" the wife is a working wife - a lawyer married to a lawyer. In the real world, women in the work force, before the war, were the young single women filling in time until they married. When the men went off to war, their jobs were filled by older, married women who worked in every possible capacity. A poll taken during the war showed that
80% of these women wanted to continue in the work force after the war. However, when the men returned home, women were dismissed from their jobs. Men needed these jobs and also reassurance about their role in society.
Films and other forms of the mass media were used to warn women of the dangers of losing their "feminity" and to emphasise the reward which awaited women within the traditional marriage roles. Behind this attitude was the need to re-instate the men and to maintain male economic supremacy and male superiority over women.
Films of this time, tried by intimidation and persuasion to convince women that their rightful place was in the home and
not in the work-force.
An example of the woman back in the home is the film "Harriet
Craig" - a 1950 remake of Dorothy Arzner's film, "Craig's
Wife" (1936). Joan Crawford as Harriet Craig is the perfect
housewife who puts her home and possessions before people and
treats marriage as a bargain. She runs the house, keeps
herself attractive and sees to it that her husband is 32 comfortable and never bored. Molly Haskell writes that it would be comforting to regard "Craig's Wife" as a protest against the mindlessness of Housewifery, but like Cukor's "The Woman" (1939), of which the same claim has been made, Haskell says "It is not so much a satire as an extension, in high relief, of the ties and intellectual tremors of a familiar American type."(7)
Although, as Haskell points out, in actual fact marriages are more successful and satisfying if the two partners are each engaged in stimulating activities, are self-reliant and both grow during the marriage, "the myth - and perhaps all too often the fact - is that marriage is based on the elevation of one ego at the expense of the other, on the superiority of the male over the female".(8)
This, of course 15 the Christian view of marriage,b~sed on the Genesis Two Version of the Creation, the view of Marriage predominantly reflected in Hollywood films on Marriage before 1970. 33
CHAPTER FIVE NOTES
1. Haskell, M., From Reverence to Rape. The Treatment of Women in the Movies, New York 1975, p. 91.
2. Ibid, p. 101.
3. Ibid., p. 117.
4. Ibid., p. 21.
5. Thomson, D., America in the Dark. The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, New York 1977,
p. 218.
6. Ibid., p. 218.
7. Haskell, M., From Reverence to Rape, New York 1975,
p. 222.
8. Ibid., p. 149. 34
CHAPTER SIX MARRIAGE IN FOUR HOLLYWOOD FILMS UP TO 1970
James Monaco says that every normal human being can perceive and identify a visual image, but that even the simplest visual images are interpreted differently in different cultures. He says that a process of intellecton, not necessarily on a conscious level takes place.Cl)
"If the relationships established in a film are significant, it makes no difference to the spectator how they came, or were brought about, or to what extent their significance was intended. A movie has meaning for the spectator when he is able to interpret its patterns of actions and images. Provided that its relationships are coherently shaped, the film embodies - and can be shown to embody - a consistent meaning which may or may not have been sought, or sincerely felt, by the director."(2)
The films discussed in this Chapter are about traditional marriages in which the wife is expected to be a housewife. Molly Haskell says "The circumscribed world of the housewife corresponds to the state of woman in general confronted by a range of options so limited she might as well inhabit a cell."(3) The convention of these films, is that t~e narrative solves the problems confronted by the characters.
Why is the world of the housewife so circumscribed, and why do women have so few options? Is this, because, to the Catholic Church, (according to Porter and Venning) Anatomy is destiny? "Women's primary earthly functions are maternity, 35
nurture and sacrifice. In marriage, which if valid is indissoluble, the husband prevails unless the wife's obedience would cause her to sin. Woman is to man as the
Church is to God, and should serve him accordingly. In practical and canon law terms, violation of the rule of marital infidelity and other forms of sexual misbehaviour are more serious when committed by women. Artificial contraception and abortion are forbidden. These prohibitions are recognised to have greater practical effect on women than on men."(4)
The Roman Catholic Church, in which men who do not play the game, make the rules, is still punishing women and enforcing values which are based on a myth. Not only feminists but women within the Church are now questioning these values.
The Church's standard of morality is evident in the way marriage is shown in the films described in this chapter.
The films are looked at from a feminist perspective, which according to Kuhn, "poses the kinds of questions asked of a textual analysis. These may include: what functions does a woman character perform within the films narrative? How are women presented visually? Are certain fixed images of women being appealed to and if so how are they constructed through the film's image and/or narrative? How do women not function, how are they not represented in the film?"(5)
What is women's image and role in these films?
1. First of all, all the wives are glamorous and attractive. Rosemary Coward says that the cultural 36 construction of the ideal woman on the screen, as young, attractive, slim, fashionable and glamorous, specifically addresses male audiences. She says that attraction to images of women's bodies presented as ideal types, given men reassurance. This has nothing to do with men's natural appreciation of objective beauty but is intended to make men comfortable, by making them feel secure and powerful. The "aesthetic" appreciation of women, she says, disguises a preference for keeping women separate and at a distance, so men can feel secure with women, as other forms of contact could be too unsettling. This constitutes a form of voyeurism. Because the female body is the main object of attention, it is on women's looks that the prevailing sexual definitions are placed. The emphasis on women's looks is a crucial way of keeping women the subordinate sex by exercising control over women's sexuality - a characteristic of male-dominated societies.(6)
2. Secondly, they are all stereo-types. For example, a) The Good Woman - the Busy Housewife and Mother, and The Temptress - (in "A Letter to Three Wives") b) The Dumb Blonde - (in "The Marrying Kind") and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". c) The Shrew - ( in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") d) The Neurotic - (in "Diary of a Mad Housewife") 37
The main concern of these women is getting and keeping their husbands, their appearance, their clothes, cooking, parties, entertaining and children.
How women are not represented in these films are as strong, independent, assertive women, with an identity of their own. The two women who do have a strong identity, Addie Ross and Judge Carrol, do not exist in their own right. The story is not about them. They exist in order to facilitate the telling of the story of other people's marriages.
The central women characters in these films are all home based. When circumstances force Florence back into the work force, her marriage is broken. Florence and Martha, who do not conform to the "natural" role of wife and mother, upset the equilibrium. In the resolution of the film, these women are returned to their normative role, that is, subordinate to their husbands.
According to Barthes, to understand a narrative is not merely to follow the unfolding of the story. It is also to recognise its construction in "storeys", to "project the horizontal concatenations of the narrative 'thread' on to an implicitly vertical axis". He analyses narratives into three levels, "functions", "actions" and "narration", which are bound together according to a mode of progressive integration.(7)
All narratives appeal to the imagination and imagining can supercede reality. According to Thomson, imagining can become the elementary mode of human cognition, not feeling, 38 experiencing, or knowing. Knowledge, experience and emotion are then all reaches of the imagination. He says that all appeals to the imagination lay ground for recession in identity, "but moving imagery carries the process to a special intensity because of its totality of audience the bewildering imitation of life it provides."(8)
Even in the structural analysis of narratives, which does not define characters in terms of their psychological beings (what they are) but in terms of what they do as participants, in the final analysis, - how the woman structure moves the narrative, from the initial equilibrium to disruption and resolution, depends to a large extent on how society views women. ( 9)
Cukor, for instance, has a different view of women from that of other directors of his time. Haskell says that in the difference between the couple in The Marrying Kind and Adam's
Rib, Cukor & company acknowledges the most fundamental economic, spiritual and intellectual inequality between the educated elite and the less privileqed, lower middle-class America "but they never deprived then of their dignity, or deny them joys and sorrows and a capacity to feel as great as the poets of the earth."(10)
"Film, like any other art of mass appeal, is both a lamp and a mirror. Not only does it light the way to new fashions and mores, but it reflects (sometimes in a reverse image) what society at a given moment is."(11)
"A Letter to Three Wives" 39
Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz (1949) features three married couples played by Jeanne Crain and Jeffrey Lynn, Ann Sothern and Kirk Douglas, Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas. The story in the film is told in a series of flashbacks revealing the state of each marriage as each wife wonders if it is her husband who has run of with Addle ross (Celeste Holm), the all-knowing narrator of the film who never appears in it.
Addie Ross is the character who keeps the narrative in motion by linking the three stories together and giving the film meaning and coherence. The film opens with her sultry voice describing the town in which they live. She describes two of her "dearest friends" - Brad and Deborah Bishop. Her tone is sarcastic. The audience is taken inside the Bishop's house.
Brad Bishop tells his wife he may be away_overnight. He shows no concern for her feelings about having to go to the dance alone, that night. He is concerned about how she is going to look - what she is going to wear. He is the busy executive going away on a conference, and she is the wife, who is wearing a dress he picked out for her from "Vogue" - the same dress, she points out angrily, which "Just so happens to be the same dress Addie Ross wore to the concert two weeks ago". Deborah drives up the street to pick up
Rita, and the audience learn that the narrator is "Addie
Ross". Addie is the "Eve", the Temptress, the woman with class and taste, whom the husbands admire and whom the wives distrust and resent; who, in her letter to the three wives
(delivered to them at the Ferry where the third wife Laura 40
Mae is waiting), informs them that she has run off with one of their husbands "as sort of momento" of their friendship.
Rita and George are the second married couple. Rita works from home (by writing-radio scripts), because she needs to supplement her husband's teacher's low salary.
The third couple are Laura Mae and Porter. Laura Mae is much younger than Porter. She works in his Department Store and he asks her out. When she makes it quite clear she is only interested in marriage and he finds he cannot get her any other way - he pays the price.
Laura Mae plays the "Eve" role. She deliberately ladders her stocking to expose her leg to further tempt Porter. She carefully plans the getting of her man - a rich husband.
From the Feminist Perspective, the second couple is the most interesting. It is the marriage of George and Rita which provides the element of rebellion. Rita makes it clear, that even if they did not need the money, she is not prepared to go back to "washing, scrubbing and ironing and a life of taste and discrimination".
At the Country club, Porter comments on the fact that Rita has bought her husband George, his tuxedo "Funny thing for a wife to give her husband - a tuxedo".
George replies, "An even funnier thing for a husband to give his wife". Porter does not think a woman ought to buy clothes for a man, as it is "contrary to nature". He adds
"It's a male's world. Yeah. See something you want, go 41
after it and get it. That's nature. That's why we're made strong and women weak. Strong conquer, provide for the weak. That's what a man's for. Teach our kids more of that, there'd be more men." The story of his marriage, later revealed in flashback, supports his ideology. These three couples support the idea of American equality and opportunity for upward mobility, but the women are all confined to the home, while the men are the providers, and the heads of the household, and are superior in status and attitude.
"The Marrying Kind" directed by George Cukor (1952) stars
Aldo Ray and Judy Holliday as husband and wife.
The opening mis-en-scene is the front of the Domestic
Relations Court where couples are shown fighting and arguing to the musical background of the Wedding March.
The camera zooms in to the notice board of the "New York
Court of Domestic Relations. Judge Anna B. Carrol presiding" and focuses on the name "Keefer v. Keefer". Inside the Court room Judge Carroll asks Florence and Chet to remain after the Court has adjourned.
The story of the marriage is told in a series of flashbacks in answer to her questions.
From the Feminist point of view, the most interesting story is when the family goes to the "Decoration Day" picnic.
Their two children are excited. After lunch, there son Joey runs off. Husband and wife lie on their backs and Florence tells Chet her idea about making money from selling flavoured postage stamps. The camera moves into a close-up of her 42 singing "How I love the kisses of Dolores" while she strums on the ukelele. She seems relaxed and happy. People start running in the background - something is wrong - Chet rushes into the water and carries out the limp Joey in his arms. He puts him on the ground and both he and Florence call out his name. They try to revive him but it is too late.
The death of their son shatters them both and further separates them rather than draws them together. In the next segment, Chet is knocked over by a truck. Florence visits him constantly while he is in hospital and later when he is in the convalescent hospital, sometimes at great personal inconvenience. The camera and sound combine to show the audience what Flo is going through at this time. Flo and her little girl go up the escalators - people are everywhere. An announcement comes over the loud speaker - they get on the bus. Chet is shown waiting at the other end. Flo and the child are again shown almost asleep on the bus. Chet is shown anxiously waiting. The bus has broken down. By the time it gets to its destination, Flo has time only to give Chet a bundle of magazines and then forces the protesting child to get on the other bus to go back home.
When Flo finally tells Chet that she wants to get a job, he says, "I don't want my wife supporting herself. What am I - some peculiar?" Florence has wanted to work for some time. It is Chet's firm belief that he must be the "man" that r finally breaks the marriage apart, and leads them into the Divorce Court before Judge Carroll. The Character of Judge Carroll (played by Madge Ke~nedy) is warm, caring, and 43
intelligent, but even the judge has to rush home because her husband does not like her "working late, too much"
This film affirms the values of family and home life with the husband the head of the family and his wife his subordinate. The film creates this ideological stance in two ways. As it was made in the fifties, the consciously or unconsciously intended message conveyed to women at the time was one of intimidation. "Stay at home where you belong or be punished by the Jeath of your child and the breakup of your marriage."
"The Marrying Kind" makes the point that for some couples, like Emily and Pat (Chet's sister and brother-in-law) the conventional marriage is satisfying and rewarding (as Emily has never worked as she didn't believe in it). For other couples like Chet and Florence, however, it is without sufficient reward to either party. By comparing the marriage of Chet and Florence with that of Pat and Emily, the film puts the blame for the failed marriage on the woman, Florence. The fact that it is not a question of one type of marriage being right and the other wrong, but a question of both parties wanting and needing the same things out of marriage, is not brought out sufficiently. Even though Chet and Florence decide to try again, this is not a realistic happy ending in the light of the history of the marriage, but conforms to the Christian view of marriage.
The element of revolt against traditional sex-roles is shown in the character of Judge Carroll (e.ven though she is used in a sexist manner). It is also shown in the character of Florence (even though she is punished for it) and more 44
subtly, in the fact that the marriage of Pat and Emily, and of Flo's sister, are shown as happy and stable, but childless, while one of the main reasons for the breakdown of Flo and Chet's marriage, is. the added expense and stress caused by the birth of tht•r two children.
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"
Directed by Mike Nicholls (1966) features Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor as husband and wife, Goerge and Martha.
In the opening scene of the film the moon is over the university campus. A couple is walking accross the university grounds. There is loud laughter. Autumn leaves are falling. The music is eerie. The pair go into their house.
The film is of Edward Albee's play of the same name, and is a penetrating look at the American husband and wife relationship.
The action in the play all takes place on the one night and in the early hours of the morning. The film is in black and white. The lighting is subdued. Martha goes to the refrigerator and takes out a chicken drum-stick which she holds in both hands and tears to pieces with her teeth, in the same way that she tears George to pieces with her mouth throughout the film. There are dirty dishes on the table.
Upstairs the double bed is unmade and clothes are everywhere.
George lights a cigarette and Martha takes it. 45
When George refuses to kiss her and she asks why, he says,
"Well dear, if I kissed you, I'd get all excited. I'd get beside myself and then I'd have to take you by force - right here on the living room rug - and our guests would walk in and what would your father say about that?"
Even though Martha does not take him seriously, she looks hurt and sad in the close-up. one may well ask, as Martha is trying to initiate sexual contact, why this answer to her question "why won't you kiss me George? is at all relevant. Perhaps George is just hostile to Martha's father. Perhaps he is merely asserting his male superiority, as he feels threatened by Martha's advances. Perhaps in reality, he is impotent.
In a critical commentary on Edward Albee's play, Michael stugrin states that the major theme of "Who's Afraid of
Virgina Woolf" is "the failure of man to face reality and to deal with it without being overwhelmed and destroyed.
Instead, man resorts to illusion in order to avoid the pain and invariable disappointment inherent in facing reality."
George and Martha's central illusion is their imaginary child. (12)
Although Martha and George are equally vitriolic and abusive, and appear to hate each other this is an illusion. Martha says to Nick, "You know, there's only been one man in my whole life who made me happy, George, my husband." She tells
Nick that George "made the hideous, the hurting, the
insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it; 46
George and Martha - sad, sad, sad." This shows Martha's lack of self-esteem and feeling of self-worth and lack of respect for herself.
When George says, "Stop it Martha" and there ls a crash, Martha says "I hope that was an empty bottle George. You can't afford to waste good liquor, not on your salary, not on an Associate Professor's salary. So here I am, stuck with this flop, this bog in the History Department, who's married to the President's daughter, who is expected to be something - not just a nobody, a bookworm who doesn't have the stuff to make anybody proud of him."
Again, the traditional idea of marriage. Martha expects to gain her identity from being married to a 'somebody' not from doing something for herself. She also voices the old feudal idea, that being some-one's daughter is important for a woman, only in her case, she cannot carry on the line.
As far as the other couple is concerned, Honey's image is that of a fairly "dumb blonde" who traps Nick into marrying her because they think she is pregnant and who, it is revealed later, is really terrified of having children.
Nick is a much younger man than George. He is enthusiastic about making good at the University. Nick says he will "take over a few courses from the older men - borrow a few pertinent wives". George replies, "Now that's it. I mean you can shove aside all the older men you can find, but till you start ploughing pertinent wives, you're not really working. That's the way to power - plough 'em all. The way 47
to a man's heart, the wide inviting avenue to his job, is through his wife and don't you forget it". Nick replies, "And I bet your wife has the widest most inviting avenue on the whole damn campus". And, he adds, after a close-up of
George's face, "I mean, her father being President and all".
This conversation reveals a hostile and sexist attitude to women.
In the case of Nick's marriage, his wife is intellectually inferior, but in the case of George and Martha, though Martha is intellectually George's equal, she has never developed her own talents and potentialities. If the values projected by this film had been Genesis One values, Martha could have taken over the History Department herself, instead of feeling frustrated with George's inability to do so.
This film upholds the ideal of male superiority. The element of rebellion is found not only in Martha who is "unfeminine" and a bad house-keeper but in the character of George, who is the victim - the failed male, till he takes assertive action and destroys the imaginery child and his wife's dominance.
When George tells Martha that their son is dead, she is completely crushed. "Oh my God, I think I understand this" says Nick. Close-ups of all the ~haracters show that they are all very upset. Suddenly the room is light, the camera moves back. Martha is quietly sobbing on the couch and the other three are standing like statues. George says, "It's dawn. The party's over." After Nick and Honey have left,
George places his hand on Martha's shoulder. He strokes her hair. Martha is quiet and subdued. This is the only time 48
George shows any warmth or tenderness for Martha in the whole film.
"Did you have to?"
"Yes. It was time".
When George says quietly, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
Martha says,
"I am George, I am". The camera moves from a close-up of her face to his hand on her shoulder, and the words, "The End".
The music from the opening scene is repeated, thus given a feeling of completion.
The men/women relations in this film are cruel, hostile, exploitive and manipulative - a vicious power game between men and women which the men win in the end, yet "George and Martha have been called Mr and Mrs America not because of their social status which is culturally elitist but because their marriage is so very familiar".(13)
"Diary of a Mad Housewife"
Directed by Frank Perry (1970), stars Richard Benjamin and Carrie Snodgrass as the husband and wife, Jonathan and Teena Balser. Though this film is in warm vibrant colour, it is a very cold unemotional film as there is no background music whatsoever (except for some Disco Dance Band Music in the first party scene). 49
From the opening scene of the film, when the camera tavels ove Teena's blanket while he is "singing", JonathQ.Jl assumes a superior attitude. He is up, while Teena is still in bed.
He has been up for fifteen minutes and says to his wife, "For
God's sake Teen, snap to it". He criticises the way she looks and acts. "I wish I could understnd what's the matter with you these days. I'm really worried about you". His real concern, however, seems to be that she present a better image to the world because she is Mrs. Jonathan Balser, his wife, and his wife is a reflection of him, so he tells her. He thinks she has a "rattan colour" and through she used to have a terrific figure, she ls now too thin. "You've gotten so bloody skinny - and that God-awful hair of yours, just hanging down - no style".
He cannot understand why she acts exhausted, even the minute she gets up in the morning. He also disapproves of her smoking and points out all the harm she ls doing to herself.
He criticises her housekeeping. She has not unpacked "those bloody trunks yet" and shouts to her, "Eh Teen, why don't you get cracking on a thorough fully house-cleaning campaign around here" so the place will lood "as if civilised people are in residence".
During the latter part of this monologue, he and their two girls are sitting at the breakfast table, while Teena gets their breakfast. He says to his daughters, "This is the softest four-minute egg I ever saw - if it is a four-minute egg •.• Your mother made Phil Beta Kappa at Smith, but I don't think she can make a four-minute egg." While going 50 down in the lift, he tells his wife and children that he is
going away on business. He asks Teena to pack his bag for him and tells her what to pack.
He kisses the children goodbye and gets into a cab. The children join other children and Teena goes back home to the apartment and domestic world. The atmosphere is created in clear images; Teena with the washing; the washing machine working; the door bell ringing; the dog barking. The vacuum cleaner is on and a man walks by with a bucket and ladder. The telephone rings; the 'maid arrives. The plumbers are making a mess and in the midst of all the chaos, the credits appear on the screen.
Even though the husband and wife are equal, in the sense that they have both been to University, they are now confined to different worlds. In the three following scenes, when Jonathan returns unexpectedly as his plane almost crashes; at the restaurant, when they are having dinner, and later in the bedroom, it is clear that neither party is happy.
In the first of these scenes, Teena is just having a break and opening a paper bag, when Jonathan arrives. He hates Chinese food. Teena offers to get him a hamburger, but he wants to go out for dinner. At the restaurant, he tells her he wants to have a big party and when he says "Think you can have the silver polished by Christmas time Teen?" Teena lowers her head and cries.
In the bedroom scene, he snuggles up to Teena in bed and says, "Hey Teenie, what about a little ol' roll in the hay?" 51
"Jonathan - not tonight, I'm too tired".
"Christ, is there anything you can do anymore?
He turns off the light and says, "Don't worry, I'm not going to demand my rights as a husband and as a provider around here. one thing I am going to demand. We're invited to Joan
Nimno's studio tomorrow night. I want you to pull yourself together and do something about that God-awful hair of yours."
No doubt the character of Jonathan is a caricature, but it clearly shows up the division between husband and wife in the traditional marriage roles and the lack of real communication between them.
At the party, Teena meets the author, George Prager, for the first time. The change in sexual standards, and its portrayal in films after the relaxation of the Production
Code, is very evident in this film.
Sex in this film is not an expression of love nor is sex used for the procreation of children. The explicit sexual scenes seem cold and unemotional, as they take place in silence.
The audience is given a clear view of the undressing of Tina, but there is no view of the undressing of George. The image of Teena left naked on the floor with her arm across her breasts and her leg twisted to cover her genital area, is quite distorted.
The role of housewife and mother is shown as demeaning.
Teena is everyone's "doormat" and servant. 52
However, her affair with George makes her more confident and assertive, not only with Jonathan but with other people. At the party (which is a terrible failure), Teena says to a woman who refers to Othello and warns her to keep her eye on her husband "Why Charlotte, I didn't know you had studied the classics. I thought you got into movies because you were Marty Gordon's favourite hooker!"
This is a dramatic contrast to the opening scenes of the film when Teena literally does not say a word except to apologise for not making the toast to Jonathan's satisfaction.
The affair is over when Teena finds out there has been another woman with Prager. They have a violent arg~ment and he throws her out of the flat.
In the early hours of the morning, Teena finds Jonathan in the kitchen. On being questioned as to what is wrong, he says he is "cleaned out and in debt". He is in trouble at the office and may lose his job. Finally he tells her he's been having an affair. He says to Tina, "Do you want a divorce or do you think we could pick up the pieces and work out a better marriage than we ever had'?"
The final scene in the film shows Teena talking to a group. "So that's it. That's where it's at." Everyone in the group starts shouting at her (while looking straight at the camera). "That's pretty dirty. Your poor old man levels with you and you don't open your mouth about your boyfriend. You leave the poor slob dragging his tail in guilt and you're just as guilty as he is" shouts one man. 53
"What obligations did she have to make that silly bast.1rd feel better?" shouts one of the women. "She has a husband and a lover and an eight room apartment on the Park. Why does she need help?" shouts another.
Another man says, "Your husband works hard to support you in return for which he wants the house clean, the buttons sewn on and a modest amount of sexual intercourse. I mean, what's your problem?
"You are nothing but a spoiled middle class bitch - exactly like my ex-wife so I know where of I speak". As the credits come on again, everyone is still shouting.
This film ls an ideological breakthrough. In it, the wife is allowed to show dissatisfaction and to rebel against her traditional role without being punished for it. The film is open-ended. Will Teena embark on her own journey of liberation, or will Jonathan and Teena be able to pick up the pieces and have a better marriage than they had before?
From the feminist perspective, this is a particularly interesting film. The submissive little housewife learns to assert herself. She rebels against her husband by having an affair. For this, not only is she not punished but she grows in confidence and begins to speak her mind. In the end, her husband comes to confide in her and treats her as an equal, but it is Teena who need psychiatric help. It is Teena who ends up in group therapy (which has the effect of making the rest of the film a flashback). There is hope, however, that she will be able to overcome her immediate problems and 54 ultimately lead a more satisfying and fulfilling life, with or without her husband Jonathan. This is far removed from the traditional "happy endings" of earlier Hollywood films on marriage, which reflect the Christian view of a committment ,n to each other for "better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health" till death do them part.
These films are mainly about women, but they are not of the women's genre. They are addressed to both men and women but women would identify more with this last film than men would.
This film is a land mark film. It marks the transition from A. the traditional image of woman to the new image of women brought into consciousness by the Women's Movement. Expected page number is not in the original print cop) 56
11. Huss, R. & Silverstein, N., The Film Experience. Elements of Motion Picture Art, N.Y. 1968, p. 128.
12. Stuqrin, M., Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and other works. A Critical Commentary, New York
1972, p.o/0.
13. Ibid, p.f/ • 57
CHAPTER SEVEN
FEMINISM AND FILM
Feminism rejects the idea that woman is by nature inferior to man. By implication therefore, feminism rejects the Genesis Two Version of the Creation, which sets down the traditional roles for men and women, with the woman the natural inferior of man.
Charvet states, "The basic feminist idea, then, as I understand it, is that in respect of their fundamental worth there is no differencew between men and women. At this level, there are no male beings and female beings, but only human beings or persons. The nature and value of persons is independent of gender." From the basic idea that men and
women are of egual worth is derived the idea that men and
women should also have egual rights - that is, the right to a position in society determined in accordance with their own talents and abilities, not determined according to their gender.Cl)
The name of Juliet Mitchell, a feminist theoretician and historian is linked to the rise of the Women's Movement in England in the early 1970's. In her book PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM, she attempts to bring Feminist understanding to Freud's writings. However, as Shelley Phillips explains, "since psychology and psychiatry are status guo preserving subjects and understandably in a patriarchal society have been oriented towa~d studying male development and the male condition; their theories, their concepts and their research have tended to regard the male perspective as the universal 58 reality and male norms as 'normal adjustment' by which women can be assessed."(2)
In her book PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM, Juliet Mitchell attempts to show that Feminists have misinterpreted Freud. According to her, the Oedipus Complex is universal, even though Freud's theory on totem and taboo (on which is based) is a myth.
In discussing this book of Mitchell's, Richard Wollheim expresses the view that initially it seemed as if feminism had something to learn from psychoanalysis, in order to gain a better understanding of the essential differences and similarities of men and women, "But to anticipate all that much from this is to assume - as it is natural to do - that the roots of sexual discrimination lie in the relations between the sexes. but perhaps they really lie, and perhaps this is what this fragment of Freud's intellectual biography may suggest to us - in the relations between the parts of an individual's sexuality. The suggestion here is that what women have suffered from over the centuries is man's inability to tolerate the feminine side of his nature. If this is so, the intellectual task that confronts feminism is to try to trace the cultural and institutional devices which have facilit~ted the projection of this intolerance onto social forms."(3) Could one such cultural device be the story of Adam and Eve?
According to Davis, that version of the Creation reverses the original version, that Adam was born from the Great Earth Goddess. "The whole intention of the distortion manifested 59
in the Hebrew tale of Adam and Eve is twofold: first, to deny the tradition of a female creator and second, to deny the original supremacy of the female sex. It is significant that only the Jews strive to deny the feminine supremacy, the belief in a feminine creator, persisted throughout the world."(4)
Chasseguet-Smirgel is of the opinion that the woman as depicted in Freudian theory is exactly the opposite of the primal maternal image as it is revealed in clinical material of both sexes. The human being's dependence on the mother causes the formation of an omnipotent maternal image which marks the child's psyche forever.(5)
The sexual division of labour, and women's responsibility for child care, are linked to, and generate, male dominance, according to Nancy Chodorow. She says, that if children were dependent from the outset, on both their mother and father, and identified with both parents, masculinity would not become tied to a denial of dependance and a devaluation of
women. ( 6)
The dominant idea in the Contemporary Women's Movement according to Mitchell is that both sexes should share both spheres.(7) If this became socially acceptable, this would ensure that men and women would achieve equality in practice as well as in theory, in the future.
Claire Johnston states, " ...• the fact that there is a far greater differentiation of men's roles than of women's roles in the history of cinema, relates to sexist ideology itself, 60 and the basic opposition which places man inside history, and women as ahistoric and eternal."(!)
She says that myth, in the form of speech or discourse, has been the main way in which women have been used in the cinema. Through the use of myth, sexism is transformed and made invisible and natural. "Within a sexist ideology and a male-dominated cinema, woman is presented as what she represents for man." Johnston is of the opinion that in spite of the enormous emphasis placed on woman as spectacle in films, woman as woman has been repressed.(2) She states that film is an ideological product, and the very tools and techniques of cinema themselves, are an expression of the prevailing ideology. " it is not enough to discuss the oppression of women within the text of the film: the language of cinema/ the depiction of reality must also be interrogated so that a break between ideology and text is effected."(3)
According to Kuhn, one of the major theoretical contributions of the Women's Movement, has been its insistence on the significance of cultural factors in the way in which women are presented, and the ideological character of such presentations. She suggests that the cultural construction of the ideal female as young, shapely, well-dressed, glamorous and fashionable may in itself be considered oppressive, as it is an image which is sought after but unattainable for many women. Such images also objectify women, in that they lend social support to the evaluation of women, only in tems of the visible criteria of beauty and 61 attractiveness. In her opinion, the depiction of women as objects of male sexual violence in pornography, is a logical outcome of this objectivation of women.(4)
Feminist criticism of films from various standpoints, emphasises the concepts of image and role. Kuhn says that such analysis is important in creating an awareness of the socially constructed nature of representations of women in films, and also in offering an impetus towards creating alternative images. She acknowledges that the weakness in this approach is, that it focuses on the surface features of story and character "without considering the operation either of elements underlying the surface features of film narratives, or, perhaps more importantly, on how 'specifically cinematic' - formal characteristics peculiar to cinema composition and so on - operates in films either alone or in conjunction with stories or images and characters."(5) However, she states, the role/image approach had and still has, a strong influence in feminist film criticism.
Laura Mulvey's analysis of voyeurism in narrative cinema suggests that such a cinema addresses itself to a male audience. She says that women, as the object of looking, evokes in the male audience not only pleasure but fear, because the body of a woman signifies the threat of castration, and to overcome this anxiety woman is treated as a fetish.(6) (Castration anxiety is based on Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex, doubt on the universality of which has been cast in a book by J. N. Isbister).(6a)) 62
In Kuhn's opinion, "scopophilia might take different forms· were the meaning of the mother's lack of a penis - or indeed, for that matter, her possession of a vagina - not in fact sexual difference." She argues that a cinema which evokes pleasures of looking outside the masculine structures of voyeurism, might set up a "feminine" approach to cinematic signification.(?)
Since the middle of the 1970's, there have been a number of films which feature the process of a woman's self-discovery and growing independence. Annette Kuhn says that the existence of this "new women's cinema" might be explained in terms of direct causation, in that it simply reflects the growth and influence of the women's movement, but such an explanation does not take into account the simultaneous existence of films portraying violence towards women. The "new women's film" addresses itself particularly to women with some degree of feminist consciousness, while other film genres are directed at different social audiences. In these new women's films, the female spectator is able to identify with the central character, who ls not only a woman, but also a winner. As feminism is controversial, however, "it would be problematic for a cinematic institution whose products are directed at a politically heteogeneous audience overtly to take up positions which might alienate certain sections of that audience. Films whose address sustains a degree of polysemy - which open up rather than restrict potential readings, in other words - may appeal to a relatively broadly-based audience."(8) This openness permits the audience to make up its own ending according to its own 63 stance and values. A primary requirement of the new women's film is that the central character be female and be sympathetically portrayed. An example of the new women's film is "An Unmarried Woman" which is discussed in the next chapter. 64
CHAPTER SEVEN NOTES
1. Charvet, J., Feminism, London 1982, p. 1.
2. Phillips, s. Dr., "Mother & Daughter Relationships", Unit for Child Studies, Selected Papers No. 15, School
of Education, University of N.S.W., 1982, p. 1.
3. Wollheim, R., "Psychoanalysis and Feminism" New Left
Review No. 93, London 1975, p. 61.
4. Davis, E. E., The First Sex Baltimore, 1971, p. 144.
5. Chasseguet-Smirgel, "Freud and Female Sexuality"
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1976, p. 275.
6. Chodorow, N., The Reproduction of Mothering, california
1978, p. 197.
7. Ml tchell. J., "Coming Out Show" ABC Radio 2FC, 30 October, 1982.
8. Johnston, c., "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema" from Nichols, B. (Ed.) Movies and Methods, California 1976, p. 209 .
9. Ibid., p. 211.
10. Ibid., p. 215.
11. Kuhn, A., Women's Pictures - Feminism and Cinema, London 1982, p. 6.
12. Ibid., p. 7.
13. Mulvey, L., "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", 65
Screen Vol. 16 No. 3, p. 6.
14. Kuhn, A., Women's Pictures - Feminism and Cinema,
London 1982, p. 63.
15. Ibid., p. 139. 66
CHAPTER EIGHT
FILMS AFTER 1970
"An unmarried Woman" directed by Paul Maqursky (1978) stars
Jill Claybourgh, Michael Murphy and Alan Bates. This film is about a woman who has been happily married for seventeen years whose husband suddenly leaves her for another woman.
Feeling depressed, frustrated and lonely she goes to a psychiatrist, a woman, who tells her that if she were in her situation she would get back into the stream of life. "Get back in there. Don't be scared of going out with guys.
Let's open the door and walk out and get in the stream of life."
"Men, huh?"
"Yeah, men. I'd risk it with some new men. They're people you know. I think you could enjoy them. Take a chance."
"Yeah, I guess I should."
The husband seems to be caught up in something he doesn't understand. When things do not work out with his new lady love, he wants to come back to his wife Erica, but she will not have him.
Erica takes her psychiatrist's advice. She experiments sexually with Saul, to find out how it feels to sleep with a man you don't love. She finds that although the physical sex is very good, it feels "sort of empty"~ 67
She turns to her women friends for comfort and support. one of these friends tells the group that she is having a very satisfying affair with a man young enough to be her son.
This film seems to be trying to take the guilt out of sex.
Erica is told by her psychiatrist that it is O.K. to admit her feelings, but that there is no need to feel guilty because "guilt is a man-made emotion". "Don't feel guilty about feeling guilty either, and don't feel ashamed of your
feelings. They are your feelings. They have no I.Q. They have no morality. They are your feelings, just feel them."
Erica has a good relationship with her teenage daughter and takes Saul home to meet her. Saul wants Erica to go away with him but she refuses to do so.
She tells him later, she would like to travel, maybe even go
back to school. She says she does not want to depend on her
ex-husband and she needs a challenge in her work. At the end
of the film, Saul lowers his painting, a gift to Erica, into the street with ropes, and leaves it with her when he drives
off in his car. It is a very large painting and she
struggles to the footpath with it. The audience is left with
the feeling, that difficult though life may be for her on her
own, somehow she will manage. This film appears to challenge the traditional marriage, but at the same time asks whether
the wife would not have been better off forgiving her
husband. This option remains open at the end of the film.
Mike Nichol's "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) is described by Molly
Haskell as "the quint-essential 'Now' film in its distortion 68
(by simultaneously magnifying and degrading it) of the sex principle (male erection-and-single-orgasm sex) as the only bond between men and women, and the wedge that inevitably drives them apart".(l)
Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Arthur Garfunkel) are at a dance in the opening scenes of the film. Susan (Candice Bergen) walks in and Jonathan says to Sandy, his friend, "You like that? I give her to you". This remains his attitude to women throughout the film. "Her tits are too small, but her legs are great." Both boys date Susan. When she lets Sandy "feel her up" and he tells his friend Jonathan, he wants some of the action too. When Susan has intercourse with Sandy (even though she doesn't feel sexually attracted to him), Jonathan says to her "Boy, you're really something." She replies "I don't feel like something, I feel like nothing." sandy becomes a doctor and marries Susan. Jonathan becomes a lawyer and says he would get married if he could find the right girl. "Women today are better hung than the men - not as easy getting laid as it used to be." Probably because of this, he lives with Bobby (played by Ann-Margret) who then gives up work. The relationship between Jonathan and Bobby is one of master and servant, frustration, manipulation and hostility. Whenshe wants to go back to work he says "I want you here where you belong."
How Bobby has deteriorated is evident from his words to her. "You spend more time in bed than any other human being I know, past the age of six months, that I ever heard of. The place is a mess - no food in the house. Half the time you 69
look like you fell out of bed." He does not understand
Bobby's feelings or why she is so unhappy. He does not understand Bobby, when she says:
"I need a life", but replies,
"Get a job".
"I don't want a job - I want you".
"I am taken by me. Get out of the house - do something useful, goddammit."
"You wouldn't let me work when I wanted to."
Later he says, "You want a job'? I've got a job for you. Fix up this pig-stye. You get a pretty goddamn salary for testing out this bed all day."
Later, after she tries to commit suicide because he wants to leave her, they marry, have a child and then divorce. Sandy tries to look young and trendy and has affairs with younger women.
In the last scene of the film Jonathan is with a prostitute, as he needs her to make him feel like a man again. Jonathan is made into a victim who has lost everything.
This film is a good example of Men/Women relations based on the Adam and Eve stereotypes. It vividly demonstrates the need for change. It is demeaning to the women and to the men. It is unfortunate and sadly realistic in its character portrayals. Jonathan treats all women as objects made for 70 his pleasure, not as human beings, but it is he who is punished in the end.
"The Last Married couple in America" directed by Gilbert Gates (1980) stars George Segal and Natalie Wood, as husband and wife who feel that they are that couple. All their friends are either separating or divorcing. In the opening scenes of the film, Howard, a Divorce Lawyer, says; "It's not that the marriage has failed, it's that it never worked,
O.K.? Only now, people have got the guts to quit. As an institution it's antiquated, O.K.? It hasn't been updated in two thousand years - five thousand years. Divorce is one of America's biggest growth industries."
Later he says; "You see, two hundred years ago, you died when you were forty. You were married for twenty years and that was it. Now you live to be seventy. They expect you to be married for fifty years to the same person? Marriage is being swept into the dustbin of history. Pretty soon, only priests and nuns are going to get married." These words set the tone of the whole film, a comedy, which asks serious questions. "Is marriage really an antiquated institution?" "Is there any value in being married to-day?" "Is sexual freedom a better alternative to marriage'?"
The narrative points out the positive and negative aspects to these questions, and it does show an alternative to the traditional style of marriage. The relationship between the central characters is an adult one. The wife has her own identity as a sculptress, even though she works from home. When her husband Jeff has an affair with her friend Barbara, 71 she feels very hurt: Barbara, who is sexually liberated, has given him V.D. which questions the value of sexual freedom. Jeff, the husband, acquires a new girl friend and Marie, the wife has an affair with a younger man. By the end of the film they realise that is not what they really want. When Marie says "How did we ever let those people into our lives?"
Jeff replies: "Oh, Police Strikes, Women's Lib, Gay Lib, Condominiums." They send everyone at the party home, wake the children and tell them daddy's back and all go out for hamburgers at two O'clock in the morning. The audience is left with the feeling that an important part of marriage is the children and having family fun, so that the film reinforces the importance of the family, but not altogether at the expense of Women's Liberation and Sexual freedom. In the end, husband and wife are re-united, becuase they have exercised their free choice in the matter. Having experimented with other partners, they decide they still prefer each other.
A Hollywood film on marriage made especially for television is "The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank", directed by Robert Day (1980). This film shows insight into women's conflict between wanting her own identity and at the same time wanting to be a good wife and mother.
The wife, Dorothy (played by Carol Burnett) tells her woman friend "When I die and they put that tombstone up out there, I don't want it just to say 'Here lies Mommy' - or 'Here lies hey you' or 'somebody's friend' ... or 'Jim's wife'. I want it to say 'Here lies Dorothy Benson, What a Woman!". Expected page number is not in the original print co1 73 with her and that her son would be better of without her, so she leaves.
The wife, Joanne, is played by Meryl Streep and the husband by Dustin Hoffman. The child, Billy, is played by Justin Henry. The opening scene is a close up of Joanne's face, sad and upset as she puts Billy to bed for what will be the last time. The closing scene is of Joanne (going up in the elevator) with a happy look on her face. Joanne has grown and matured between the opening scene and the closing scene.
In the first scene, after she has tenderly kissed Billy good night, she packs her suitcase. When her husband comes home late from the office, she tells him that she is leaving him. She knnows it is a terrible thing to leave her child and her home, but she cannot function in that environment, where she has no self-esteem. She needs an identity other than being someone's wife or mother.
She works very hard to become a whole human being. Eighteen months later she wants her son back and fights for his custody. In the meantime, the father has formed a warm and loving relationship with his son. He explains to Billy that Mummy did not leave him because he was bad, as Billy had thought. She left "because Daddy had wanted her to be the kind of wife she did not want to be and she had been very unhappy".
In court, he admits that his wife also loves Billy, but says that is not the issue. The issue is, what ls best for Billy. He says; "My wife always used to ask 'Why can't a woman have 74 the same ambitions as a man?" He turns to his wife and says; "I think you're right, and maybe I've learned that much, but by the same token, I'd like to know what law is it that says a woman is a better parent simply by virtue of her sex? What is it that makes a good parent? It has to do with constancy. It has to do with patience. It has to do with love. I don't know where it says that a woman has a corner on the market - that a man has any less of those emotions than a woman has."
Though the Court grants the mother custody, she realises she would harm her child by taking him away to live with her. In the last scene, she is in the elevator on her way up to tell Billy he may stay with his father.
This film questions the traditional sex roles and Adam and Eve Ideology, and illustrates the view that fathers are capable of forming a warm, loving, supportive relationship with their children if they are given the opportunity. The film is open-ended. Husband and wife may ultimately be re united or they may go their separate ways - but they have both achieved growth and understanding in the meantime.
That there has been a breakdown of the traditional male stereotype and that fathers openly take a nurturing role with their children is now very obvious in society, where it is common to see men holding very young babies, pushing strollers and solely accompanying children of all ages. That involvement with the father is good for children is supported by a survey carried out by the Institute of Family Studies.(2) 75
"Mr Mom", directed by Stan Dragoti (1983), with Michael Keaton and Terry Farr as the married couple, is a screen example of equalitarian marriage, which is now happening in practice, both in Australia, and in America.(3)
When the husband loses his job, the wife works full time while he takes care of the home and the three children. She is very successful at her work in advertising, and, after some initial difficulty, he is very good at house-work and child-care. He is accepted by the other children's mothers, joins in their card games and other recreations, watches T.V. Soap Operas, and does the usual "house-wife" things. When he is offered his job back, at the end of the film, one of the suggestions made, is that both partners work part-time, and look after home and children part-time. ("Three days on, two day off"). The film is open-ended, but that option was certainly not available in Hollywood films on Marriage between 1940 and 1970.
The wife is shown not only as capable and intelligent, but as 'feminine' and attractive. The husband is no less a man because he is loving and protective towards his children, though he does not project the typical 'macho' image.
_This couple appears to be concerned with what is right for them and their family, not with conforming to sex roles. Their solution, where the two partners are both capable of getting good part-time jobs, like each other, and have similar values and ideas on bringing up their children, may well be the ideal solution not only for parenting problems but for employment problems as well. 76
Woody Allen's film, "Hannah and Her Sisters" clearly illustrates the difference in marriage and other men-women relationships shown on the screen in 1986 from those shown while the Production Code was in force.
Hannah has been married twice before and has chldren from those marriages. She (Mia Farrow) and her sisters, Lee (Barbara Hershy) and Holly (Dianne West) come from a theatrical family where their ageing mother (Maureen O'Sullivan) has had a successful career and their father (Lloyd Nolan) is still a gifted pianist. Hannah is a successful actress. Her husband Elliot (Michael Caine) is infatuated with his sister-in-law Lee and has an affair with her. He realises he really loves his wife when Lee leaves him to marry another man. Holly becomes a successful writer and marries Hannah's ex-husband, (played by Woody Allen). Though each of the three sisters is restored to a normative married relationship, each has at the same time her own life and identity. Her identify is not derived from her husband and she is not punished for this as wives were in Hollywood films on Marriage before 1970.
This film has aesthetic appeal for both men and women. It evokes pleasure outside the masculine structures of voyeurism.
The music in the film is stimulating and sensuous and the scenes of New York are colourful and attractive. This film not only appeals to men's senses but to women'.s senses as well. The characters are not traditional stereotypes, but warm human beings who are not punished for being themselves. 77
The Wedding ceremony, judging by the number that take place in films and on television programmes, is as popular as ever. In the film "A Wedding", directed by Robert Altman (1978), the subject is treated in a different way. The film is a satire. The action all takes place on the Wedding Day and involves forty seven one dimensional characters. Lillian Gish is the Matriarch who dies at the beginning of the film, after saying "Thank you god" that the marriage has taken place and everyone is arriving for the Reception. Her character dominates the proceedings, in the same way as she dominated her family when she was alive. This film challenges the sacredness of the wedding ceremony just as other films on marriage after 1970 challenge the sacredness of the traditional marriage. 78
CHAPTER EIGHT NOTES
1. Haskell, M., From Reverence to Rape, New York, 1974,
p. 360.
2. Turner, B., "Fathers who work long hours 'lose' their
kids", The Australian, 26 March, 1986.
3. See Harper, J., Fathers at Home, Penguin Books,
Australia, 1980 and
Kimball, G., The 50-50 Marriage, Beacon Press, Boston,
1983. 79
CHAPTER NINE
CONCLUSION
Many modern women are dissatisfied with the traditional housewife role and full-time commitment to home and marriage. Lack of adequate child-care facilities is the biggest factor contributing to their unhappiness, according to the Clemenger Survey.
With the exception of those directed by George Cukor, Hollywood films on marriage between 1940 to the late 1960's while the Production code was in force, reflected the Church's view of male-female relations and were therefore sexist.
Since 1970, however, the cinematic depiction of male/female relationships and marriage has changed, some people feel, for the worse. Clerics and Sociologists are disturbed by the rising rate of divorce and the increase in singly-parent families. However, a study carried out the the Institute of Family Studies states that most divorces since 1976 occur in the first four years of marriage and it is expected that the residual pool of marriages would become progressively more stable. The researchers believe divorce rates will decline because there is now a marked trend towards later marriage with decisions to marry following a period of living together.Cl) This study suggests that living together before marriage (which is still frowned on by the Church) helps to create more stable marriages. 80
Some Hollywood films on marriage, after 1970, openly show· women's dissatisfaction with the traditional marriage roles and also show a changed attitude towards sex. Thus in films where the husband is unfaithful, the wife is no longer shattered by this, nor does she try very hard to get her husband back. She embarks, as did the wives in "An Unmarried Woman", and "The Last Married Couple", on new sexual relationships of her own and makes her own choice as to whether she will resume her marriage relationship. Women are both in reality and in film, on the whole, looking at themselves in a more positive and confident way. They are now wanting a life and an identity of their own, whether inside or outside. marriage. Their security does not depend on being "ruled over", or "being taken care of" by their husbands. The growing numbers of mature age women students at Universities show that women are placing a high value on education, and are taking advantage of the educational opportunities now open to them. Educated women are in a position to question traditional values, as are educated men.
If Richard Wollheim is right when he says that what women have suffered from over the centuries is man's inability to tolerate the feminine side of his nature, how much of this is due to a belief, even on an unconscious level, in the story of Adam and Eve?
Men who were taught and who believed the Genesis One version of the Creation, could hardly dislike the feminine side of themselves. It would seem then, that legislation aimed at eliminating sexual discrimination should start at ensuring 81
that both stories of the creation are taught to children as part of the Religious Instruction Course, if at all.(2)
Traditional marriage no longer meets human needs. In an article in the Press on women, it was stated that an opinion survey of six thousand Australians shows that women, even more so than men, rate a shared sense of humour, free discussion and mutual respect, higher than sexual fidelity or maintaining romance.(3)
An American study, by two sociologists from the University of Washington in Seattle, sought to find out the factors which influence happiness for couples and the factors that bind or divide couples. In heterosexual relationships, the man's ability to be tender and expressive was found to be more important than sexual frequency in keeping couples together.
The study found that a woman who was happy in her work was also happy in her marriage, perhaps, the researchers suggest, because she relied less on the marriage for personal satisfaction. Among the factors that increased the chance of a couple's breaking up, was conflict and dissatisfaction with the way work intruded into the relationship.(4) If, as some modern feminists suggest (and as is demonstrated in the film "Mr Mom") both partners shared work and home - this factor might be less likely to be a source of conflict in the future. As Betty Friedan writes, "From all we know of human psychology and history, neither woman nor man lives by work or by love alone." She says both love and work are necessary for a sense of identity. "All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that."(5) 82
Far from being against the natural order of things, the ethical basis for the marriage of equals with an equal sharing of home and work-spheres as shown in some modern Hollywood films on Marriage is to be found not only in Feminism, but also in the Genesis One version of the Creation in the Bible, and is supported by research.
The traditional marriage, and stereotyped sex roles based on Adam and Eve increasingly being questioned. As there is an alternative version of The Creation in the Bible, people who oppose equality on the basis that it is "unnatural" seem to have little justification for their view. The traditional marriage, as supported by Religion and Education, and reflected in Hollywood films on Marriage between 1940 to 1970, is sexist and discriminatory. If religion were to place its emphasis on the Genesis One version of the Creation instead of the Genesis Two story of the Creation, it would support the equality of men and women and the new concept of marriage and sex roles espoused by Feminism and reflected in some Hollywood Films after 1970. Modern research suggests that this would not only benefit women but men and children as well. 83
CHAPTER NINE NOTES
1. Porter, D., "Early Divorce Gains Acceptability", S.M.H., June 18th, 1986.
2. See Appendix 3.
3. sun-Herald, 16th January, 1983.
4. Sydney Morning Herald, 6th October, 1983.
5. Friedan, B., The Second Stage, London, 1982, p. 101. 84
APPENDIX
The contents of this Appendix have been included for three reasons.
Appendix 1 demonstrates the misogyny behind the adoption of Genesis Two as the Word of God. The ideology of this myth was used to keep women in the home and out of the work-force, (when the Production Code enforced the Christian code of morality in Hollywood films), in a less direct but just as effective way than it was used here, to keep women out of European Universities.
Appendix 2 demonstrates that this ideology of Creationism used by the Church to justify its treatment of women, is unscientific.
Appendix 3 demonstrates the position of women in a society in which the ideology of Creationism is no longer relevant.
1. WOMAN INTO CITIZEN. Arnold Whittick, page 26.
"The inequality of the sexes and the subjugation of women is again illustrated in educational opportunities. This subjugation was in some measure due to religious doctrine translated into superstition. For example, up to the fourteenth century in Italy, women enjoyed great personal liberty, and were renowned for their intelligence and influence, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries they entered the Universities and even had places of high honour in the Faculties. Many were famed for their achievements in learning, Mathematics and Philosophy. But in 1377, the 85
Faculty of the University of Bologna decreed: 'And whereas woman is the foundation of sin, the weapon of the devil, the cause of man's banishment from Paradise, and whereas, for these reasons, all association with her is to be diligently avoided, therefore do we interdict and expressly forbid that anyone presume to introduce in the said college any woman whatsoever however honourable she be. And if anyone should perpetuate such an act he shall be severely punished.'
That decree not only closed that University, but the theory upon which it was founded: that women were responsible for the presence of sin in the world and its perpetuation closed to them all Universities of Italy and Spain. More, it condemned all education for women. Under this terrible mandate, generation after generation of women, endowed with great abilities were compelled to live and die in the darkness of ignorance.
This attitude to women still persisted among many men well on into the twentieth century; especially those who were the victims of superstitions emanating from some of the myths of Palestine. Women, and the temptations she offered to man, was regarded as a major source of evil and must therefore be kept in subjection."
* Published by Athenaeum with Frederick Muller, London, 1979 86
2. ARTICLE from Sydney Morning Herald 20 August, 1986
"NOBEL WINNERS IN GROUP ATTACK ON CREATION SCIENCE by Stuart Taylor
WASHINGTON, Tuesday: Seventy-two scientists who have won NObel Prizes and 24 scientific organisations yesterday urged the Supreme court to strike down as unconstitutional a Louisiana law requiring schools that teach evolution to teach 'creation science' as well.
The scientists said in their legal brief and in a news conference that the Louisiana law threatened 'the future of scientific education in this nation' by disparaging proven scientific facts in order to promote fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
Dr. Murray Gell-Mann, a 1969 Nobel laureate in physics who organised the effort, said creation science was 'a pseudo science based on the literal interpretation of certain Bible stories' .
Dr. Gell-Mann, a professor at the callfornla In5tltute of
Technology, s,:tid creation ocience wao p:romote,::l under £,:1 loe scientific premises by 'dark forces of ignorance and superstition' .
He and the other scientists filed their brief in opposition
to an appeal by Louisiana against a lower Federal Court decision that struck down the 1981 State law as an unconstitutional 'establishment of religion'. 87
The Louisiana law also requires that evolution be taught ae an unproven theory rather than proven scientific fact.
Supporters of the Louisiana law argue that creation science, which the State says is based on evidence of 'abrupt appearance in complex form' of man and other organisms along
with the physical universe, is a legitimate scientific theory entitled to equal time with the theory of evolution.
But a Federal District court in Louisiana ruled in striking down the law in January 1985 that its thinly disguised purpose was to promote a religious belief in the scriptural account of creation.
The US Court of Appeals voted in December to uphold a panel's earlier decision affirming the District Court's decision.
The State argued in its appeal that creation science consisted of scientific evidence and not religious concepts and that the law had the secular purpose of promoting free inquiry and academic freedom.
The scientists who signed the brief, including specialists in physics, chemistry, medicine and biology, argued that creationism had no basis in legitimate science."
3. Extract from the Sun-Herald August 31st, 1986.
~ VIKING QUEENS CONQUER from Ruth Gledhill in Oslo.
It was Dr. Monica Kristensen who said it for all Norwegian women when the reporters asked her if it wasn't a little unusual for a 'mere female' to lead an expedition to the 88
South Pole. 'It's not really unusual for Norwegian women to do anything' she said. Then a pause: 'Certainly there's nothing men do that we can't.'
Dr. Kristensen is one of the high profile females to emerge this decade from a land previously famous for little more than fir trees, floods and getting no marks in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Another is runner Ingrid Kristiansen who this month smashed another world track record.
Norway is an agressively socialist country where tax is high and schools and welfare have paramount importance. Eight of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, are women and they are radically altering the society in which they live.
The clue may be found in the classroom, where right from the start children are taught that girls can do anything that boys can do. And that goes for engineering and other traditionally male-dominated areas.
In Norway almost all women work. Children are looked after by what are called 'day mothers'. It breeds an attitude of equality now being shown to practical benefit in every strata of Norwegian life by these descendants of the steely Scandinavian women who took total charge of their families while their Viking husbands were at sea ravaging the British.
Dr. Kristensen, 36, will lead three men on the SA2.4 million expedition to trace the steps of Amunsden, the man who beat Captain Scott to the south Pole." 89
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