University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/35511 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. REPRESENTATIONS OF SCREEN HETEROSEXUALITY IN THE MUSICALS OF FRED' ASTAIRE AND VINCENTE MINNELLI JEFFREY DENNIS CROUSE Ph. D. in Film and Television Studies University of Warwick November 1997 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the ways in which heterosexuality is rendered in the Hollywood genre where its existence is most privileged: musicals of the studio era (c. 1930 - c. 1960). In this popular film category, heterosexuality is expressed in a framework of "boy-meets-girl" amatory coupling that is remarkably amplified and insistent. In analysis that is at once sympathetic and critical of the subject matter, I show that heterosexuality in the Hollywood musical is constructed in a way that is far from monolithic. On the contrary, I find that there are in fact varieties of heterosexual identity that exist in the genre, and that they are most succinctly revealed through romantic engagement. Yet heterosexuality is depicted along divergent formulations owing to contrasting relational aims and assumptions. Building on Richard Dyer's 1993 essay, 'III Seem to Find the Happiness I Seek': Heterosexuality and Dance in the Musical, " I will discuss how the basis of these separate models is traceable to different approaches related to power distributions between men and women. These processes, in turn, arise from different notions concerning masculinity and femininity. In this way, a mix of gender expressions inhabit the Hollywood musical leading to an assortment of heterosexual models. Textually these models become visible not only through an analysis of characterization and the position of the man and woman within the narrative, but in the camera work, all aspects of the mise-en-scene, and most cogently, in the arrangement of the central heterosexual couple in the song-and-dance sequences. For my examination of heterosexuality in the Hollywood musical, I will concentrate on the work of two of its greatest auteurs: Fred Astaire (star) and Vincente Minnelli (director). The impact each man made on this genre is hard to overestimate. In terms of methodology I divide my analysis between these two artists, and ascertain what model(s) of heterosexual identity are communicated by them. Then after establishing what design(s) of heterosexual life each one suggests (for Astaire I analyse Top Hat (1935] as well as Carefree [1938] and The Sky's the Limit [1943], while for Minnelli I look at Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Pirate (1948]), I conclude this thesis by examining their most acclaimed joint effort (The Band Wagon (1953]) to discern what, if any, change one might have had on the other. A phenomenon tied to the US musical (whether stage or screen) is that although it is the most heterosexual of genres, it is also one traditionally both crafted and appreciated by gay men. Though it does not fall within the scope of this thesis, it is worth speculating for future work if Astaire's heterosexuality and Minnelli's homosexuality had any significant bearing on the way they represented the standard boy meets-girl plot device upon which the Hollywood musical relies. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................. .. A Note Concerning iii Spelling ............ Chapter 1: Loaded Silences 1 Introduction: .. .. Section I- Astaire Chapter 2: Top Hat: Letting His Will Provide The Occasion Introduction 16 ........... Dancing with the World: Astaire's Covert 20 Classicism ....... Dancing with Rogers: Charm and the Ego 45 Sublime ......... .. Chapter 3: Carefree and The Sky's the Limit: The Male Chorus' Revenge Introduction 77 ........... .. 88 Carefree: Dancing as Rogers Leads. The Sky's the Limit: Dancing on Ledge 117 a ......... Section II - Minnelli Chapter 4: Meet Me in St. Louis: The Challenge Of Difference 141 Introduction ............ The Agony of Difference. ...... 146 The Ecstasy of Difference. ..... 169 Chapter 5: The Pirate: The Artistry of Eros Introduction ............ 207 Ravishing the Sensibilities. 213 .... The Artful Life. .......... 242 Section III - Astaire and Minnelli Chapter 6: The Band Wagon: The Intersection of Two Auteurs 274 Introduction ............ Integration Myth One: The Myth of Community. 289 .. Integration Myths Two and Three: Spontaneity Related to the Myths of Popular Entertainment and the Archetypal Persona 304 Astaire ... The Grand Synthesis: Heterosexuality in the "Girl Hunt" 327 347 Bibliography .................... 353 Filmography .................... Section 1 ASTAIRE i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I want to thank Professor Richard Dyer for his guiding hand, support, and trust in my abilities. His pioneering writings on minority and majority representation were the reason why I came to study at the University of Warwick, and it has been a tremendous honour to have been his student. In addition, I must thank Professor Genette Vincendeau, Jose Arroyo, and V. F. Perkins for their time in reading my work in the annual research reviews that were conducted during the period in which this thesis was written. In addition, I am indebted to the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals of Universities in the UK for awarding me the overseas Research Students Award Scheme. This allowed me to attend the University of Warwick, and without it I would have not been able to fulfil my lifelong dream of pursuing a doctorate in England. Very special debts of gratitude go to Dr. Andrew Kievan of the University of Kent at Canterbury and to Ph. D. candidate James Steffen of Emory University. Each had a profound impact on this thesis. Dr. Kievan challenged me to rethink my original ideas concerning Astaire's persona, while Mr. Steffen's help was broader yet just as critical. ii Finally I wish to dedicate this thesis to my parents, Dennis and Carolyn Crouse. Their support was so crucial that without their love and patience this effort would have been frankly impossible. iii A NOTE CONCERNING SPELLING Due to the degree in which UK English is changing with what seems a movement toward the US style, all spelling in this thesis conforms to that recommended in the 1996 edition of the oxford Colour Spelling Dictionary ed. Maurice White (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 1 Chapter 1 Introduction: Loaded Silences Now it is well known, even in our age of strident salvationists, that all norms tend towards silence. For every book that today defends the supremacy of heterosexuality, there are a thousand that assume it. The history of sexual virtue is no monotone, but neither is it incoherent. It is the narrative of a loaded silence. Jon Ward, "The Nature of Heterosexuality" Richard Dyer began a 1988 piece in Screen with the words, "This is an article about a subject that, much of the time as I've been writing it, seems not to be there as a subject at all. "1 He was discussing the idea of filmic representations of whiteness as an ethnicity, and after spending much of the Seventies and Eighties investigating (among other topics) the way women and minorities are depicted on film he turned his attention to images of men and majorities. His earlier work -- for instance, his groundbreaking writing on gays and lesbians -- added to a very rapidly expanding body of critical knowledge on both sides of the Atlantic directed toward a region of film analysis that had been largely neglected. The insights by him and others were extremely valuable, yet they had one unintended effect: examining the manner in which women and (sexual and racial) minorities are constructed not only served to 2 leave men and (racial and sexual) majorities as the yardstick or norm, but strengthened their position as such. Thus in the last decade there has been something of a shift to the investigation of areas like the cinematic representation of masculinity, whiteness, and heterosexuality. This thesis is centred around the last of the examples listed-- heterosexuality. Making a crucial point, Jon Ward declares that "all social norms tend toward silence. "2 This view is confirmed by Dyer in his study of whiteness. He discovered that majority constructions are difficult to examine because they are elusive in the way they seldom call attention to themselves and are often instead about "something else. " This makes it very hard to "see" their structure, content, and power-- let alone allow anyone to understand and analyse them. Dyer found that such strategies of deflection sustain the "natural" power of men and majorities, for it enables them to exert their hold even as the traces of their existence shift to more limited expressions further removed from the original source. In examining whiteness as a construction in film, Dyer gives examples concerning this process of deflection: 3 Any instance of white representation is always immediately something more specific-- Brief Encounter [David Lean, 19461 is not about white people, it is about English middle-class people; The Godfather [Francis Ford Coppola, 1972] is not about white people, it is about Italian-American people; but The Color Purple [Steven Spielberg, 1985] is about black people, before it is about 3 poor, southern US people. Of course the situation is that such films as Brief Encounter and The Godfather, although they are not reducible to this, are not only about different varieties of the white experience but are in many ways insistently so. Even to talk of "the white experience "sounds strange in a way that speaking of "the black experience" (or, say, the Jewish or Japanese) would not. Except in the case of racist rhetoric, any expression of "the white experience" is conveyed in more specific terms (in the US, for example, this is always put across through the use of hyphens as in Irish-American or Polish-American).