Alan K. Frishman
1. Women, Their Age and Men
What choice (otherwise she faces death, disease, disgrace, loneliness and spinsterhood) does the woman have but to attract a man? If that's the case, then she must be considered attractive to men. And in the movies, where image is everything, being attractive generally means
being young
. Anita Loos sums it up in relating Irving Thalberg's advice to the young screenwriter:
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When you write a love scene, think of our heroine as a little puppy dog, cuddling up to her master, wagging an imaginary tail, and gazing up at him as if he were God.
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Is this another instance of the image affecting, rather that reflecting, the culture? After all, in former times, when stories were read or heard rather than seen in Moliere, for example, or in Chaucer the "older husband" was doomed to lose the girl to a man of her own age. "Older" women were considered in their prime. (To Plato the ideal combination was an 18–year–old male and a 35–year–old female.) Occasionally the idea of a relationship between a young man and an older and/or less attractive woman is held as intrinsically worthy (as in
Harold and Maude
with Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort). Generally, though, even when the older woman is treated sympathetically,
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...she is never conceived of as being more than a passing interlude, a course in the hero's self–education. The older man–younger women arrangement, on the other hand, is viewed as something solid and normal. This is truer today [1973] in movies, and presumably in life as well.
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Questions for Class Discussion
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1. What do you consider the ideal age difference between a husband and wife?
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2. Do you agree that movies with their emphasis on the physical image have favored younger actresses?
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3. What do you think of Plato's "ideal" couple a 35–year–old woman and an 18–year–old man?
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4. In
Harold and Maude
Ruth Gordon (in her seventies) and Bud Cort (in his early twenties) are in bed together. Does that image repulse you? Would it be the same if their ages were reversed?
2. Men "Dominating" Women
Although women, as beautiful images and more, have been central to film as an industry, the closer women started coming to achieving independence in the real world, the more forcefully films reminded us that in the arenas of
real
power it's still a man's world. When in
Godfather II
Al Pacino becomes the new godfather and is confronted with [his wife] Diane Keaton's exercise of her right of personal choice in her desperate attempt to break the cycle of masculine violence/counter–violence his response is to close the door on her and isolate himself from any further communication between them.
In the acknowledgment of the natural leadership abilities of women and the need for men to appreciate and learn from them film, expensive, conservative, always with a large audience in mind, has lagged behind other forms of cultural expression. For example, in
The Disappearance
(written in the same 1950's that feared Lucy Gallant on screen choosing a dress shop over having babies), Phillip Wylie postulated a situation in which men and women lived separately from each other in parallel but simultaneous worlds. The men of course started fighting right away, with disastrous results The Soviet and American women leaders, on the other hand, met for tea and soon worked out their differences amicably, lovingly.
But this emphasis on "love," especially between same–sex peers in a non–sexual situation, so central to the "woman's film," was still held by many critics as an unsuitable subject for a great film. As Haskell asks in this context: "what could be more important than love anyway?"
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Just as Lucy Gallant's struggling business needed the approving money from her male rescuer to stave off the bank, the reconciliation of sparring females is often made authentic only under the approving gaze of the authoritative (and white) male, as in the final scene of
Imitation of Life
, when
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inside the car at the funeral, Sarah Jane lays her head on Lora's shoulder, Lora grasps Susie's hand, and all three are locked into the paternalistic approving gaze of [Steve] Archer. With the return of the white male, the family regains its tenuous composure and the authority of his gaze lends meaning to the scene.
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Occasionally a man will understand that, in order to complete himself, he needs to understand the woman both outside of him and inside of him. In some cases the quickest path to this understanding is for him to become a woman in disguise. We see this with Don Juan in the series of books by Carlos Casteneda about the development of a Yaqui Indian spiritual warrior. A young man with much potential but a limiting misogynistic view, Don Juan is tricked by his spiritual teacher into hiding out for several months as a young woman. That step becomes crucial in his learning process. We see a similar evolution of enlightened male consciousness in the popular
Tootsie
(1983). When Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) realizes his best shot at a steady acting job (in a soap opera) comes about by pretending to be a woman, Dorothy, he tries to sell his agent who doubts he can pull it off on the idea:
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I
do
know what it's like to be a woman. I've been an unemployed actor for years, sitting by the phone with no power. Then when I do get a part, it's a man who has all the power.
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As Michael/Dorothy comes to know what it's like to be condescended to, he starts caring about people in a new, more nurturing way. He even comes to realize surprise! that "Dorothy" is smarter than he (just as Mrs. Doubtfire, in the movie of the same name, is a better father than Robin Williams). Michael tell us, "I was strong enough to be a woman, that best part of me." And, ironically, through being a woman, Michael/Dorothy is able to get the girl, Julie (Jessica Lang). After revealing his true identity, he tells her that having been a woman for a while has prepared him for their future relationship: "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was as a man with a woman.... The bad part's over. We were already friends."
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Questions for Class Discussion
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1. What would happen if men and women would switch bodies for a week?
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2. Would society be better , worse or the same if women were in most of the positions of public power?
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3. In
Tootsie
why was Michael better able to have a relationship with Julie after he had pretended to be a woman?
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4. In
Mrs. Doubtfire
Robin Williams plays a female housekeeper in order to be closer to his children after he and his wife separate. Why was he a better father as a "woman" than he was as a man?