Degradation of women in movies nothing new
#METOO: Even classic films fail to meet contemporary social attitudes
The movie is one of the most revered romantic comedies of all time, but it also contains a moment in which an angry Clark Gable tells co-star Claudette Colbert he’d like to break her neck.
Later in the film he says what she needs in life is “a guy who will take a sock at her once a day whether it’s coming to her or not.”
We’re talking about It Happened One Night, the 1934 Frank Capra classic. It stars Clark Gable, perhaps the most potent macho symbol of Hollywood’s golden age, as a cynical newspaperman caught up in the madcap adventures of Colbert’s spoiled runaway heiress.
The film captured a bundle of Oscars, including best picture and awards for its two stars. It’s still a richly entertaining comedy — but would it pass muster with the #MeToo movement?
One suspects not. #MeToo may be focusing its current outrage on people like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Donald Trump, but perhaps it should take a closer look at the past century of popular culture — a century where entertainment content repeatedly embraces sexist attitudes and behaviour that now seem increasingly toxic.
In brief, #MeToo is taking on an enemy with very deep historic roots. The examples are endless — but are all equally questionable?
Pillow Talk, a 1959 romantic comedy, features Rock Hudson as a womanizing playboy who has fitted his apartment with a special switch that will automatically lock the front door to prevent female dates from escaping. Another switch ejects a ready-made double bed from the wall. The film was a hit and launched Doris Day on a new and lucrative career fighting for her virtue on screen.
“Certain women should be struck regularly — like gongs.” This line is spoken by Elyot Chase to ex-wife Amanda in Noel Coward’s 1930 stage classic, Private Lives. In a recent highly praised U.S. revival, Elyot’s comment came after Amanda had kneed him in the crotch and broken a phonograph record over his head.
Chief nurse Margaret (Hot Lips) Houlihan is a much-loved M*A*S*H character, both in the original 1970 movie and the hugely successful television spinoff of this Korean War satire set in a medical unit. But much of the comedy surrounding her comes from the continuing
sexual harassment she suffers at the hands of Hawkeye and his pals.
The most notorious scene in the film occurs when the guys sever a curtain cord in the women’s shower so they can catch a glimpse of Hot Lips in the buff. Humiliated
and tearful, she crawls out of sight while the guys raise their glasses in a celebratory toast. Legend has it that Sally Kellerman, who plays Hot Lips in the movie, kept spoiling takes by moving out of camera view before the shower curtain fully dropped.
The actors solved the problem by dropping their own trousers first, leaving Kellerman so stupefied that she forgot to duck. In 1971, the movie was nominated for five Oscars, including best picture, and won for best screenplay.
“Now, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” A typical 007 seduction line — this one from Sean Connery’s James Bond in the 1967 You Only Live Twice. (Though in a sign of progress, Judi Dench as M in 1995’s GoldenEye does call out Bond as “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War.” )
The classic 1935 musical Top Hat has Fred Astaire in amorous pursuit of a distinctly hostile Ginger Rogers. One of its best-remembered moments comes when she hires a horse-drawn carriage to take her to the park and he disguises himself as the driver. Ginger’s hostility builds when she realizes she’s trapped in the carriage with the man she despises holding the reins. When rain breaks out in the park, Ginger seeks refuge in a bandstand. Fred follows her and when there’s a clap of thunder, Ginger runs into his arms. Fred sings the Irving Berlin song Isn’t This A Lovely Day to Be Caught In The Rain. The two end up dancing together.
“Nicely packed — not much meat on her, but what there is choice.” That’s Spencer Tracy’s character commenting on Katharine Hepburn’s physical attributes in the 1952 comedy Pat And Mike.
In the zany Marx Brothers classics of the 1930s, Harpo pursues women and Groucho waggles his eyebrows and practises his seduction skills, usually on middle-aged matrons:
Groucho: “I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.” Woman: “Really?” Groucho: “No but I don’t mind lying if it might get me somewhere.”
Then there’s this more direct approach to Groucho’s favourite target, the stately Margaret Dumont : “Marry me and I’ll never look at another horse.”