Why Would She Come Back?
Some of you may know that my husband and I enjoy watching old musicals. We own at least two dozen, not counting the Disney musicals like Mary Poppins, Pete's Dragon and Beauty and the Beast, but we have a lot of those, too. Last night I was watching Kiss Me Kate for the first time in ages, and something about this movie's treatment of women disturbed me because it seems to be a common theme in a lot of those old musicals from the 1950s and 60s.
In Kiss Me, Kate, the female lead, who, in the movie, happens to be playing the role of Kathryn (the shrew) in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, apparently has a love-hate relationship with the male lead (playing Petruchio), who happens to be her ex-husband. In the course of the performance, the two beat each other (she slaps him, he spanks her). Off stage, she tries to abandon the show in the middle of the performance, and he sets two gun toting goons on her to force her to stay. She finally manages to escape with her fiancee only to show up in the final scene on stage to give the "women should honor and obey their husbands" speech, and the movie ends. When the movie ended, I sat there staring at the screen wondering, "Why on earth did she come back?" I couldn't figure out whether she was back because she had learned that her fiancee had a previous fling with another girl, if she decided she liked show business too much to give it up, or if she decided she liked her ex-husband in spite of all the horrible things he had done to her.
Another movie in which I have always wondered "why on earth did she come back?" is My Fair Lady, where Professor Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle how to speak and act like a lady, all the while treating her like dirt. Eliza has a young man who is crazy about her, she has friends, including Professor Higgins mother, who might be willing to help her find her own place in the world, and yet at the end of this movie, she returns to Professor Higgins for some unfathomable reason. Does she enjoy being bullied? What was she thinking?
Returning to Kiss me, Kate, there is a scene where another character is talking to her boyfriend, singing to him that she is "always true to [him] in [her] fashion", trying to convince him that although she dates other men, she still is true to him. This song reminded me of Gertie in Oklahoma!: sort of a combination of the songs, "I Caint Say No" and "All Er Nuthin." The message portrayed is that some women are just too weak to be faithful to one man. This message is supported by Laurie agreeing to go to the box social with Jud, even though she obviously loves Curly.
Another movie that I have issues with is Annie Get Your Gun. In this movie, although Annie Oakley is a talented and very skilful sharpshooter, she has to deliberately lose a shooting match in order to sooth Frank Butler's pride so he'll marry her. While the song, "Anything You Can Do" is fun to listen to, apparently men really don't like it when a lowly woman can do something better than they can.
Another musical that I love, but isn't very respectful of women is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. In this movie, a woman is lied to and deceived, expected to clean up after, cook and care for seven sloppy brothers, and then six more girls are kidnapped and dragged into the hills for months. And then the girls marry their kidnappers! What is the moral there?
Gigi is another movie that I truly enjoy, and yet the whole culture of the time and place in this musical is questionable too. Gigi is still a young girl when her grandmother who is raising her, sends her to her aunt to begin teaching her to become a courtesan, or a mistress. Luckily, in this movie, Gigi and Gaston eventually decide to break tradition and marry instead.
Born in the generation that I was, I never had much understanding of the suffragette movement that Mrs. Banks is involved in in the movie, Mary Poppins. I suppose that I have always taken the right to vote as a given, and I haven't appreciated the generations of progress that were involved in winning that right. Were women really seen as being weak and subservient to men? (And men were definitely dominant. Remember the song, "The Life I Lead"?) Were women supposed to endure abuse, belittlement, and unfaithfulness in their husbands because of "love"? Was women's only acknowledged purpose in existing in order to please men?
Anyone who knows me will know that I'm perfectly content to be a stay-at-home mother to my kids, wife to my husband. I'll do the cooking and cleaning and laundry when it needs to be done because it is part of the job I have chosen. At the same time, I have the utmost respect to those women who have chosen to (or have needed to) pursue careers outside the home. I believe women can be just as smart and just as capable as men. I don't believe that women should stay in (or return to) situations that are abusive (no matter how much they think they love the guy), but that they should have the right to make the choices that they believe will lead to their greatest happiness.
I hope that watching these old movies, with their catchy tunes and enjoyable stories, will not teach my children their outdated messages. Times have changed, and women do receive more respect these days than they did fifty years ago, for which I am very grateful. I hope we never go back.
*Warning - Spoiler Alert!*I'm going to write about some of these old movies and I'm going to mention the endings of some of them. Don't read ahead if you haven't seen the movies and want the endings to be a surprise whenever you do happen to watch them!
In Kiss Me, Kate, the female lead, who, in the movie, happens to be playing the role of Kathryn (the shrew) in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, apparently has a love-hate relationship with the male lead (playing Petruchio), who happens to be her ex-husband. In the course of the performance, the two beat each other (she slaps him, he spanks her). Off stage, she tries to abandon the show in the middle of the performance, and he sets two gun toting goons on her to force her to stay. She finally manages to escape with her fiancee only to show up in the final scene on stage to give the "women should honor and obey their husbands" speech, and the movie ends. When the movie ended, I sat there staring at the screen wondering, "Why on earth did she come back?" I couldn't figure out whether she was back because she had learned that her fiancee had a previous fling with another girl, if she decided she liked show business too much to give it up, or if she decided she liked her ex-husband in spite of all the horrible things he had done to her.Another movie in which I have always wondered "why on earth did she come back?" is My Fair Lady, where Professor Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle how to speak and act like a lady, all the while treating her like dirt. Eliza has a young man who is crazy about her, she has friends, including Professor Higgins mother, who might be willing to help her find her own place in the world, and yet at the end of this movie, she returns to Professor Higgins for some unfathomable reason. Does she enjoy being bullied? What was she thinking?
Returning to Kiss me, Kate, there is a scene where another character is talking to her boyfriend, singing to him that she is "always true to [him] in [her] fashion", trying to convince him that although she dates other men, she still is true to him. This song reminded me of Gertie in Oklahoma!: sort of a combination of the songs, "I Caint Say No" and "All Er Nuthin." The message portrayed is that some women are just too weak to be faithful to one man. This message is supported by Laurie agreeing to go to the box social with Jud, even though she obviously loves Curly.
Another movie that I have issues with is Annie Get Your Gun. In this movie, although Annie Oakley is a talented and very skilful sharpshooter, she has to deliberately lose a shooting match in order to sooth Frank Butler's pride so he'll marry her. While the song, "Anything You Can Do" is fun to listen to, apparently men really don't like it when a lowly woman can do something better than they can.
Another musical that I love, but isn't very respectful of women is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. In this movie, a woman is lied to and deceived, expected to clean up after, cook and care for seven sloppy brothers, and then six more girls are kidnapped and dragged into the hills for months. And then the girls marry their kidnappers! What is the moral there?
Gigi is another movie that I truly enjoy, and yet the whole culture of the time and place in this musical is questionable too. Gigi is still a young girl when her grandmother who is raising her, sends her to her aunt to begin teaching her to become a courtesan, or a mistress. Luckily, in this movie, Gigi and Gaston eventually decide to break tradition and marry instead.
Born in the generation that I was, I never had much understanding of the suffragette movement that Mrs. Banks is involved in in the movie, Mary Poppins. I suppose that I have always taken the right to vote as a given, and I haven't appreciated the generations of progress that were involved in winning that right. Were women really seen as being weak and subservient to men? (And men were definitely dominant. Remember the song, "The Life I Lead"?) Were women supposed to endure abuse, belittlement, and unfaithfulness in their husbands because of "love"? Was women's only acknowledged purpose in existing in order to please men?
Anyone who knows me will know that I'm perfectly content to be a stay-at-home mother to my kids, wife to my husband. I'll do the cooking and cleaning and laundry when it needs to be done because it is part of the job I have chosen. At the same time, I have the utmost respect to those women who have chosen to (or have needed to) pursue careers outside the home. I believe women can be just as smart and just as capable as men. I don't believe that women should stay in (or return to) situations that are abusive (no matter how much they think they love the guy), but that they should have the right to make the choices that they believe will lead to their greatest happiness.
I hope that watching these old movies, with their catchy tunes and enjoyable stories, will not teach my children their outdated messages. Times have changed, and women do receive more respect these days than they did fifty years ago, for which I am very grateful. I hope we never go back.
Here here Maelyn. You're using that very good brain to teach your children, but I know that if you had to, you'd use that very good brain in some profession to keep your family going. And as your children get older you might just choose to enter a profession. And oh how lucky they would be. Look at the life of Sister Bashaw.
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