I'm an A Level Media student researching women in film noir for my exam and was hoping to get some fans of the genre's opinions on how women are represented in Gilda (feel free to add opinions about any other films)? Particularly focusing on Gilda being portrayed as a sex object and whether she is presented from a misogynist's perspective or as empowering, a strong role model for women? Any feedback appreciated thanks.
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she would put all her blame on mame!
...nah, joking aside; I very much like Gilda but the ending confused me so im not sure who she was as a person. She was protrayed as a classier version of a woman who sleeps around with different men. She had talent and smarts, yet, she never wanted to make a living herself, even though, she was able-bodied. So, maybe she was always a spoiled brat who got her way. She was a gold-digger but it certainly seemed like she knew how to live the high-life and that could have been because she dreamed of living it. Whatever the case, this movie shows Gilda as a irresistible woman and most woman wish to be disered that way. So, depending on the woman you asked Gilda was a gold-digger and not a slouzy street-walker. To say the least I'd rather be known as a "Gilda" and not a "Pretty woman"
"I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you."- Peter O'Toole
In 1946, women were expected not to work, to be supported by a man. Within that parameter you have housewives and golddiggers, the housewives settling for the status quo of home and children, and the golddigger trying to get something different. There was no way Gilda would have been able to make her own way in the world, as most gainful employment was closed to women at the time. Remember this was made after WWII, when women were being filtered out of the work force and back into the home, so that returning GI's could have jobs. That fact plays into how women are portrayed in the late 40s and into the 50s and on to the 70s; it was a brainwashing attempt, pure and simple, just like the films glorifying women working for the war effort, and films glorifying the war were used to get the US involved in the war.
As for the portrayal of Gilda, I have not seen the movie, so can't really comment on that particularity. But I saw a trailer on the DVD for You Were Never Lovelier for both Gilda and Lady From Shanghai, and in both of those her character is slapped around by men. The fact that this was highlighted in a trailer shows you the attitude of men to women in that time. No one would put that in a trailer today, without a concomitant scene showing her hitting back.
This is the essence of misogyny. I don't know if I want to even watch Gilda or Lady from Shanghai because of the violence against women and the portrayal of their commodification. Too painful.
This is the essence of misogyny. I don't know if I want to even watch Gilda or Lady from Shanghai because of the violence against women and the portrayal of their commodification. Too painful.
What I find funny is that you can watch Breakfast at Tiffany's, which by all means doesn't spare the immense racism, but won't watch Gilda
You don't know if she saw Breakfast at Tiffany's or not.
All through the movie, Gilda sustained constant abuse from both husbands. Some people can watch that, others cannot.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
I guess being slapped around and grabbed, kept prisoner by the knowledge she is but one woman and they are all males and united to hold her prisoner just does not equal a man being "beaten up" or the racism in a different movie altogether? Slapping a woman is the same as beating her up. It just stops before it gets to the point of broken bones.
Perhaps misogyny is difficult to watch because a woman experienced so much of it personally? As a black person might find an old racist movie unbearable because it reminds them of painful experiences in their lifetime?
Remember this was made after WWII, when women were being filtered out of the work force and back into the home, so that returning GI's could have jobs... it was a brainwashing attempt, pure and simpleThis story takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It has nothing to do with the post-war US. Of course, you would actually have to SEE THE MOVIE to know that.
I have not seen the movie... But I saw a trailer... the essence of misogyny... the violence against women...I guess you missed the scene where Gilda slaps Johnny - twice!
The scene where she slaps him twice because he tricked her into marriage thinking they could actually be a real couple and he is nothing but cruel to her and imprisoned her and when she was forced to run away he sent someone to gain her trust and bring her back and won't give her a divorce or any means of escaping this hellish situation? It's not like she hospitalized him. She was desperate and he held all the cards and he let it happen. She was in tears with no options left, he was getting what he wanted, and she was lashing out. He barely reacted.
I don't know if the film is misogynistic but Johnny and his determination to make her suffer for sleeping around when she wasn't even in a relationship with him sure as hell was.
I did watch this movie and I'm not new to old movies. I would fully expect Johnny to completely reject her romantically and treat her like she had no morals at all because she supposedly slept around. That's the 1940s for you. Other than his laundry comment, his behavior pre-marriage didn't seem all that out there for the time. It's just everything he did afterwards that makes him seem like a noir villain not our supposed hero.
i was extremely puzzled by how you described this movie...until you admitted you hadn't seen it. this is a story of revengeful seduction. gilda marries johnnys boss to punish him for leaving her, and then uses her position to win him back. she toys with him. torments him. although in the end she gets her way, johnny also does some tormenting of his own. this movie is one of my all time favorite noir films. i have watched it countless times. the tension is thick. rita is at her most amazing. i have never seen a female character portrayed on film that is even half so fascinating. you really should put your prejudices aside and watch it. you won't regret it.
shareYou do need to see the movie. Gilda's employment would not have been in a traditional woman's job--she had talent and sex appeal, could sing and dance, perform. That did not, of course, earn her any respect from the men in her life....they acknowledged talent but threatened her anyway....strange storyline throughout. But when she takes the stage to sing "Mame" in Montevideo, she brings down the room--and proceeds to turn it into a striptease number. Off comes a glove, then she tells the lewd tasteless men in the audience she's bad at zippers--and they climb over one another to get her zipper down. All this infuriates the man who loves her. The point if the whole thing after all. I don't understand....but yes, it's very misogynistic! It's women characters as written by men, motivated by men. I'm a woman--so I'll never be able to explain it or understand what it's supposed to mean. Gilda may as well be a little green martian with antennae....
share...nah, joking aside; I very much like Gilda but the ending confused me so im not sure who she was as a person. She was protrayed as a classier version of a woman who sleeps around with different men. She had talent and smarts, yet, she never wanted to make a living herself, even though, she was able-bodied. So, maybe she was always a spoiled brat who got her way. She was a gold-digger but it certainly seemed like she knew how to live the high-life and that could have been because she dreamed of living it. Whatever the case, this movie shows Gilda as a irresistible woman and most woman wish to be disered that way. So, depending on the woman you asked Gilda was a gold-digger and not a slouzy street-walker. To say the least I'd rather be known as a "Gilda" and not a "Pretty woman"
In my view there are issues in the movie: 1) will Johnny acknowledge that Ballin Mundson is a bad person and do the right thing and give up the monopoly in tungsten and 2) will Johnny see that Gilda is the right person for him. In both issues Gilda is showing him the way, and fighting with all her might, also with her sexual power as a woman. At the end Johnny does give up the monopoly and begs Gilda: "Please, can you take me with you".
So yes, Gilda is being portrayed as a sex object. But I do not see anything bad in that perse. She is using her sexual powers for things that she wants. Maybe you could describe that as: she is a sex subject, and Johnny is made the object.
Is she a role model for women? Well, to be strong and go for the thing they want. If they have to do that in the same way? Well, it's a movie.
"As for the portrayal of Gilda, I have not seen the movie, so can't really comment on that particularity. But I saw a trailer on the DVD for You Were Never Lovelier for both Gilda and Lady From Shanghai, and in both of those her character is slapped around by men. The fact that this was highlighted in a trailer shows you the attitude of men to women in that time. No one would put that in a trailer today, without a concomitant scene showing her hitting back.
This is the essence of misogyny. I don't know if I want to even watch Gilda or Lady from Shanghai because of the violence against women and the portrayal of their commodification. Too painful."
Is this really the kind of baloney they teach you now in feminism 101 class? I always love it when people watch old movies just to feel self-righteous about themselves and the wonderful world we live in now.
Oh, and watch the movie.
Jessica Rabbit
"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."
It is an absurd statement to say that no employment was open to women in 1946, that they were either gold diggers or housewives. My grandmother worked for the Southern Pacific railroad from the twenties into the fifties and managed to raise a family as well. There were secretaries, teachers, nurses, etc. Often in the movies, in order to make the female leads appear glamorous, they were employed in show business--which was also a field in which women were welcomed. Gilda, in fact, turns to performing in a nightclub to get away from Johnny. Obviously someone as alluring and talented as Rita Hayworth could have gotten all sorts of jobs at that time, and wouldn't have had to resort to gold digging.
Gilda being portrayed as a sex object and whether she is presented from a misogynist's perspective or as empowering, a strong role model for women?
I view Gilda as an empowering figure. She gains empowerment by being promiscuous to make Johnny feel weak, getting her own back on him. I would not say she is a strong role model for women as Gilda is not a likable character. She acts promiscuous and manipulates the likes of Johnny and Ballin just because she could.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
It is unfair to judge an older work by standards which hadn't been invented yet. Look at Clark Gable's actions in Mogambo, which he could never get away with today.
shareAre you kidding me OP?You havent watched the movie and yet you make assumptions like those?
As a woman ,and a liberal one at that,I can tell you Gilda is by far the strongest most empowered and empowering character of the movie.
It is unfair to judge an older work by standards which hadn't been invented yet.
"being manipulative was just as disagreeable in the 40s as now. And being promiscuous was disapproved of much more than now." Yet, most men wanted her and most women envied her while taking her as a role model.
shareA lot of men wanted her and a lot of women envied her. But women taking her as a role model in the extremely repressive 1940s? Funny.
shareOh puke. There is nothing whatsoever empowering about having to sleep with a man to make another man angry, jealous and violent! Promiscuity empowering? Please go to a doctor. A good psychiatrist or psychologist for serious counseling. For crying out loud--it's the most traditional form of prison available to a woman throughout history!
From the earliest days of the Bible, women were portrayed as either wives and mothers without selves, "selfless," devoted to husband, children or family and nothing else, as untrustworthy whores--and that supposedly gave men the edge in virtue, in holiness, in intelligence, in trustworthiness. Ipso fact, only men could own property, run businesses, hold office i politics or church. From the very 1st days of the Catholic Church, its leaders were telling the followers that women could not be trusted--they were nothing more than modern Eves, falling for snakes, looking for ways to bring down men and society with their charms and their evil motives...they have no sense of judgment. Here are a few of the warnings that I still hear repeated almost word for word by young men with church-school educations--comparisons to snakes, eyes that always show her plotting or statement she ever stops trying to manipulate or twist the truth... (from https://valerietarico.com/2013/07/01/mysogynistquoteschurchfathers/ ):
"Woman is a temple built over a sewer." Tertullian, Father of Latin Christianity, circa 160-225
"In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell." –Tertullian, “the father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225): On the Apparel of Women, chapter 1
"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman… I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children." –Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius (354 – 430): De genesi ad litteram, 9, 5-9
"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence." –Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, 13th century: Summa Theologica I q. 92 a. 1
"Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. … Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good." –Saint Albertus Magnus, Dominican theologian, 13th century: Quaestiones super de animalibus XV q. 11
"The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes." –Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546), Works 12.94
"Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband. . . . For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior." –John Dod: A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603
"The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands." –James Fowler: Women in the Church, 1999.
Basically, all society is in danger of going to hell because women who don't behave themselves and act subservient to their husbands, keeping house, cooking meals, and having babies, will bring everyone down as did Eve in the Garden of Eden. Trom the death of Jesus through to Pat Robertson, Quiverfull, and Sharia Law, Orthodox Judaism, Opus Dei, and the rest, women is either Godly in the home, covered up, or she's a prostitute. Anyone who thinks a woman can find freedom or self-satisfaction in either role, defined as they are by ancient men, is wrong and likely insane!
Gilda can't find happiness, freedom, or even revenge by sleeping with other men, promiscuity--that's just a choice created by the same men who built the original prison that held her.
Her freedom, happiness and satisfaction will only come by her creating her own career, her own income she earns on her own. Self-respect. She has to be able to rely on herself, not on her ability to use another. They just move her around in the movie, working for another man or sleeping with a different competitor. It's dumb. None of it is freedom or power on her own terms. Think of those horrid creatures who jump on her to unzip her dress!! is that freedom or empowerment? If it were, strippers and porn stars would never get addicted to drugs.
At the end, these women usually die, in fiction through the centuries--it's their divine punishment for rejecting the correct path. But here they (the male screenwriters, producers and studio heads) marry her off in a postwar ending the government approves. Married to a gambler, a card cheat, a violent guy with a criminal past. Is that better than death?
I think it's a little of both, really. Gilda is empowering because she's (mostly) in control of things, and she's able to easily manipulate men and leave them frustrated. But, it is a somewhat misogynist view because she's having to use sex to do it... but, that's more the fault of the society she's in than it is any of her own.
That "Put The Blame On Mame" song is no accident; she knows the position her society has her in, and she's gotten damn good at using the tools she has available. Since she'd be treated as a sex object anyway, she's able to take advantage of it and make it work for her. She's making the most of an unfair situation.
What were all these characters doing in Argentina anyhow? Wasn’t there a war going on? Still, I’m sure it was so much nicer drinking and dancing in Buenos Aires, even if you didn’t speak the language, than doing something useful for your country. Since the Americans shown in this film are all greedy selfish criminal scum, why worry about the female? As she speaks good English and can write neatly, why doesn't she get a job?
shareShe was filthy rich because of her marriage. Women in those days who married rich languished around the pool and the bar at night. Her job was to be glamorous and sexy.
shareI believe there was a lot of profiteering, smuggling, helping nazis escape and smuggle assets out of Europe....and weapons were stolen when governments fell as in North Africa, Italy, France, Dunkirk....there were buyers among dictators in South America and Africa.... Gilda doesn't get a job because she does not want minimum wage--besides good-paying jobs were still held by males, even good secretarial jobs. Finally, those guys who avoided the draft were still hiding.
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Grizzle - check out medical and law school grads these days. Women, now that they're free to pursue their own interests, are proving to be much better than men in both talent and capability in a number of fields.
shareI won't dispute that. And I have no objection to women pursuing their own interests -- it's a great thing that women no longer feel "obliged" to a lead a certain sort of life.
The problem comes in telling women they're exactly like men. One result is an attempt to create an equality of numbers in most professions, including some that women aren't very good at.
I just purchased the LEGO MindStorms EV3 set, and was startled (that's an understatement) to see how aggressively LEGO is marketing this set to young women. Similarly, I'm unhappy with commercials telling young women that they can learn anything. This can create unreasonable expectations if a person (male of female) fails to carefully consider their strengths and weaknesses.
Someone needs to do some introspection. Most people spend NO time in their lives whatsoever thinking about how another may be taught to believe they can do anything, that they are capable of anything they set their minds to when such a thing might not be so because of gender averages?
Tests confirm that human brains are so different, that a specific woman might be far better than most every man at some task such as one using spatial orientation, even though on average, men generally are better than females are at such tasks, generally..... And one man may excel in verbal ability while in general, women are better at tasks requiring verbal ability. It's never all or none....it's "most are better..." There is always an exception. Always a female better, a female worse...a male better, a male worse. Some women are ace race car drivers, some men can't drive a car without hitting cars parked in a parking lot, not moving at all! There are female astrophysicists and male pediatric nurses. why is this even an issue in 2016?
So there is no harm encouraging everyone to follow their dreams--they may be the person who is exceptionally talented. Only losers fear being outdone by people who aren't as good as they are. And that's where only psychiatric help will make a person understand what they are doing....worrying about the wrong things. Instead, each person should worry about doing their personal best. Teach themselves to shine. Forget someone who won't be able to perform as well because of gender--it just makes a person appear to be so bad at the skillset they have to bring down someone else to pass themselves....one of those transparent arguments....