Disturbing Misogyny


Has anyone else noticed how disturbingly misogynistic this film is? Of course, most movies from the 50's are reflective of their time with regards to the treatment of women, but Keeee-ripes! Douglas Henderson, the actor who portrays the Zoologist, can be seen savagely beating and tossing the women about like rag dolls throughout the movie all under the guise of saving them from harm. Really unpleasant.

A very accurate review of this by a blogger (not myself) can be seen here:

http://www.radiationcinema.com/2009/05/fast-cheap-world-of-mr-big.html

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I agree. What else are we to conclude about an era that produced entertainment dialogue such as "Ward, weren't you a little hard on the beaver last night?"

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I am glad to see that I'm not the only one who noticed this. My thought is that either the actor was going through a difficult divorce or the actress had refused his advances. Or maybe he was gay. In the scene where he holds the blonde actress to comfort her, he has a death grip on her arms and is bending backwards to stay away from her. Whatever the reason, those women took a beating. There is also the scene where they first pull the inflatable raft up to the island, and he doesn't pull it in close enough. That woman steps into water above her boots. All in all, I hope her boyfriend punched that jerk in the nose for being such a bastard.

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Whoaaaaa..there boy! Hold your horses! "Or maybe he was gay?" Are you entered in some kind of Stupid Remark of the Decade Contest? I'm a gay man and I treat all people with kindness and respect. I think most gay men do. In fact, most men do. I'm watching the MST3K version of this and they comment on this guy, too. He did seem to have a problem pushing women around.
But, "Or maybe he was gay?" hehehe.. Thanks for the laugh.

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Certainly this movie is misogynistic, but then that's typical of mid-50s attitudes, and I wouldn't read too much into it. A lot of movies, especially cheaper ones, had similar undercurrents, often used for crude, dopey humor, and unfortunately this was all too standard for the time. I doubt anyone, including the actresses, gave these attitudes a second thought, so ingrained were they in the culture of the period.

What's interesting is that these misogynist barbs were masked behind a veneer of apparent equality of treatment for women, as two of the four crew members are females, both qualified specialists in their fields. Yet except to get two "dames" in the movie, there was no particular reason, as far as the basic plot goes, that all four of the crew couldn't just as well have been men. The romantic subplots were tedious and unnecessary save to spin out the film's brief running time. And, naturally, despite the seeming equal regard for women as qualified professionals, both quickly descend into "girly" actions like giving priority to a bath in the lake, and, later, screaming hysterically at any danger and being reduced to helpless sobbing until the men come to the rescue.

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terryinwva has made an extensive reply to the "maybe he was gay" nonsense. So I'll just add: john, have you any idea how clueless you sound? Gay men invariably revere and adore women - in my (decades of) life experience the worst wife-beaters are heterosexual.

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[deleted]

Obviously - homosexual men wouldn`t even have wives.

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Gay men do not revere or adore women, that is just another stereotype.

You've obviously never been around to here them refer to women as "fish." Gay men often resent women as competition or use them as sport in the fashion industry.

Couture fashion seems to be devoted to making a female look as ridiculous as possible while telling her she is as attractive as possible. Gay men typically have NO IDEA what makes women attractive to men any more than the guy at the local redneck bar truly understand what makes men attractive to women or gay men.

And on a final note, the worst wife beaters I've ever seen, and most law enforcement officers would tend to agree, are lesbians. Of course when it comes to spousal abuse, it's really hard to qualify "worst" once you get past a certain point where it is all just "horribly bad."

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Less prevalent in A pictures. Uncouth characters apparently more numerous in the low budget end of the movie business.

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[deleted]

Only a misandrist uses words like misogyny.

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Oh, Jesus.

"He's already attracted to her. Time and monotony will do the rest."

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Only a misogynist uses words like misandrist.

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Well, the current socially accepted definition of Misogyny is differetn from what it was just a decade ago, much less 60 years ago. I think you are over-reacting a bit here.

I don't think this film was particularly out of touch with what was common thought in 1955, however the main actor was in some sort of sour mood all the way through the film, not only bad towards the women. He maybe wasn't too happy with his association with the film or had trouble with the director, or even something personal going on.

I also think some of the directing was probably pretty harsh towards everyone, and is eveident by the running away from the island where the actors fall down, men and women both, and have to get up and speed on. This was typical of a low budget film where there would have been one take of any sccene as long as the take was workable. So when the lady steps in the water over her boot, she just has to troop on and keep in character, or when anyone trips and falls, they get up and keep on going.

You hear about this kind of stuff happening all the time even in grade A studio productions.

As has been stated here, the fact that two of the crew were women is a positive thing, even though the women were there as romantic objects and were viewed as women were in the 1950s.

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The Eyes of the City are Mine! Mother Pressman / Anguish (1987)

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I think the OP is overdoing it a bit too. The men weren't beating up or being cruel or crude toward the women.

But the fact that the film ostensibly makes a blow for equality by making two of the characters highly qualified women, then promptly negates most of that by relegating them to second-tier status by emphasizing them as love interests who need men to save them, is lamentable -- though entirely predictable. Much better films than King Dinosaur resorted to such easy stereotypes back then, so we shouldn't expect anything novel from one of the worst movies ever made!

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Agree. The zoologist can be seen tossing and hitting his wife first when she's trying to treat the wounded guy and then when she's trying to flee the explosion of the atom bomb. What an a-hole. This goes beyond even the common trope of the "damsel in distress", when we have women who are too dumb and weak to defend themselves and rely upon men to save them, to actually show violence against women as a normal thing. More than unpleasant, it is disgusting.

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Misogyny as defined by the liberals as any man that doesn't kiss your ass because you're a woman and give you 99% of our paycheck.

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