Gender and performativity. This film was made for a women's studies classroom. Whether you like it or hate it, it does an amazing job of showing and telling the ways in which femininity and womanhood are performed actions that are associated with attributes and characteristics that are learned and reproduced based on culturally inherited values. When we see the 'gals', Josephine and Daphne overemphasize words, practice their walks, raise their voices, it is only the beginning. When we see Sugar (seriously?) use her body and play the "saviour" of Shell Oil Jr's lost manhood, or when we see Daphne accept Osgood's proposal to take him for all his money, we see femininity at its extremes. No matter how you see it, this movie is fun.
It seems to me that this film relies on the time honoured comedic tradition of gender bending in a way that is not particularly nuanced, or any any way remarkable. But, its conventions, which we are all familiar with make us positively anticipate the action and plan accordingly. You don't watch a comedy like this for its underlying message. You watch it so that men need to readjust their boobs, and realize that being a woman is a whole lot harder than it looks.
I really like that the Joe/Josephine character performs economic status as well as gender. These social conventions are all equally false, but they are rooted in things we find important. I tried to discuss performativity with a group of second year English students once. They understood gender, but they didn't understand race. It took a bunch of tries, but in the end, they got it through a mix of Stuff White People Like and White Chicks. Performance of wealth I think is a something universally relatable, and something many people feel more comfortable with than the idea of performing gender or race. We know that when we buy name brand clothes, wax our car, or tell our date they can order anything they want off the menu, we are trying to improve how we are perceived economically. When Joe becomes Shell Oil, Jr, Sugar treats him differently. In fact, she responds by creating a higher economic status for herself though stories of the conservatory and coming out parties.
This movie was a product of its time. I don't think we could see it recreated in the same way right now. Interestingly, like Baby Face, the film was tried by the film board for its sexuality. Marilyn Monroe's kisses were too hot for the National Legion of Decency, which classified it as condemned. Since this was the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s, this rating did not result in a censored version being released. Instead, it resulted in the disbanding of the Production Code several years later. That said, this film did not get approval from the MPAA, and so it was not released with this endorsement, which we in today's society just assume is there, and really don't know the difference one way or the other. We live in a time which is somehow both more tolerant, and more interested in controlling. Now we are allowed to be make more sexually focused films, but we aren't allowed to produce a Hollywood film that does not pass a board verdict. So, though we are less aware of it, censorship of sexuality is still a major part of modern filmmaking. This goes against the themes of this movie, and those like it, which encourage us to explore sexuality and the conventions that surround it and pollute it.
My one major reminder, as is the case in all entertainment which uses the convention of gender bending, is that those who are fooled always forgive and forget. I have yet to see a comedy, from Twelfth Night to Tootsie, where gender confusion is treated as a serious problem. Its like it is allowable for us to step outside gender conventions, as long as it isn't for "real". What about the people who really do want or need to perform a gender other than the one pushed on them by their genitalia? No one is ever upset in comedies when people confuse gender boundaries, which, in real life, can be extremely poorly received. The reality of these situations is that people place WAY too much stock into gender categories. Many, many types of abuse happen as a result of an over reliance on these pretend differences between men and women. Dramas such as Boys Don't Cry treat this issue with the seriousness we need to remember these issues are rooted in.
We laugh when we see something that makes us uncomfortable. This gives us an opportunity to explore why these things are important to us, and whether they have any real inherent value at all. Marilyn Monroe's femininity is more over the top in this movie than is the case in any of the hyperbolic gesturing either of the men make in that direction. So, break this down, think about it... and then imagine Josephine in a bathtub with a suit on under the bubble bath, and makeup and a wig on her face. The person in there is neither of these, but instead, exists somewhere on the spectrum in between them. That's where the rest of us are, too... somewhere in the suds.
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