M's Musings on THE APARTMENT

The Apartment.  Dir. Billy Wilder.  Screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.  Ft. Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and Fred MacMurray.  MGM, 1960.

I know that going in, I really wasn't sure what to expect.  Given the title, I first thought it was going to be some kind of psycho thriller.  Then, Trev told me it was supposedly a comedy about a guy who had a super sweet apartment that he uses to move up the corporate ladder.  Then, I discovered that it was the follow up movie to Some Like it Hot.  So, I figured, ha ha!  It will be a funny comedy.  Then there was Jack Lemmon and I said, alright, let's do this thing!

During the first hour or so, I couldn't help but make connections between this film and Babyface.  I kept thinking about how men and women must manipulate the same structures to try to succeed in the corporate world.  Sad but true, poor Baxter loses autonomy over his place of residence in exchange for a small boost up the corporate ladder.  But, as he moves up, the game stays the same, and he continues to lose more and more.

Enter Fran, the lovely elevator operator.  Baxter's innocent love interest.  Also, unbeknownst to poor Bax,  mistress to Baxter's boss.  This is the moment when we know all will be right in the world, as Bax can save the day, get the girl, and get his apartment back.

But this is not exactly how the story unfolds.  Having a depressed Baxter bring home a woman on Christmas Eve only to find Fran having attempted suicide and dying is not exactly a fun romp through the corporate ladder.

This movie was dark.  And long!  I mean, this girl's suicide is blamed on Baxter, is literally cast off by the superior, and is left for Baxter to deal with.  And, Fran is still alive, so he has to deal with nursing her while everyone thinks he is the scum of the earth who drove her to do this.

Seriously depressing.  I'm not sure if I was in too sombre a mood to appreciate the humour of this movie, because I took it seriously, and thought it was a really bleak take on society.  Its not surprising to see how the attitudes propagated there helped create a generation of people like us, looking around, wondering why the economy, etc, is crumbling at our feet.

As much as I liked Fran in the first few scenes, her devotion to her lover seemed unusual after the suicide attempt.  I mean seriously...  what does this guy possibly having going for him?  He has some money, sure, but you returned his "payment", and now are just stuck with his less than stellar personality.

Watching Baxter act as a bachelor was the highlight for me.  When he strains his spaghetti with a tennis racket, it made my day.  Here is a guy who is just trying to do things right, and is just beaten to shit for it over and over.  I wonder if he even got to enjoy his dinner?

The ending of the movie seemed forced given all the horrible stuff that transpired throughout.  Though in some respects I got what I wanted, I left this film feeling very unsatisfied.  I think this film didn't fit comfortably into a genre, and that's ultimately what got me.  It wasn't a comedy or a tragedy.  It was just a drama that leaned in both directions at different times.

I think I would have been happier with one or the other.

M's Musings on SOME LIKE IT HOT

Some Like It Hot.  Dir. Billy Wilder.  Screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.  Based on a story by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan.  Ft.  Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.  MGM, 1959.

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.