THE SEARCHERS

Exam 4: Genre Films

Note: the password for the readings GANGSTER READING and TOOTSIE READINGS on my website is

filmclass

THE PUBLIC ENEMY

Our second unit of study is on FILM GENRES, and the genres we’ll study are the gangster film, the romantic comedy, and the western. A genre, simply stated, is a category of film like the three that we’ll be studying, but also the musical, horror film, science fiction film, film noir (Touch of Evil), war film, disaster film, or family melodrama (Far From Heaven). According to Thomas Sobchack a genre film “is a film which belongs to a particular group of films that are extremely similar in their subject matter, thematic concerns, characterizations, plot formulas, and visual settings. Such a film somehow depends on these similarities for its very existence and for the satisfactions it brings the viewer” (Hollywood Genres) Your textbook further says of genre films, “As filmmakers bring forth more variations of a genre, the genre changes, and the genre changes as the times do” (631). Thus in the evolution of films within a particular genre there will always be this balance between what an audience expects of a film and what is new to the audience, between an individual film belonging to a genre but at the same time challenging it.

FORMULA, CONVENTION, ICONOGRAPHY

How do we know, instinctively, when we’re watching a film that it belongs in a particular genre? We know this from our past experience watching films. We can identify a film as being a Western, musical, horror film, or whatever by its FORMULA PLOT, SETTING, TYPICAL CHARACTERS, and ICONOGRAPHY, and sometimes by its VISUAL STYLE.

FORMULA is “a pattern of dramatic actions or plot that becomes familiar as it is repeated with minor variations from film to film” (Sobchack). In the classic Gangster film, for instance, the formula plot runs as follows: the hero is an ambitious, independent young man, usually ethnically identified (Italian, Irish, Jewish) who comes from the lower classes in an urban setting. He becomes part of a criminal gang, and by using violent means, he rises in wealth and power through the course of the film. But it is inevitable that in the end of the film he will fall.

The SETTING of the classical gangster film is the city. In your reading for this week, Thomas Sobchack describes setting this way:

“The gangster’s milieu is the modern city, generally seen at night, with its enclsoing walls of concrete and shadow, its rain-soaked streets, and its careening black automobiles. The gangster’s setting…is one of contested space where forces of social order and anarchy are locked in an epic and unending struggle.” (83)

Conventional settings within the city include the nightclub, the gang hideout, the streets and back alleys of the city.

The TYPICAL CHARACTERS in the gangster film, beyond the hero as I’ve described him above, include sometimes a side kick (as in the western), gang bosses, ‘soldiers” who work under the bosses in the gang hierarchy, police (sometimes corrupt), women as sexual objects to be possessed by the gangster, and family members like a mother or a father (who is often either weak or dead). This nuclear family is presented in the films in opposition to (that is, in conflict with) the gang “family.”

Perhaps the way we most readily identify a film as belonging to as particular genre is through its ICONOGRAPHY. Sobchack defines an ICON as “an object, landscape, or performer who accrues symbolic as well as particular meaning and conveys that meaning through recurrence in a group of genre films.” In other words, within a particular genre, these iconic objects carry meaning that they would not necessarily carry outside of that genre. The iconography of the western is perhaps the most familiar to us of any genre: six guns, horses, the stagecoach, black hats and white hats, and so on. The iconography of the gangster film is nearly as familiar: machine guns, fast black cars (often from the 1930s, even in films shot much later), fancy clothes (and in fact the clothes of the gangster often change as he rises in power and wealth), and women dressed in sexually provocative wear. Often there are a lot of long guns and long cigars that are clearly identified with men!

Unlike other genres, the classic gangster film has a characteristic VISUAL STYLE as well. There is usually a good deal of editing and camera movement. Sometimes the view is obstructed or the frame is dark. The rhythm is often choppy, the story told in a fragmented form. Settings are often crowded with people (remember it’s an urban genre). Obligatory scenes may include a family dinner, a religious scene, the gang hideout, the police raid, as well as a shootout in an alley. The rise of the classic gangster film in the early 1930s corresponds to the rise of sound film, so sound becomes an important element, and we hear the screeching tires of getaway cars and the rat-a-tat of automatic weapons.

The question arises then, if these genre films are so much alike, and if they depend on stereotypes and conventions, why bother to study them?

We study genre films not because they are necessarily great works of art, but because our assumption is that they are reflective of the culture that produced them. In this case, American culture.

The reasoning goes something like this: Although there’s a good deal of craft and artistry that goes into the making of a film, commercial Hollywood film is and has always been primarily a business. The same is true of other elements of our popular culture. You’ve all heard the lament from sports fans that big time sports in America, even collegiate sports, is no longer carried out for the satisfactions of competition, but is first and foremost a business concerned with making the most money possible. What about television and popular music? Here too, it seems, business—making money—takes precedence over the creation of something of artistic value.

Genre theory further holds that because filmmakers are engaged in this business, they will do whatever is necessary to please an audience, since the more people they please, the more money they can make. Hence, the product—the film—can tell us something about the audience that that film is trying to please. Specifically, it can tell us something about the shared values, beliefs, symbols, myths, and likes and dislikes of that audience: which is to say, its culture.

If this theory is correct, then genre films are particularly fertile grounds for the study of culture through film. The reason is that in studying a genre, we can study not just one film to see what it tells us about the audience that liked it, but a whole series or category of films. This series of films, or genre, has perhaps lasted for fifty or even a hundred years. The first western, The Great Train Robbery was a silent short made in 1902. Another famous early silent, A Voyage to the Moon, is a French science fiction film. The first talking film, The Jazz Singer, in 1927, was somewhat of a musical. Surely if these film genres have lasted so many years, and if individual films in those genres have so many of the same characteristics, then these film genres can tell us something about the culture which has produced them. These film genres don’t exist in nature like a tree or a bird. They didn't come from god (at least not directly). They're not natural phenomena; they're cultural constructions.

THINGS TO LOOK FOR

Try to identify the Plot Formula, Setting, Typical Characters, Iconography, and Visual Style of the gangster film as it occurs in The Public Enemy. It’s not at all hard! Think about the character of Tommy Powers, as played by James Cagney. How would you describe him? How would you describe his attitude toward women and towards his family? And how might he be a precursor or forerunner to types that you see in action or crime films today?

The early 1930s were a golden era for gangster films. In 1931 and 32 Hollywood produced about 120 of these films, and people flocked to see them. This was the time of prohibition and gangsters and their misdeeds made headlines in the newspapers. Just as in today’s culture (with films involving terrorism or corporate malfeasance) people went to movies to see something of their own times, their own concerns reflected on the screen. Audiences saw these gangster films as essentially true stories. As you watch this film, ask yourself what may be the basic question we ask as students of all popular culture: why is popular culture popular?

And remember too that this is an old movie, made in 1931. I particularly enjoy the language of the times, the attitudes towards sex, the old cars, and some of the production values of the film. Much of what we see here is funny to us now, even though it wasn’t intended to be funny in 1931. I think you can enjoy that element of the film and still appreciate why it works.

AFTER FILM LECTURE

I’m sure you noticed the disclaimers at beginning and end of the film, which read as follows (overhead)

DISCLAIMERS

(Foreword)

It is the ambition of the authors of “The Public Enemy” to honestly depict an environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal.

While the story of “The Public Enemy” is essentially a true story, all names and characters appearing herein, are purely fictional.

--Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc.

(Afterword)

The END of Tom Powers is the end of every hoodlum. “The Public Enemy” is not a man nor a character—It is a problem that sooner or later WE, the public, must solve.

This gives you an idea of how controversial the film must have been upon its initial release, as innocent and in fact comical as it seems to us now. The years of the 1930s, the first years of talking pictures, were years before the Hollywood Production Code was implemented. People were becoming concerned that popular films like those in the gangster genre were causing corruption in audiences, leading people astray, and so on, something like the controversy today over violent video games. Protests ensued. Perhaps this came about because films like The Public Enemy portrayed gangsters sympathetically. Even though a central figure like Tom Powers gets his just desserts at the end of the film, his rise to power takes up much more screen time. Thus we see him powerful much more of the time than we see him humbled or dead. Yet this powerful central character of the film is a murderer and criminal. James Cagney has star power, an attractive figure to the audience.

In 1933 Hollywood initiated its Production Code, which stayed in effect until it began to be ignored by filmmakers in the 1960s (show still picture of things forbidden by code, 427), and which you read about for this week. It was only after the Code came into being that the filmmakers of The Public Enemy went back and added the disclaimers to the beginning and end of the film, trying to bring it into compliance with the new standards of the day.

I’d like to show you about eight clips from this film illustrating points I brought to your attention before the screening. But first, consider the film’s plot and content in terms of these two oppositions which are characteristic of some gangster films. By “opposition,” a term I’m borrowing from structuralist theory, I mean a conflict or inconsistency presented in a film and which reflects a concern of the audience at the time of its production. The action of the film may attempt to mediate the opposition. That is, it may attempt to erase this contradiction, to let the audience believe it can believe two opposing ideas at the same time. (More about this over the next two weeks).

Business Family

Mr. Lehman – “legitimate” businessman Ma Powers

“Nails” Nathan (like Lehman, Jewish) Molly Doyle/Mike Powers as couple

Paddy Ryan Matt Doyle/Mamie as a couple

Schemer Burns --gang bosses, both Irish

Putty Nose Kitty

“Pa” Powers

Jane (the older prostitute)

Gwen Allen

<-Tom Powers->

This chart classifies the characters of The Public Enemy in terms of their alignment in regard to one of the central oppositions in the film (and in the Gangster genre) of “business” vs. “family.” The men in the left column are listed arguably from the most powerful to the least. Mr. Lehman is the brewer, the formerly legitimate businessman made otherwise by the passage of prohibition. He is insistent that his name not be linked to any of the corrupt or violent activities that the gang undertakes to distribute his beer. His appearance in the film suggests that in the minds of the audience, the corruption of the gangsters differs from the practices of mainstream business, of American capitalism, not by its basic nature, but by degree. In other words, everyone breaks the law, some just do it more flagrantly than others. Some get caught, some don’t.

Nails Nathan would seem to represent the ideal of a gang “soldier” like Tom Powers, with his flashy clothes, money, and easy manner. The gang bosses hold power, but are less glamorous than Nails. Note that all of these characters are ethnically identified in the film. Putty Nose is more or less a small time hood. And at the bottom of the list is Pa Powers, a figure of power over the boy Tommy, but merely a police officer, and a character who is dead by the time the main action of the film begins.

On the other side of the opposition is “family.” Clearly Ma Powers is the strongest representative of this strain in the film, with her naive appraisal of her “good “ boy, her cooking and cleaning, her domestic house dress, and so on. We’re also presented with two couples in the film, the straight arrow Mike Powers is presented as a weak character, identified with home, a “sucker” who volunteers to fight in the war and is injured. But he’s paired with Molly Doyle, the sidekick gangster’s sister. Slightly less identified with family and domesticty is Matt in his role as half of a couple with Mamie. Yes, he’s a punk, but he at least has a girl.

Then we have two of the women characters, whom I’ve placed towards but not within the “family” side of the opposition. Kitty is the first girl that Tommy picks up. She’s portrayed eventually as a whining, nagging wife-figure, portrayed at breakfast with Tom. She’s rewarded for her “wifely” roll by getting a grapefruit in the face in one of the most famous scenes in American film! Slightly less domestic is Jane, the older prostitute we encounter when Tom and Matt are hiding out from Schemer Burns. It’s the way Jane talks to Tom that puts a woman like her, a prostitute, in this category: “You don’t need to be ashamed in front of me,” she says in her lilting motherly tone. She has a motherly kiss “for a fine boy.”

Caught in the middle of this opposition is the hero, Tom Powers. He wants to both remain loyal to his dear mother, to give her money and be her pal, yet be the independent tough guy who climbs the ladder of the gang’s business. He wants to have it both ways, and the film finally tells us that he can’t. You need only think of the Godfather series, where the Corleones run a “family business,” to see how this opposition plays out in a later film in the genre. The Coreleones want to follow what we might label or mislabel “family values,” but at the same time they support this family through a business that’s as violent and corrupt as it is successful. They want it both ways.

What’s more, and this is typical of the gangster genre, the gangster hero is ambivalent about sex. To the gangster, a woman is nothing more than another possession to show off to his friends. When Jane “takes advantage” of Tommy by having sex with him when he’s drunk, an act that could never have been suggested in a film after the Production Code came in force, Tommy is angry at her and hits her. As the sexual siren Gwen asks Tommy, “Do you want to be different to please your boyfriends?” In fact, the gangster’s first allegiance is to his fellow mobsters, not to his possession/girlfriends; women to the gangster are merely a sign of rising through the classes, like fancy clothes, hot cars, and the power of guns.

Gwen I place even more towards the middle on this scale. She’s primarily a sexual being, and a possession of Tommy, yet she also treats him as a child, as I’ll show you in a clip from the film in a minute.

Here’s another, different way to think about the content of the film:

Fathers Mothers

punishing fathers Ma Powers

Pa Powers (policeman, belt) Kitty

Putty Nose Gwen Allen

Schemer Burns Jane, the “mothering” prostitute

Stuffed polar bear

shadow of cop

benevolent fathers

Paddy Ryan

“Nails” Nathan

This paradigm is something of a restatement of the business/family scheme. Only here, we see fathers divided into those who punish Tom, which is most of them, and two who are more or less helpful to him (although those two are corrupt and unsympathetic in the eyes of the audience). Note that I’m including here visual representations of “father” in the form of that polar bear Tom panics and shoots during the botched robbery, and the tall shadow of the cop Tom sees in the warehouse when he’s being pursued. We’ll see that clip in a moment.

RISE AND FALL OF TOM POWERS

GAINS WEALTH/CARS/WOMEN

^ v

strong arms speakeasy owners angry at Jane/leaves rashly

^ v

dressed as delivery men/beer in milk truck Matt is killed

^ v

gets gun, but botches burglary acts rashly to get revenge

^ v

steals watches shot by Burns gang tries to repent, but too

late

CLIP ONE – credits (chapter one 0-1:00)

Even the music of the film supports the underlying business/family opposition. We hear the “domestic” theme, when the music is a gentle waltz played by strings; but the rest of the time we hear the theme (“I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”) cast in a minor key and played by brass in a more “masculine” minor key.

CLIP TWO (chapter two 1:57-4:22; chapter three 5:06-7:21)

This opening montage sets the scene (“establishing shots”) by presenting us with the urban mileu that’s the home of the gangster. We see factories, stockyards, crowded immigrant streets of a city we learn later is Chicago. It’s stock footage, obviously, that the filmmaker has borrowed. The function of the scene is to try to explain, however briefly, why the gangster has become what he has—that there is a societal responsibility for crime.

Then we get the Salvation Army band marching through, representing religion and especially temperance, the “family” side of the business/family opposition.

The scene with Tommy as a boy again shows the roots of his miscreant behavior. He calls Molly Doyle “only a girl” and tells Matt, “We got business,” and “That’s what you get for fooling around with women.” He already is uncomfortable around women not his mother (and we hear the business/family opposition).

He’s told he’s “the meanest boy in town” after he trips Molly Doyle on her skates, and calls his brother Mike a “sissy.” Then the camera dollies in with a high angle shot of the only scene in which the father appears. He speaks no lines, but only administers his violent punishment.

CLIP THREE (chapter 8, 24:00-25:00

Prohibition montage: A great bit! Here we see “ordinary” people throwing flowers out of their van in order to fill it up with booze on the day before prohibition goes into effect. We see people pushing a baby carriage full of booze bottles, corrupting the “family” symbol of the carriage for the purposes of the “business” of liquor. We see the hypocricy of the society that enacts prohibition even though so many of its members want to drink (and note that many of these people seem by their dress to be in the upper class), and we learn again some of the reason behind Tom Powers becoming a gangster, especially in the next scene when Paddy Ryan says that booze will be valuable now that prohibition is here.

CLIP FOUR & FIVE (chapter 9 30:38, chapter 9 32:03

Note than when the gangsters move up in the world, the first thing they do is get fancy new clothes and a new car—these are the trappings, the ICONS we associate with the gangster hero and the gangster genre. “Be careful” Tom tells the valet, “this ain’t no Ford.” And then when Tom tries to pick up Kitty, he says, directly, “You’re a swell dish, I could go for you.” Kitty is merely an accoutrement, another one of his gangster trappings, an object that indicates his status.

CLIP SIX chapter 11 40:46- 43:02

Note how the keg of beer is visually obstructing our view and the characters’ views of each other—its prominence in the mise en scene. Alcohol is the thing that’s dividing this family, and we see that visually represented here and at the end of the scene when Mike Powers throws the keg at the table. Note too that even the home spun Ma Powers has a glass of beer. The audience of the day, most of whom likely had not stopped drinking either, really do see Mike Powers as a “sissy,” don’t they?

CLIP SEVEN chapter 12 45:52

Grapefruit in the face. The gangster wants a woman for sex and for the status she represents to him in the eyes of others, but when it comes to being in a domestic relationship and yielding power to a woman, no one can replace Mom and the gangster “moll” shouldn’t try. This is one of the most famous scenes in Hollywood history and it helped make Cagney a star.

CLIP EIGHT chapter 17 58:47 - 1:01

Gwen Allen. Note the relative size of the figures in the mise en scene. Gwen is lying down seductively, while Tom is “erect” in the back, certainly suggestive. But Gwen in the foreground is much larger in the mise en scne. So who has the power in this shot?? Clearly the woman, through her sexual allure. Look how the siren takes the passive, powerless Tommy to her breast, again like a mother. “You’re a spoiled by, Tommy,” Gwen says. and “You’re my bashful boy.” Again we have the conflation of the woman as mother and woman as sexual object. We get similar dialogue when Jane, the older prostitute calls Tom Powers “A fine boy.”

CLIP NINE chapter 1 1:22:47 to end

Note the low angle shot and Tom, again pictured rigid and erect, falling flat on his face. Another famous movie scene.

GANGSTER FILM

THE PUBLIC ENEMY (William Wellman, 1931)

"Simply stated, a GENRE film--whether a Western, musical, film noir, or gangster film--involves familiar. . . characters acting out a predictable story pattern within a familiar setting." (Sobchack)

FORMULA “a pattern of dramatic actions or plot that becomes familiar as it is repeated with minor variations from film to film” (Sobchack).

GANGSTER PLOT FORUMULA: the hero is an ambitious, independent young man, usually ethnically identified (Italian, Irish, Jewish) who comes from the lower classes in an urban setting. He becomes part of a criminal gang, and by using violent means, he rises in wealth and power through the course of the film. But it is inevitable that in the end of the film he will fall.

TYPICAL SETTING: the modern city

TYPICAL CHARACTERS: side kick (as in the western), gang bosses and “soldiers,” police (sometimes corrupt), women as sexual objects, mother, or a father (who is either weak or dead).

ICON as “an object, landscape, or performer who accrues symbolic as well as particular meaning and conveys that meaning through recurrence in a group of genre films.” (Sobchack)

ICONOGRAPHY OF GANGSTER GENRE: machine guns, fast black cars (from the 1930s), fancy clothes, women dressed in sexually provocative wear. long guns, cigars as phallic symbols

VISUAL STYLE: much editing and camera movement, choppy rhythm, fragmented narrative. obstructed view shots, dark frame. Crowded urban settings

Typical scenes: family dinner, a religious scene, gang hideout, shootout in an alley, police raid.

Sounds: machine gun fire, screams, screeching tires

Note: the password for the readings GANGSTER READING and TOOTSIE READINGS on my website is

filmclass

TOOTSIE (Sydney Pollock, 1982)

"Simply stated, a GENRE film--whether a Western, musical, film noir, or gangster film--involves familiar. . . characters acting out a predictable story pattern within a familiar setting." (Sobchack)

ROMANTIC COMEDY

TYPICAL SETTING: none

TYPICAL CHARACTERS: male and female lead. Other competing love interests

ICON as “an object, landscape, or performer who accrues symbolic as well as particular

meaning and conveys that meaning through recurrence in a group of genre films.” (Sobchack)

ICONOGRAPHY OF ROMANTIC COMEDY: none

CHARACTERISTIC VISUAL STYLE: none

FORMULA “a pattern of dramatic actions or plot that becomes familiar as it is repeated with minor variations from film to film” (Sobchack).

ROMANTIC COMEDY is a genre identified most strongly by its plot formulas and its theme which according to Mark Rubinfield is typically “social regeneration through coupling”

TOOTSIE PLOT FORMULAS (Rubinfield):

Pursuit Plot (conventional in romantic comedies): “involves a ‘quest of conquest’ in which a hero is attracted to a heroine; courts her; encounters resistance from her; and, being a ‘real man,’ refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer. Ultimately, the hero woos her, wows her, and wins her.”

Coldhearted Redemption Plot: “features a bitter hero who is incapable of love. He is heartsick. He is, also, too heartless to know he is heartsick… What the hero most needs is a redemptive heroine.”

The Prick Foil Plot: “The hero is depicted as a ‘regular sort of guy’ who although not always in the same social class as the heroine, genuinely loves her. The prick foil, on the other hand, is typically depicted as a romantic rival who is economically and/or socially better positioned than the hero, knows it, and flaunts it.”

METHOD ACTING: “Acting in which the performer studies the background of a character in depth, immerses himself or herself in the role, and creates emotion in part by thinking of emotional situations from his or her own life that resemble those of the character.” (Phillips 636)

Depicted in the opening montage beneath the credits: Michael Dorsey and his acting students

Which interpretation of Tootsie do you find most convincing?

TOOTSIE IS PRO FEMINIST:

Dorothy's predicament-- how an actor can get a job as an actress, win the lady his male self desires and discourage the gentlemen his female surface attracts-- is food for comedy, but she herself is not a comic figure. The most important switch pulled in Tootsie is not in Michael/Dorothy's progression through gender but in the assumption that for a male to dress like a female is not, ipso facto, absurd. Not only is Dorothy a better man than Michael ever was, she is as well the woman of the year.

…Today's crop of [cross dressing] heroes/heroines--whatever their motives for cross-dressing--are mirroring contemporary sexual conflicts and attitudes. The recent plays and movies raise questions about what it means to be a woman, or a man, with some seriousness--even if the seriousness is served with a considerable admixture of mirth.

--Cantwell, Mary. “The Sexual Masquerade is Conveying a New Message,” New York Times. Jan 16, 1983.

TOOTSIE IS CONSERVATIVE, ANTI-FEMINIST:

It depicts women as weak, powerless, banal emotional blobs. They are saved only by a man's inspiring assertiveness in the guise of a soap-opera actress-heroine in designer blouses.

Dorothy is "unattractive." Dorothy is really a man. Obviously, then, the so-called "feminist message" dissolves into visual images that tell us the opposite: Dorothy is powerful in telling off Ron — Dorothy is homely. And the other women in the film are beautiful, powerless, and weak-willed. Thus, Tootsie perpetuates these unfortunate sexist stereotypes, as well as the antiquated assumptions about any connection between a woman's physical appearance and her intelligence. Finally, it must be remembered that the only person to successfully "call" Ron on his sexism is really a man.

--Deborah H. Holdstein. “Tootsie: Mixed messages.” Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983.

PLOT FORMULAE (Rubinfield):

1. Pursuit Plot (conventional in romantic comedies): “involves a ‘quest of conquest’ in which a hero is attracted to a heroine; courts her; encounters resistance from her; and, being a ‘real man,’ refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer. Ultimately, the hero woos her, wows her, and wins her.”

2. Coldhearted Redemption Plot: “features a bitter hero who is incapable of love. He is heartsick. He is, also, too heartless to know he is heartsick… What the hero most needs is a redemptive heroine.”

The Broken-Hearted Redemption Plot: hero is “more loveless than heartless; his wounds stem from loneliness, not bitterness.” Sleepless in Seattle

3. The Prick Foil Plot: “The hero is depicted as a ‘regular sort of guy’ who although not always in the same social class as the heroine, genuinely loves her. The prick foil, on the other hand, is typically depicted as a romantic rival who is economically and/or socially better positioned than the hero, knows it, and flaunts it.”

The Dweeb Foil Plot: heroine’s choice is between the hero and a man “who is such a dweeb—such a pinhead—such a schmo—that the heroine’s choice is once again ‘no choice,” at least in the all knowing eye of the audience. Sleepless in Seattle.

The Bitch Foil Plot: the hero must choose between the heroine and a bitch. Jerry Maguire.

The Temptress Foil Plot: the hero must choose between the heroine and a seductive woman. 10.

4. The Permission Plot: “depicts a romantically involved hero and heroine encountering resistance from a parent and/or authority figure who vehemently disapproves of their relationship.” It Happened One Night (1934) Titanic.

TOOTSIE introduction

Our second week in the study of film genres will be given over to the Romantic Comedy and the film Tootsie, directed by Sydney Pollock in 1983. Note that the film is ranked second only to Some Like it Hot by the American Film Institute in its list of 100 top American comedies. In its day, Tootsie was nearly as well received as it is highly thought of today. It was Oscar-nominated in ten categories, including best picture, and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Jessica Lange (who, in my opinion, gives a rather flat performance in a role that was maybe the least interesting in the film—see what you think!)

Equally important perhaps is that Tootsie was the top grossing comedy of all time up to 1982. I say this because, as you remember from my talk last week, a genre film is important to us as film students because of what it tells us about the beliefs, the likes and dislikes, the culture, of the audience at the time of its production. Being so wildly popular in its day, Tootsie must have struck a chord with its audience. The question we can ask is why that was so.

I’ve given you again Thomas Sobchack’s definition of a genre film: “Simply stated, a genre film--whether a Western, musical, film noir, or gangster film--involves familiar. . . characters acting out a predictable story pattern within a familiar setting."

The Romantic Comedy is unusual as a genre because, as you see from my overhead, there is no particular setting typical of the genre. The films can be set in New York, Seattle, or in the countryside. There are really not typical characters in the genre, beyond of course the romantic leads. And unlike the gangster film with its machine guns, fast cars, and stylish clothes; or the Western with its six guns, horses, and broad vistas of the American West, there is no iconography identified with the Romantic Comedy. Nor is there a characteristic visual style.

Instead, the Romantic Comedy is defined almost exclusively by its plot formulas and its themes, so that is what I’ll be talking about after the film. The conventional theme of the Romantic Comedy is, according to Mark Rubinfield in his book Bound to Bond: Gender, Genre, and the Hollywood Romantic Comedy, “social regeneration through coupling.” That is, we know at the beginning of the film that in a conventional Romantic Comedy the male and female lead will end up together; our interest is merely in seeing how they’ll get there. What’s more we in the audience see this coupling as natural, as supporting the social order, the way things ought to be. The Musical is another genre that usually offers this kind of pro-social, pro-status quo resolution.

Many film scholars have tried to describe and categorize the many variations in the plot formula of the Romantic Comedy. I’ll talk a little more about that after the film, but for now, here are the descriptions of three of those categories that Rubinfield feels apply to Tootsie. Note that he posits that each individual film will usually follow more than one formula.

Pursuit Plot (conventional in romantic comedies): “involves a ‘quest of conquest’ in which a hero is attracted to a heroine; courts her; encounters resistance from her; and, being a ‘real man,’ refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer. Ultimately, the hero woos her, wows her, and wins her.” (4)

Coldhearted Redemption Plot: “features a bitter hero who is incapable of love. He is heartsick. He is, also, too heartless to know he is heartsick… What the hero most needs is a redemptive heroine.” (13)

The Prick Foil Plot: “The hero is depicted as a ‘regular sort of guy’ who although not always in the same social class as the heroine, genuinely loves her. The prick foil, on the other hand, is typically depicted as a romantic rival who is economically and/or socially better positioned than the hero, knows it, and flaunts it.” (34)

As you watch the film, see if you agree that it fits into Rubinfield’s template.

***

In your reading for this week I had you look at two articles from the time of the film’s release that presented opposing views of Tootsie. Clearly a mainstream Romantic Comedy made in 1983 that takes as its subject a man cross dressing as a woman is going to initiate a discussion of gender. Keep in mind the currents of the times of the film’s production: The Equal Rights Amendment has only recently failed to win ratification in enough state legislatures to become the law of the land. Ronald Reagan has been elected president two years before, signaling a turn in a socially conservative direction in the country. And what had been known popularly as “women’s liberation” in the 1970s is coming to be known as “feminism” in the popular mindset. Issues of gender identity and equality are on everyone’s mind.

Perhaps viewing Tootsie with twenty five years’ hindsight, we’re tempted see the issues that the film brings up as long settled, as dated. The general social consensus now is that women should be treated fairly and equally in the workplace. The politics of relationships seems to have struck more of a balance than it perhaps did in the early 80s. And we are a culture today more accepting of all kinds of difference, including gender difference—though how much more accepting we are remains open to debate.

But viewing the film as a product of its time, which of the following interpretations of the film do you see as more accurate? These excerpts are drawn from your reading for this week:

TOOTSIE IS PRO FEMINIST:

--Cantwell, Mary. “The Sexual Masquerade is Conveying a New Message,” New York Times. Jan 16, 1983.

TOOTSIE IS CONSERVATIVE, ANTI-FEMINIST:

It depicts women as weak, powerless, banal emotional blobs. They are saved only by a man's inspiring assertiveness in the guise of a soap-opera actress-heroine in designer blouses.

--Deborah H. Holdstein. “Tootsie: Mixed messages.” Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983.

Finally, a footnote: I had you for this week look at the pages in your text that describe Method Acting. Your text defines it as follows:

We won’t really see a good example of method acting this semester (such as in the work of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and others). Neither are Dustin Hoffman or Jessica Lange or others in the cast of Tootsie known as Method Actors.

However, depicted in the film’s opening montage, beneath the credits, you’ll see Michael Dorsey teaching an acting class to his students. The exercises they’re doing are probably drawn from the method actor’s playbook.

AFTER THE FILM LECTURE

First, let me present Mark Rubinfield’s classification system of plot formulae in the Romantic Comedy and note the way that Tootsie does or does not follow the various formulae.

THE FOUR HOLLYWOOD LOVE STORIES

1. Pursuit Plot (conventional in romantic comedies): “involves a ‘quest of conquest’ in which a hero is attracted to a heroine; courts her; encounters resistance from her; and, being a ‘real man,’ refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer. Ultimately, the hero woos her, wows her, and wins her.”

[Tootsie: While Michael Dorsey does not set out from the beginning of the film to “win” Julie’s heart, it’s clear that soon after they’ve met this becomes his goal, and a goal that has transcended and surpassed his goal of success as an actor. From his discovery of his affection for Julie at Les’s farm, to his unmasking himself, to the last scene of the film, he clearly “won’t take no for an answer.”]

2a. Coldhearted Redemption Plot: “features a bitter hero who is incapable of love. He is heartsick. He is, also, too heartless to know he is heartsick… What the hero most needs is a redemptive heroine.”

[Tootsie: Michael’s bitterness seems to be related more to his failures as an actor than his inability to find a partner. Note, though, that early in the film, at his birthday party, we see him use every insincere pick up line imaginable on the women there. We also learn that most of the people at the party he didn’t know: Michael is not a popular guy! Meeting Julie “redeems” Michael in that not only does he become capable of romantic love, we assume he’s not going to be a jerk anymore in other areas of his life as well. In seeing the world from a women’s perspective, he has now become a “better man as a woman.”]

3a. The Prick Foil Plot: “The hero is depicted as a ‘regular sort of guy’ who although not always in the same social class as the heroine, genuinely loves her. The prick foil, on the other hand, is typically depicted as a romantic rival who is economically and/or socially better positioned than the hero, knows it, and flaunts it.”

[Tootsie: A “foil” is a character in a narrative, usually a secondary character, who is set up in contrast to the hero. The Prick Foil in this film is Ron. He’s clearly unlikable, and he qualifies as being “economically and socially better positioned” than the professional outcast/loser Michael. Is Michael a “regular sort of guy”? In some ways, maybe. But Dustin Hoffman’s persona and appeal as an actor has been in playing “regular guy” sort of roles, to his generation of actors what Henry Fonda perhaps was to a previous generation. Social class is less important here than in many romantic comedies, especially earlier ones. But one difference between the two leads is Julie’s apparent success in the profession and Michael’s failure.]

Keep in mind that Rubinfield wrote these definitions of the formulae without Tootsie particularly in mind. They apply to many romantic comedies. Thus we see, upon closer examination, just how very similar films within a genre are to one another, and how powerful to us as audience these formulae must be.

What about the other plot formulae that Tootsie does not follow?

2b. The Broken-Hearted Redemption Plot: is similar to the Cold Hearted Redemption plot, the difference being that the hero is “more loveless than heartless; his wounds stem from loneliness, not bitterness.” (27) The film you may know best that fits in to this category is Sleepless in Seattle, in which the Tom Hanks character is heartbroken at the death of his wife, until he meets Meg Ryan.

3b. The Dweeb Foil Plot: similar to the Prick Foil Plot except that the heroine’s choice is not between the hero and a prick, but between the hero and a man “who is such a dweeb—such a pinhead—such a schmo—that the heroine’s choice is once again ‘no choice,’” (45) at least in the all knowing eye of the audience. Sleepless in Seattle follows this plot, when at the outset of the film Meg Ryan is engaged to Walter, who is unexciting, unromantic, and allergic to everything.

3c. The Bitch Foil Plot (49): is the inverse of the above two, in that here it is the hero who must choose between the heroine and a bitch. Jerry Maguire is perhaps the film you know best that follows this formula, when Tom Cruise is initially aligned with Kelly Preston.

3d. The Temptress Foil Plot (55): is also the inverse of the first two, except the hero must choose between the heroine and a seductive woman. In 10, for instance, Dudley Moore must choose between Julie Andrews and Bo Derek.

4. The Permission Plot: “depicts a romantically involved hero and heroine encountering resistance from a parent and/or authority figure who vehemently disapproves of their relationship.” (63)It shows up primarily in older Romantic Comedies like It Happened One Night (1934), but a more recent example, though not a comedy, would be Titanic.

***

Next, a few words about the history and development of the Romantic Comedy genre in film. In a recent article in the New York Times, film critic A. O. Scott decries what he sees as the dumbing down of the genre. He observes that every year in late winter and early spring Hollywood approaches its

“…designated season of mediocrity, a time for predictable, unchallenging genre movies. Horror and action for the teenagers, sappy family comedies for the kids, and, for grown women and their companions, stories of dating and mating decked out with tame Mars-and-Venus jokes and preordained happy endings...

Does that sound cynical? Perhaps, but I don’t think the cynicism is mine... The dispiriting, uninspired sameness of romantic comedy strikes me as something of a scandal…. If you have seen 27 Dresses — or last year’s Because I Said So, let’s say, or the other Mandy Moore wedding-theme comedy that came out in 2007, or any of the dozens like them disgorged by the studios in the past decade or so — you will know what I mean. How did this genre fall so far, from one that reliably deployed the talents of the movie industry’s best writers, top directors and biggest stars to a source of lazy commercial fodder?”

If you’re a romantic comedy fan, you might not like or agree with his appraisal. But if you are a fan of the genre, I would suggest seeing some earlier romantic comedies to see if you think today’s offerings measure up or if you perhaps agree with Scott that the genre has gone downhill.

The golden age of the romantic comedy was the 1930s and 1940s, a time in which the “Screwball Comedy” became popular. These films such as It Happened One Night, The Lady Eve, His Girl Friday, and Ball of Fire (to mention a few of my own favorites) are interesting to many film scholars today because they tended to feature a woman as the main character, and an independent woman at that. This is unusual in that most genres—western, gangster, sci fi, horror, even the musical,--more often offer us a male hero. We thus think of genre films more often than not as a conservative, pro-social force that tends to support the status quo—which is to say genre films support patriarchy and the traditional idea that the woman’s place is in the home.

Mark Rubinfield argues that in order to be considered a Screwball Comedy (rather than merely a romantic comedy), a film must meet all five of these requirements:

1) frenetic action and pacing

2) verbal sniping between the hero and heroine symbolizing the war of the sexes

3) mistaken identities, including confused, and/or ambiguous sexual identities or gender roles

4) a love story

5) a caper plot (which he defines as a “wily heroine using her brains (and sometimes her brawn) to outwit a villain or villains (usually, but not always, male)”) (100)

(Interestingly, Tootsie easily meets requirements 3 and 4. And if you consider Dorothy as a woman rather than a man, then it meets #5 as well. But missing is the verbal sniping between the male and female leads, and the pacing of the film is more deliberate than those in the Screwball genre. Again, I suggest you check out these lively films if you like, perhaps as the basis of your extra credit insurance paper.)

As times goes on, films in any genre must change to meet the changing demands on an audience. Viewers still want to recognize the conventions of the gangster film, western, or romantic comedy, but at the same time they want to see variations in the formulae of the films that seem to speak to their lives today.

Thus by the 1960s and 1970s, times of social unrest and the rise of the women’s movement, the romantic comedy was beginning to reflect the trends of the day. Instead of “social regeneration through coupling,” in the words of Rubinfield, we began to see “self actualization through uncoupling.” In other words we began to see films in which the romantic couple did not end up together at the end of the film! Titles that you may recognize which fit this description of theme include Annie Hall, Manhattan, Carnal Knowledge, An Unmarried Woman, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Shampoo.

That brings us up to 1983 and Tootsie. Clearly the cross dressing in the plot makes this a different flavor of Romantic Comedy, one that at least attempts to speak to the issues of the day in regards to gender and women’s roles in romantic relationships and in the workplace. How well does it do this and what position does it finally support?

I can safely say that I’m not entirely sure, which keeps the film interesting for me on repeated viewings.

Cantwell argues that Tootsie asks its audience to consider the questions basic to the feminism of its day, questions of gender identity, and thus its message is pro feminist:

“What, besides the obvious, … is a male? A female? What constitutes "masculine" or "feminine" behavior? Is anyone wholly feminine or masculine, or are we all at different points on a continuum? It is a revolution that was spawned a vastly greater tolerance for unconventional sexual behavior than was imaginable 20 years ago.”

Indeed, the plot of the film offers a great deal to support Cantwell’s position. From her first audition, Dorothy is a mouthpiece for the liberating rhetoric of the day. “You want some gross caricature of a woman,” she tells Ron, the sexist director of Southwest General, “to prove some idiot point like power makes women masculine, or masculine women are ugly.” And later she insists that he “stop thinking of me as a woman, and start thinking of me as a person.” And of course there is Dorothy’s insistence that her name isn’t Tootsie or Honey or Sweetheart, but Dorothy.

In the course of shooting the soap opera, Michael (or is it Dorothy?) decides to take Sandi’s advice and start making up her own lines. This too allows the film to make stronger “women’s liberation” statements, as, for instance, when Dorothy tells the woman in the hospital bed that a woman with two children should not go back to the husband who beat her and get therapy herself. Instead she should get mad and, as Dorothy does, throw a flower pot against the wall. Dorothy vows to give every nurse a cattle prod to zap the philandering Dr, X “in his bedubies.” We learn that women all over the country, including the Agent’s secretary, take the independent Dorothy as a hero and role model.

Fine, Deborah Holdstein might say in response to Cantwell, in the other article I asked you to read for this week, “Tootsie: Mixed Messages.” Fine, except that Dustin Hoffman/Michael Dorsey…is a man! It’s hard to argue that the comic figure of Sandi is not the “weak, powerless, banal emotional blob” that Holdstein describes. Michael is four hours late for a dinn