The Demonized Woman - Essay Example

 The Demonized Woman It is through the analysis of film that we can understand the values and ideologies emerging from our culture and gain a glimpse into how the powers that be define us, a sort of ‘single voice’ that works to promote the status quo or to effect social change. This ‘single voice’ typically belongs to those who hold the power and leaves very little room for differences of opinion. “Broadly speaking, the media exist in a very close, sympathetic relationship to power and established values. They favor a consensus view of any problem: they reflect overwhelmingly middle class attitudes and experience” (Hall, 1974). More than simply speaking of the news or documentary forms of media, Hall’s ideas encompass the world of entertainment media as well. He indicates that even here, where the goal is supposed to be strictly entertainment, the media continues its long-standing tradition of reinforcing middle-class society’s concepts of the world. In order to appeal to the middle class, many of the films that come out of Hollywood tend to reflect the hopes and dreams of this class of society, primarily as they are defined by those in power, namely the white male. This typically involves the concept that the female remains properly submissive to the white male’s rule regardless of what women may desire. While a woman is occasionally allowed to enter this world, it is only at the invitation and assistance of a white man and, as she became increasingly more threatening following the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, was strongly encouraged to return home throughout the ‘80s. All of this is communicated through the films produced in Hollywood during this time period. “In typical themes, women were set against women; women’s anger at their social circumstances was depoliticized and displayed as personal depression instead; and women’s lives were framed as morality tales in which the ‘good mother’ wins and the independent woman gets punished. And Hollywood restated and reinforced the backlash thesis: American women were unhappy because they were too free; their liberation had denied them marriage and motherhood” (Faludi, 1991: 113). For example, in the film Fatal Attraction (1987), the independent character Alex Forrest is portrayed as a monstrous example of femininity by contrasting her against the ‘perfect’ housewife example of another character, Beth. To understand the concepts involved in this dramatic contrast of women, it is necessary to investigate the ideals of the True Woman as it has traditionally been defined as it contrasts with the concepts of the New Woman who emerged during the 60s and 70s and was now threatening men’s ideas of themselves. Starting with Barbara Welter in the mid-1960s, feminist scholarship has explored the various issues and aspects of the ‘cult of True Womanhood.’ This phrase refers to an ideology that developed in the mid-nineteenth century that defined what it meant to be a True Woman in America during that time period as it is represented in the written records of diaries, journals, newspapers, magazines and other media. “The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife – woman. Without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was ashes. With them, she was promised happiness and power” (Welter 1966 p. 152). By comparing the ideals of the True Woman with the character of Beth in the film, it is quickly apparent that the narrative is intentionally reintroducing these concepts as the essence of appropriate female activity. The character traits of the True Woman are exemplified in the character of Beth as she appears throughout the film, typically within the home or closely associated with it. Of the various times when Beth appears in the film, there are only two scenes in which she is not placed within the home setting. The first of these is when she attends a party with Dan toward the beginning of the film, making it clear that she is uncomfortable within this setting and looking to Dan for reassurance. The second time she appears outside of either her home or her mother’s home is very brief as she enjoys an evening at the bowling alley with Dan and their friends, but even here, she is not seen in action. In every other scene, she appears as loving wife and mother, patiently instructing her young daughter, cooking, cleaning and lavishing attention on her husband. She is even seen to be the driving force in getting the family to move back to the country, returning to the idealized image of life prior to industrialization and the building up of cities. Welter and others hypothesized in the 60s that it became necessary for women to uphold the traditional ideologies the family had held dear while in a rural setting, thereby restricting them to a single idealized image of what embodies the True Woman. “The nineteenth-century American man was … at work long hours in a materialistic society. The religious values of his forebears were neglected in practice if not in intent, and he occasionally felt some guilt that he had turned this new land, this temple of the chosen people, into one vast countinghouse. But he could salve his conscience by reflecting that he had left behind a hostage, not only to fortune, but to all the values which he held so dear and treated so lightly. Woman, in the cult of True Womanhood … was the hostage in the home” (Welter 1966 p. 21). According to Poovey (1988), it was by “linking morality to a figure (rhetorically) immune to the self-interest and competition integral to economic success, [the cult] preserved virtue without inhibiting productivity” thus creating a perfect world in which men were free to pursue every material pursuit they wished while women were constrained to remain at home and protect the moral and ethical values of the family unit. Beth and her activities represent a dramatic return to this cult of femininity and a rejection of the New Woman ideals of the feminist movement. At the same time it was working to constrain women within a codified image, this thought process of the True Woman served as the catalyst to push women into the public sphere. In describing the types of woman that emerged from this culture, Welter explained “some challenged the standard, some tried to keep the virtues and enlarge the scope of womanhood. Somehow through this mixture of challenge and acceptance, or change and continuity, the True Woman evolved into the New Woman” (Welter 1966 p. 174). The New Woman was the woman who emerged as the business executive and the independent single woman exemplified in the film by Alex Forrest. Roberts (2002) explained “A few directly challenged the cult, for which they were excommunicated from polite society and relegated to the ‘lower orders’ occupied by ‘fallen women,’ female laborers, immigrants and slaves.” For these women, accepting the yoke of the True Woman was a hindrance to their expressing what they felt were equally valid thoughts and ideas, wishing to be able to pursue their limits to the same degree as men without the unnatural restrictions imposed on them by those men. Thus, these women were in direct competition with men, not just for the available jobs, but also for the principles of ‘manliness’ as they refused to allow men to be their protectors or guardians. They were completely out from under men’s control and refused to give up this independence regardless of the consequences. “The female villains are all women who fail to give up their independence, like the … homicidal career woman in Fatal Attraction” (Faludi, 1991: 116). When Alex is first seen, her hair is styled like a lion’s mane, she has an angry look on her face and she’s actually hostile toward Jimmy’s initial advances. This is in spite of the fact that she is wearing an obviously inviting shiny black leather dress that is open in the front. According to Faludi, “Originally, the wife, Beth, had a job as a teacher that she was anxious to resume. But by the final version, all traces of a career were excised and Beth transformed into the complete Victorian hearth angel (a la the prototypical Victorian ‘Beth’ of Little Women), sipping tea, caressing piano keys and applying cosmetics with an almost spiritual ardor” (1991: 120). Thus, the two women are automatically diametrically opposed as one is the quintessential housewife while the other emerges as a high-powered book editor. In contrast to the country setting of the house Beth wants to move her family into, just down the street from her mother’s home, Alex lives in a starkly white loft apartment just above the meat packing district, as is emphasized every time her home is shown. “It was his [Lyne’s] idea to dress her [Alex] up in black leather and turn her apartment into a barren loft in New York’s meat market district, ringed by oil drums that burned like witches’ cauldrons.” (Faludi, 1991: 120). In a majority of her scenes, Alex is dressed in the color black, only once tempered by gray. Far from the passive activities Beth participates in as the escort of her husband, Alex is seen to take on a much more manly role. It is Alex who initiates the affair with Dan by flirting with him first at the party, then in their business meeting and then enticing him out to dinner after having rescued him from the rain. She aggressively pursues sex with him in non-traditional places such as the kitchen and the elevator and draws him out to wild, sensual places such as the salsa club where she actively participates in the dance. Her aggressiveness continues to emerge as she refuses to allow Dan to leave her after their second night together and then becomes increasingly aggressive as the movie progresses. Although Alex doesn’t always appear in black leather, the times she appears in white are typically those times when she is attempting to take on the role of the True Woman although this is well outside of her realm of expertise. Her apartment is seen as a lifeless expanse of white as if Alex is doing everything she can to associate herself with the pure white woman of the household, pure of spirit and ready to be the proper wife and mother to any man willing to whisk her away to happiness. As she and Dan have sex the first time, the phallic symbol of their climax is presented as the bubbling teakettle sitting on the stove. When she calls him the day after, she is again seen in white as she talks on the phone with him, trying to encourage him to come back over in a soft and alluring yet determined voice, “Bring the dog, I love animals. I’m a great cook … You can work here, I won’t disturb you, I promise. I’ll be a good girl.” The day is spent in a very domestic way with Dan and Alex playing in the park with Dan’s dog Quincy and then returning to Alex’s house where she engages in preparing spaghetti with a dishtowel thrown over her shoulder like a misplaced apron. However, the kitchen appears to be full of smoke while she’s cooking and their conversation during dinner focuses on the fact that Dan is married and this evening is as far as their affair is going to go. In her final attempt to appear as the ideal feminine, Alex attempts to play the part of Madam Butterfly and slits her wrists when Dan prepares to leave for his wife, but this momentary weakness is averted and Alex becomes increasingly masculine in her pursuit of what she wants. At first, this pursuit is seen as justified as Alex attempts to get Dan to take responsibility for his own actions. This is first seen when Dan prepares to leave the second time and Alex confronts him with his tendency to run off whenever they’ve made love. She corrects his assumption about them having a good time by pointing out, “you thought you’d have a good time, you didn’t stop to think for a second to think about me.” Two weeks later, signified by the night of the Madam Butterfly concert Alex invited Dan to, Alex is again trying to contact Dan, finally calling him at 2:15 in the morning and demanding that he meet her the next day, specifying the time and place rather than allowing him to get away with a vague promise to call in the ‘morning’. During this meeting, Dan appears as the irrational one as he screams at her and she answers in a reasonable voice, “If you’d agreed to see me I wouldn’t have called you” and again points out, “You mean you’ve had your fun, now you just want a quiet life” when she wants to tell him that she’s pregnant. As they discuss this new development, it is first assumed that because she is a single adult woman, she must be promiscuous, then it is insinuated that she should have been responsible to ensure pregnancy did not occur and finally that she will have an abortion because she is not married. Despite her claim that she can raise the child on her own, it becomes clear that Alex is hoping Dan will somehow opt to share his life with her, thus attaining the perfect happiness Beth has found. The concept that Dan should be held accountable for his own actions is a reflection of the original script and producer’s vision for the film. Screenwriter and director James Dearden reportedly intended the story to explore the responsibility one should take for another person’s pain and suffering. “He wanted to examine how this man, who inflicted pain, no matter how unintentionally, must eventually hold himself accountable” (Faludi, 1991: 118). According to production manager Sherry Lansing, “I always wanted to do a movie that says you are responsible for your actions … And what I liked in the short film was that the man is made responsible. That there are consequences for him. When I watched that short film, I was on the single woman’s side. And that’s what I wanted to convey in our film. I wanted the audience to feel great empathy for the woman” (Faludi, 1991: 118). It isn’t until the Dark Woman, Alex, meets with the White Woman, Beth, that these contrasts are brought into full color, still in keeping with the ideals of True Womanhood and allowing the passive housewife to win against the overly aggressive independent career woman. “In response to dramatic economic and political upheavals, they [19th century Americans] constructed white, middle-class ‘True Women’ as the gladiators at the gate, fending off the evils that accompanied the pursuit of wealth and power by bourgeois men and the expansion of cities, factories, and plantations that fed their success. Yet this was a warrior without armor taking her stand behind a white picket fence. As Welter noted, the nineteenth-century True Woman had ‘to uphold the pillars of the temple with her frail white hand.’” (Hewitt 2002 p. 157). This is exactly the position taken by Beth as she first tells Alex over the phone: “This is Beth Gallagher. If you ever come near my family again I’ll kill you, do you understand?” and then hangs up just before she kicks Dan out of the house for cheating on her. It is reinforced when she actually follows through on this threat when Alex jumps out of the bathtub to kill Dan with her meat cleaver. “The evil Alex invades, clutching a meat cleaver, and Dan grabs her by the throat, tries to drown her in the tub. But it is up to the dutiful wife to deliver the fatal shot, in the heart” (Faludi, 1991: 122) as defendress of the home. By refocusing attention on the wife in the home, American film producers are attempting to reinstate men as the dominant members of society, the rule-makers and the active partner, returning society to a condition in which they retain their old power and strength rather than being forced to relinquish anything. In first reducing Alex to a voice on a cassette tape and then silencing her altogether by choking the life out of her, Dan asserts his masculinity and dominance while Beth, in shooting Alex without a quiver, proves her right to defend her home and family while still retaining her happiness in being able to be ‘merely’ a wife and mother. While the argument presented through this film and many others continues to be one of women’s happiness is defined by her ability to devote herself to wife and mother, the truth remains subverted under the text, that men are also responsible for women’s unhappiness. If men were more willing to take on some of the traditional ‘women’s’ responsibilities in the home and with the children, everyone, including women, would have a chance at living a more balanced, happy and equal life. References Faludi, Susan. (1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown Publishers. Fatal Attraction. (1987). Hollywood: Paramount Pictures. Hall, Stuart. (1974). “Black Men, White Media.” Savacou, Journal of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement. Vol. 9/10. Cited in “Revealed: How UK Media Fueled Race Prejudice.” (2001). Chronicle World. Retrieved May 5, 2008 from Hewitt, Nancy. (2002). “Taking the True Woman Hostage.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1: 156-62. Poovey, Mary. (1988). Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roberts, Mary Louise. (Spring 2002). “True Woman Revisited.” Journal of Women’s History. Vol. 14, N. 1: 150-55. Welter, Barbara. (1966). “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1: 151-74. Read More