PRE-TEXT AND TEXT IN GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES Lucie Arbuthnot and Gail Seneca Published: 1990 Kelly Cunningham Marty Lane

Terms: misogyny, dominant culture, psychoanalytical, value, power, feminist text, appropriate, connectedness, viewer, pre-text, text, code, gaze, male gaze, feminist discourse

Thesis: “In this essay, we chronicle our search to understand our pleasure in this film. We argue that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes can be read as a feminist text.” “We hope that our analysis of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes will suggest ways to discover feminist pleasures within films of the dominant culture, and indicate the kinds of films which might be most conducive to feminist reading.” (pg. 112)

Summary: The article was written as a feminist analysis of the 1953 Howard Hawkes film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the film, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star as showgirls who take a cruise together to find romantic partners. The film ends with a double wedding ceremony after both women successfully make a match. The authors selected this movie not for its storybook ending, rather as a film they enjoy that they believed warranted further exploration from a feminist perspective. The authors prepared their analysis by first watching the film multiple times, then viewed films made intentionally from a feminist perspective for comparison. Lastly, they sought to look for the source of their “viewing pleasure” by pinpointing what made Gentlemen Prefer Blondes remarkable and satisfying. They choose to focus on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because the “the women not only resist male objectification, but who also cherish deeply their connections with each other. The friendship between two strong women, Monroe and Russell, invites the female viewer to join them, through identification, in valuing other women and ourselves.” (pg. 113) In order for the authors to analyze Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, they wanted to first provide some reference to other Hollywood representations of strong women. The authors focused on Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Katherine Hepburn. When looking at films staring Marlene Dietrich and Greta

Garbo, the authors point out that the audience projects their desires onto the characters. They present a hollow vessel for the viewer to fill with their expectations. If the viewing audience reacted to the characters by identifying with them from a feminist perspective, the plots of the movies often turn the focus back to the male viewer and his enticement. For example, when Dietrich dresses as a man and kisses another woman in a club scene in Morocco, the audience is left to decide for themselves the depth of her character’s intentions and whether or not its a gesture of showmanship, recognition of female companionship, lesbianism or all of the above. In Hepburn’s roles, the authors note a personal professional drive coupled with an emotional shallowness. This seems to suggest that a woman cannot possess both qualities. They also point out that Hepburn’s characters are often singled out as unique specimens, and not representative of femininity overall. The authors find the same eventual flaw in all of Dietrich’s, Garbo’s, and Hepburn’s films, “In destroying male pleasure, however, these films also destroy our pleasure. They deny us voyeuristic pleasure, the pleasure of losing ourselves in a narrative, and most centrally the pleasure of identification with a positive female image.” (pg. 115) The observation is made that the films often revolved around female bids for attention from men and very little emphasis is placed on nurturing relationships between women, which is a crucial part of our society. The authors then turn back to the critical viewing of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The concept of text and pre-text are introduced by the authors to describe the two narratives that are occurring in the film. The pre-text is presented as the “mainstream” story line — “Two voluptuous showgirls (…) on a transatlantic sea voyage, during which they seek husbands and capture the attention of every male on board. Their quest finally culminates in a double wedding ceremony.” (pg. 116) The text of the film is divided into two themes by the authors, “The themes are the women’s resistance to objectification by men, and the women’s connection with each other.” (pg. 116) The authors claim that the main story line is so continually interrupted by the underlying issues of feminism, that the main story actually becomes the pre-text in the film narrative. The authors divide the feminist text into two umbrella categories, “resistance to male objectification” and “the women’s connection to each other.” They describe the female actors resistance to male objectification in terms of look, stance, use of space, activity, costume, and camera and lighting. They continue to describe the women’s connection to each other in terms of look, touch, use of space, Hawks’s directorial choices, and musical as genre. Under the category “resistance to male objectification”, the authors refer to the male gaze as a way that the characters subtly subvert the norm. “Socially it is the prerogative of men to gaze at women and the requirement of women to avert our eyes in submission, The

initiation of the gaze signals superiority over the subordinate.” (pg 116) In the film, however, the women return the gaze, actively seeking and searching on their own terms. This act subvert social norms and empowers the character, and the feminine audience seeing the film through their eyes. Bridging both the pre-text and text, the positive and supportive relationship between Russell and Monroe embodies “the women’s connection to each other”. The authors state that “Commercial films rarely depict important friendships between women; when they do, the friendships are marred or rendered incredible by the film’s polarization of the two women into opposite and competing camps.” (pg. 120) Their friendship exceeds their common search for a partner and their work, they share many levels of emotional and situational commitment in a loving way. The friendship as an underlying theme is where the positive experience and enjoyment in the film stems from for the authors. Summing it up, the authors write, “It is the tension between male objectification of women, and women’s resistance to that objectification, that opens Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to a feminist reading. It is the clear and celebrated connection between Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell which, for us, transforms Gentlemen Prefer Blondes into a profoundly feminist text.” The authors summarize their article by stating that the focus of feminist film criticism should be more about women than men and that “it should begin to focus more centrally on our own experiences as female viewers than on the male viewer’s experience.” (pg. 123) Their article “centers on our own pleasure in the film, not on the ways in which the film affords pleasure, or denies pleasure, to men. For us, it is insufficient simply to expose and destroy male voyeuristic pleasure in film; the task, as we see it, is rather to use film to revision our connections with women.” (pg. 123)

Personal Responses: Kelly’s Response: At the close of the article, I found the authors’ mention of the struggle to develop a feminist voice in the humanities interesting, “Feminist discourse within the social sciences has been muffled by the din of male paradigms. Feminist discourse in the humanities can be heard because no controlling male paradigms exist to silence it.” (pg. 124) I found this to be a great connection to the reading and Foucault’s binary pairs and Structuralist theory. Without two sides, both offered the opportunity to make their case, no argument can progress. There can be dominance, but no absolutes. In order for discourse and change, the balance of power must always at least have the opportunity to develop. The balance of power in the male/ female dichotomy will arguably always exist so the feminist perspective offers this opportunity.

The ways that the article suggests the director’s use of look, stance, use of space, activity, costume, and camera and lighting contributes to the reading of the film gives the producers of still images those same tools to work with. Before beginning a photoshoot, perhaps in storyboarding phases, why not return to these as a checklist to produce the desired effect. In the same vein of the film, these can also be used to empower women in the frame. Lastly, using the author’s framework of analysis, I believe “Desperate Housewives” is an excellent candidate for the same scrutiny. The show is based around the friendship between women. A cult success, I wonder if the same appeal applies. It would be an interesting visual study to chart viewer ratings against plot lines that either give emphasis to these women to women bonds, or take them away. Marty’s Response: The authors present a very interesting response to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes that I can mostly relate to and appreciate. However, in the beginning of the article, they are discussing Audrey Hepburn’s films and state that, “The crux of our dissatisfaction with Hepburn is her lack of connection with other women, and therefore with us and other feminist viewers.” (pg. 115) This statement seems to be oversimplified — do we not have the depth as feminist viewers to relate to a quirky, independent character simply because she does not have a sisterly tie to another woman in the film? I find the relationship between the pre-text and text the authors discuss to be a concept that can be applied to many mediums. While reading this article, I was continually thinking about different episodes of the HBO series, Sex and the City. The authors present the ideas of look, touch, use of space, etc to demonstrate how Monroe and Russel are connected to each other in a more substantial way that with the men. One by one, I found direct applications of these examples to Sex and The City, with the most glaring example in an episode featuring a wedding. One of the characters has finally met her match, and is having an over the top New York wedding, but the scene that the directors choose to focus on, is not one of bride and groom, rather a still shot of the four female characters all gazing at each other. Perhaps it is time for a feminist analysis of the series? Some of the ideas presented by the article can be directly applied to graphic design and more specifically advertising. The issues of look and stance of female subjects can be manipulated to convey power over men or vice versa. It is important that we as designers are aware of what these subtleties can convey in messages. KC Note: Marty and I scripted our personal responses to the article independently, yet both selected samples from current television culture as ripe for feminist analysis. For whatever its worth, I found it interesting.