Complicated Women (2003) in the Movie Culture essay
The 2003 documentary Complicated Women is an art piece discovering the provocative character of female roles in pre-code Hollywood. Narrated by Jane Fonda, it covers the period between 1929-1934 to research on films that were breaking all stereotypes by portraying free, bold, strong and emancipated women, who seduced with their body, had lovers, and held serious jobs just like men did. However, under the cover of seeming gender equality following the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, they were also taking active part in the sexual liberation of morals, downgrading a woman to an object of man’s desires, an erotic symbol serving to please the male gaze.
Indeed, as LaSalle (2001) states in his book, late 1920’s are often referred to as “the decade of pleasure,” a time of freedom and self-indulgence. People talked increasingly open about sex, and premarital sex became increasingly common. Hugh Munro Neely’s (2003) documentary (based on LaSalle’s 2001 work) emphasizes that on the TV screens, directors insisted that sexuality is inherent to any person: both women and men tend to experience sexual desire and satisfy their intimate needs. For instance, The Divorcee (1930) was one of the first films to revolutionize the image of the devoted wife: When the husband Norma Shearer’s character has an affair, the wife gets into an affair of her own. With the arrival of big cinema in the 1930’s and a change of priorities in life associated with the Great Depression, American moviemakers introduced the Hays Code, the code of filmmaking ethics the obliged Hollywood cinematographers to stop displaying nudity, provocative dance, “scenes of passion”, extra-marital affairs as well as other relations undermining the moral foundations of spectators. Despite the fact that the Code was adopted in 1930, until 1934 there was almost nobody who obeyed it. Therefore, the mainstream cinema (not to mention pornography) of early thirties often showed intimate relationships, homosexuality, miscegenation, half-naked women, and much more, like Tarzan and His Mate (1934), which featured total female nudity.
Through the clips the Complicated Women (2003) relies on we may see how the films of that period exposed the modes of recreating female physicality, sexuality, and explicitness of sexually scenes. Thus, there was a strong emphasis on womanhood in female clothes: breasts, waist, and hips. Neckline was back in fashion, but while it was quite restrained in the front, the back was almost completely bare. The waistline rose from the hips to its natural place. Woman shapes were highlighted by silk fabrics smoothly flowing downwards. An ideal woman’s hips were narrow, and the breast was no longer hidden but rather stressed deliberately. In general, as LaSalle (2001) noted, designers purposely developed the style of clothes that would allow emphasizing every curve of a sexy female body in the most spectacular way.
It is obvious that the key to the successful performance was seen in its tempting, seductive nature. A female actress not only promises the obtainment of pleasure, but also creates the desire itself (Gill, 2007). Even though it is not viable to say that women are more charming or more desirable than men, in most cases, as Weeks (2007) study shows, women are more open to being desirable. Despite the radical changes in social life of the early 1930’s, women continued to look at themselves “through the eyes of a man,” introducing themselves as an object of his desires, above all (Greer, 1999; Gill, 2003). For instance, Jean Harlow would keep ice to chill her breasts before she was going into the scene. A sex symbol of her time, she desired to make sensibility and bright sex appeal the main features of her screen image. As a result, she became enormously popular due to her films The Red-Headed Woman (1932) and The Red Dust (1932), in which Jean’s main advantage was her overtly sexual attractiveness.
It should be noted here that the popularity estimated through the terms of sexual attractiveness was, in fact, gradually objectifying female actresses, making their sexuality a sort of a product willingly consumed by the public, and especially the male viewers. Later studies (Greer, 1999; Gill, 2003; Weeks, 2007) proved that an excessive number of images of young and sexually attractive women on screens have led to the fact that men are unable to perceive a half-naked women in media as a human being. Moreover, the results of brain scans show that men’s reaction to these photos is similar to the reaction to inanimate objects (Rosewarne, 2007). The conclusion to be made is clear: men perceive provocatively sexy women either as an object of desire, or as an attribute of success, which is vividly present in Female (1933), Ex-Lady (1933) and Baby Face (1933).
A woman-lover, woman-dancer, a woman-prostitute, or a woman-criminal was entirely in the spirit of 1930’s, where an image of female identity is used both as the tool and means to stimulate sex consumption. A common technique of this kind is the relevant placement of female figures in the space. In social life situations, beds and floors are the places where the lying persons will be lower than those who sit or stand, while the lying position is one of those in which physical self-defense is less convenient and, thus, a person in such position is rather dependent on the generosity of others (Gill, 2007). Analyzing film fragments presented in Complicated Woman (2003), we may observe that women are more often portrayed in the lying or sitting position on the sofa, armchair, bathtub, etc., which is a classic universal technique in mirroring the socially-accepted model of the “man-woman” relationship, i.e. the model of apparent superiority of one sex over the other. Furthermore, women are often portrayed with their legs bent at the knees, like in Safe in Hell (1931), Anna Christie (1930) or Ladies They Talk About (1933), which is a traditional manifestation of sexual availability, and yet again confirms the subordinate and dependent position of women.
In this way, the films of 1930’s were the first to contribute into the creation of a completely false impression of the world overflowing with imposingly “perfect” girls – desirable for a man and desiring a man themselves. Incredibly beautiful and inimitable actresses soon became icons and set the tone for the cinematography of later decades. Always gorgeous and incredibly feminine, at the same time, their images were appealing to rather specific female qualities, such as the power of sexuality. Endlessly exploiting female body as an erotic symbol, the films of those times were mostly seeing and emphasizing only the properties of female nature that were attractive to men in the first place, thus objectifying women and turning them into a promotion tool serving to attract attention and please male ambitions.
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