Fashionable Feminism in the Screwball Comedy: Who Wears the Pants?

The following is my entry in the Film Classics Annual Writing Contest.

In the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, everything is upside-down and backwards — most notably the gender roles. While mistaken identities, slapstick shenanigans and witty banter push and pull the madcap couple together and apart, their behavior often defies sexual stereotypes of the period. The man inevitably becomes emasculated and is ordered around by an independent, pushy woman who either doesn’t like him or likes him too much for him to handle.

The gender-bending doesn’t stop at the characters’ personalities and conduct, however. It also reveals itself in their many — usually ridiculous — outfits. Cross-dressing, whether overt or understated, is a major aspect of the classic screwball comedy. It provokes laughter, moves the plot forward, and develops character. Such sartorial choices were often controversial. Katharine Hepburn’s breezy trousers and Cary Grant’s frilly robes caused a fashion revolution and sexual confusion. While many modern viewers think of bombshells like Marilyn Monroe as the major threats to the Production Code, the screwball stars caused an early stir. As Andrew Sarris says, this type of film was “a sex comedy without the sex.”

In screwball comedies, women wear the pants, both literally and metaphorically. In Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938), Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) moves around her apartment in a pair of polka-dot pants. She dons trousers and flat shoes to partake in a slapstick adventure in her aunt’s backyard. In The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940), Tracy Lord (Hepburn again) prepares for her upcoming nuptials in comfortable slacks and riding pants which show off her long, slim legs. In My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940), Ellen (Irene Dunne) arrives home after years on a desert island wearing men’s clothes. Screwball women reject ladylike frocks in favor of comfortable clothing.

The masculine aesthetic which these women so much enjoy does much to emphasize their characters’ independence and strong wills, but these traits are emphasized further when they begin wearing the heroes’ clothing, and vice versa. In screwball comedies, cross-dressing is often accidental, impulsive or last-resort, but it always says something important about the characters’ hierarchy. In Bringing Up Baby, Susan steals David Huxley’s (Cary Grant) clothes to keep him from leaving, and on her way out the door, she dons his hat. This act draws attention to her more powerful — traditionally masculine — position in their relationship. It is also interesting to note that Susan also destroys many objects of David’s clothing throughout the film. She causes him to slip and fall on his top hat early in the film, and soon after that she tears his jacket. Later she burns his sock while trying to dry off over a fire, and then her antics cause his glasses to break. Susan ruins David’s emblems of masculinity — his male clothing — or takes them for herself. Susan also experiences destruction to her clothing, including when she loses the heel on one shoe and laughs at the fact that now she has uneven feet, singing, “I was born on the side of a hill.” Susan’s joy at flattening her shoe, and the alternating heights at which she stands because of it, point to her complicated gender role.

Similarly, in It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934), Ellie (Claudette Colbert) accepts Peter’s (Clark Gable) pajamas, complete with pants and a button-front shirt, to sleep in. She does this out of desperation, since she’s lost her luggage, but it points to a larger power struggle between the two, as he shows her the ropes and she continuously berates him.

The cross-dressing isn’t limited to women wearing men’s items. Screwball heroes are sometimes forced to wear women’s clothing. The most famous man to do this was Cary Grant. After Susan steals David’s clothes in Bringing Up Baby, his only option is to throw on a woman’s ruffled robe, an item which stands in stark and fascinating contrast with Susan’s seemingly unisex monogrammed robe. David’s cross-dressing becomes even more controversial when he tells Susan’s aunt that he’s wearing it because he “just went gay all of a sudden.” It’s considered the earliest cinematic use of the word “gay” to mean homosexual. Grant gets girly again in My Favorite Wife, when his new bride presents him with a leopard-print robe to match hers. Its sleeves are too short, and its pattern is feminine. The characters’ donning of such effeminate pieces points to their increased emasculation and helplessness at the hands of the heroines.

To answer the historically relevant and thematically significant question of who wears the pants in the screwball relationship, one need look no further than the characters’ literal clothes. Often the important question becomes, “Who wears the frilly robe?” Odds are it’s not the woman.

2001: I Was Wrong

I’m going to confess something.  I was wrong about Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In a post this past summer, as a part of my 30 Day Film Challenge, based on a set of questions circulating among film buffs on Facebook , I chose Kubrick’s science fiction epic as my least favorite film.  My reasoning was based on a viewing of the film on DVD as a teenager, during which I was physically bothered by the high-pitched sounds and bright, unsettling imagery.  I declared that I would never watch the film again because of the severe headache I received.

Well, I watched the film again.  It was the past week’s screened film in one of my Film classes.  I’ll admit I went into it with a negative attitude, expecting to once again be assaulted with overpowering sounds and images.  It turns out that I was presented with some pretty intense visual and aural imagery.  But I didn’t mind it.  I was sitting there during the sequences which had given me the biggest headaches as a teenager — namely the Dawn of Man sequence and the trippy Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite — and wondering why I had such a problem years ago.  The high-pitched voices accompanying the large black monolith (below) were unsettling, certainly, but I didn’t feel physically ill at the sound of them.  It was especially unusual because this time I was watching the film on Blu-ray on a large screen with louder speakers.  Why did I find myself entranced instead of uncomfortable?

I think there are a few explanations.  One is that I’m older now.  I’m not just a newly minted film buff working her way through the classics section of the video store just to say she’s seen the acclaimed titles.  I’m a college student who’s taken a number of film classes, read about film, and written about it nonstop, both on this blog and for class.  I take my fresh perspective on 2001 as a sign of my cinematic maturity, so to speak.  I’m now able to appreciate an experience which I took for granted years ago.  Although the Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite sequence is admittedly still a little too much for me, with its neon colors and creepy images.

Another factor which I think played a big part in my changed perspective is the fact that I watched the film on a larger screen with a great Blu-ray picture.  In my previous post I stated that seeing it in the theater would likely be “ear-shattering.”  This was surprisingly not the case.  Something about watching it on a larger scale made all the pieces seem to fit appropriately.  The large-scale score and soundtrack seemed in their proper element, as did the stunning space sequences, revolutionary for the time.

Watching this film at home on a standard television screen does not provide the film with its proper context.  Hearing sweeping waltz music and eerie noises emanating from a small TV is disorienting, hence my headache.  Hearing these sounds accompany a large, awe-inspiring image, however, is fitting.

It’s interesting that I had this changed reaction to a Kubrick film on the big screen, because a couple of years ago I had the opportunity to see a 35mm print of Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining on the big screen in a large theater with great speakers.  It became one of my favorite movie memories.  It was the first time I’d seen the film, and I absolutely loved it.  I wonder if it would have had the same effect if I’d seen it for the first time on DVD at home.  I don’t think it would have.  As these two examples prove, Kubrick made films that were visually and aurally at their absolute best in a theater setting.

I will admit that the scenes in the film with HAL 9000, the highly intelligent computer, are still my favorites.  No matter how much I can admire and marvel at cinematically modernist imagery, I’m still a fan of good old-fashioned realism.  HAL’s characterization interests me more than anything else in the film, including the mysterious and haunting Star Child, which I’ve pretty much given up trying to interpret and just accepted as a product of the film’s abstract aesthetic.  The preference I have for realism and character is probably the reason I couldn’t get through Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which was mentioned in my class’s discussion of 2001.  Tree of Life has a similar interest in the spectacle of the visuals over the story, and since I started watching the film at home on DVD, my reasons for turning if off were probably the same as my reasons for disliking 2001 the first time I saw it.  Had I seen it on a big screen, I might have appreciated it more.

Will I be watching 2001: A Space Odyssey again any time soon?  Probably not.  Will I rule out the possibility entirely?  No.

This screening experience has made me even more appreciative of seeing films on the big screen.  Some films demand it more than others, but I think it’s an incredible way to view film in its original, intended context, which is why it’s so great that film festivals and museums around the world provide that opportunity.

2001: A Space Odyssey is no longer my least favorite film.  In fact, I can’t think of a single film I’d put in that spot.  It’s an interesting question, seeing as some of the worst films I’ve ever seen are re-watchable because of their badness.