Term Paper on "1930s Hollywood Movies Depiction of Strong Independent"

Term Paper 7 pages (2153 words) Sources: 7

[EXCERPT] . . . .

1930s Hollywood movies depiction of strong independent women clearly reflects changing gender aspirations and the shifting economic and circumstances of women. In general, the Hollywood movies have always been key cultural artifacts that offer a window into American social and cultural history. Being a mixture of art, business, and popular entertainment, the movies always provided a host of insights into American shifting ideals, fantasies and preoccupations.

Against this background, cultural historians have treated movies as sociological documents that record the look and mood of particular historical settings; as ideological constructs that advance particular political moral values and as cultural documents that present particular images of gender, ethnicity and class romance.

Hollywood's role in reflecting the moral, economic and social aspirations of a given time is best described by Will Hays, a United States lawyer and politician who formulated a production code that prescribed the moral content of United States films from 1930 to 1966

and head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association said in 1934, "No medium has contributed more greatly than the film to the maintenance of the national morale during a period featured by revolution, riot and political turmoil in other countries."

In the 1930s depression years with an economic crisis affecting even the most prominent Hollywood studios, attention to consumer taste was crucial for them to survive. Films reflected American desires just as American desires reflected films -- making it impossible to ignore the significance of Hollywood during the 1930s. Films made in this decade no longer take on the idealistic outlook of the 1920s. Musicals in the 1930's gave people more realistic visions of aspiration and attainment. Stars, such as Judy Garland and Shirley Temple, became models of strength, courage, charisma, vulnerability, and triumph.

From gangster films to musicals to screwball comedies, Depression films take on the responsibility of reinstating the values America has always been standing for: Individualism, classlessness, and progress. During most of the Depression Era, Hollywood responded with expensive, mass-produced entertainment or escapist entertainment to boost the morale of the public by optimistically reaffirming values such as thrift and perseverance.

But movies made in that time period offered more than mere distraction from the realities of daily life. Many films of the depression years were grounded in the social realities of the time and the most realistic of them were social problem films.

Conversely, movies had their own tremendous impact on everyday's life. While mass media, such as the radio and the movies, "fed the tendency toward cultural uniformity and a specifically American modern way of life, surveys reported that movie starts has replaced leaders in politics, business, or the arts as those admired by the young."

Women's roles during the 1930s were changing and Hollywood reflected this change. Women had only been given the right to vote in 1918 and had been seen as housewives.

Women who had traditionally stayed at home and not worked -- certainly after they were married -- were entering the workforce in ever increasing numbers. This started with the necessities of earning a living in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

The pre-war years marked a sudden visible surge in the importance of women in helping to run the country that gave them a large amount of independence. Women started to take over jobs. They were farm workers, factory workers, convoy drivers, riveters, muckrakers and so on.

This led Hollywood to cast more actresses in roles as independent career women, instead of as mere sex objects.

The appealing image of these women was that of talented, hard-working women in an up-hill battle against the elements, society and people. As Paravadelli

in her 2011 examination on "Cinema and the Modern Woman" describes it, "During this time in our history the image of talented women became very popular. This particular type of heroine emerges from trouble not only unscathed but when challenged by nature and by man, morphs into a stronger, braver and ultimately more feminine character."

In the transition years from silent film to the first sound movie "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, cinema was the most effective form of representing modernity and urban life, as well as women's desire to emancipate.

Surveys of that period and contemporary investigations in audiences indicate that, that in the 1920 and early 1930s, women represented the majority of moviegoers.

Consequently, the studios had a strong economic interest in meeting the demands of this target group. As Paravedelli

stresses, "ultimately whether women really formed a majority of the cinema audience was "less important than the fact that Hollywood itself assumed that, both through their own attendance and their ability to influence men, they were its primary market."

The female audience became the target of the studio system of that time. In the 1920s and 1930s, Hollywood produced a vast number of films centered on women, often written by women scriptwriters.

So called "women directors" emerged. The very best example is probably George Cukor, the director of the 1939 movie "The women." The film is based on Clare Boothe Luce's play of the same name, and was adapted for the screen by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin. The film continued the play's all-female tradition -- the entire cast of more than 130 speaking roles was female. "The Women" is a gabby, urbane comedy that takes a (for its time, especially) steadfast look at adultery, divorce, and why men court idiocy with such abandon.

Women, of course, loved to see images of the New Woman, exemplified by such divas as Gloria Swanson, Colleen Moore, Clara Bow, and Joan Crawford.

As Paravadelli points out, "The new movie woman exuded above all a sense of physical freedom -- unrestrained movement & #8230; abounding energy -- the antithesis of the controlled, quiet, tight- kneed poses of the Griffith's heroines." She goes on to describe the "dashing spontaneity with which they rushed onto dance floors, leapt into swimming pools, and accepted any dare -- to drink, to sport, to strip," and as they moved into social, work, and higher education spheres."

This new woman also had a relationship of men outside the narrow scope of romance. Men were depicted as wonderful partners, not masters to be dependent upon. A very popular movie subject of the time was the theme of balancing a working life with a relationship with a strong and independent man.

This is the recurring subject of many films of Katherine Hepburn in those years.

A very good example is the 1942 movie "Woman of the Year" directed by George Stevens. Hepburn plays an emancipated famous columnist who travels the world meeting the people who are making current history. Chosen "Woman of the Year," on a whim she marries a down to earth sports writer (Spencer Tracy) who leaves her because her priorities are public issues, not her private life. Hepburn realizing her loss tries her best to become a "regular housewife" fails miserably.

The film starts depicting Hepburn as a smart, attractive, knowledgeable working woman who adopts a child because it is looking good in the public eye, having no idea what it entails and soon leaves the child and her husband. The movie ends showing her in an inappropriately sophisticated outfit, creating a disaster when trying to prepare breakfast for the family. In the films last scene, Tracy in an attempt to comfort her asks her to stop playing roles and simply be herself. The film's subject is as popular today as it was almost 70 years ago: Women trying to balance career and family, and often feeling guilty because no matter which they are working at, they are attempted to ignore the other.

In my opinion, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn are showcase examples of the "tough and independent" actresses Hollywood has started to present to its audience in the 1930s. They are only the most shimmering example of a generation of tough Hollywood women whose characters saw the world as a place not to cower from or simper at, but to conquer: Mae West (who made her first film at 40), Lauren Bacall, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, Marlene Dietrich, and more.

I think that Katherine Hepburn's own persona clearly reflects the needs, fears, and hopes of American culture and society of the time providing a discernable figure of identification for her audience via her "roles" played in the movies. Hepburn was born into a wealthy East-Coast family. Her mother was a prominent feminist -- she helped found the organizations that became Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters -- and her father was a surgical pioneer in urology.

In an era of changing roles for women, Hepburn excelled as an early role model of the modern women. She created in films and theater a fresh new image for women -- outspoken, ambitious, smart and equal, or nearly equal, to men.

Hepburn was the epitome of "the hard-working, determined, talented, professional, graceful, funny, outrageous, self-confident, self-indulgent, tough, and charming" woman of her time.

Bette Davis is the other… READ MORE

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