Hindsight

A feminist film from the early 1950s???

            

Thought it might be fun to post a paper I just rediscovered from graduate school.  If you can get beyond the five dollar academic words, I hope you come away seeing how categories of power such as gender and race are wonderfully exposed when you reposition them within varying eras and context.  So, what we think is feminine now, would often be considered masculine in Louis the fifteenths era, i.e. perfume, hairpieces, heeled shoes, and lace.  

                     Such a Calamity: Troubling Gender in the Hollywood Western

      In Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Judith Butler suggests a paradox: “visual representations of gender tend inevitably to contain both the imprint of dominant ideology and the inherent contradictions of that ideology” (Butler, 67).   In the promotional trailer for the film Westward the Women, just such a contradiction emerges. The viewer is presented with images of pioneer women driving covered wagons, shooting game and handling horses; meanwhile the voice-over announcer says, “There is nothing that can get between a woman and her wedding ring.”   This too-simple statement is an odd conclusion in light of what the images project.  It does, however, serve to justify the potentially subversive behavior of these women within a particular cultural and historical context by neatly framing their assertiveness inside the confines of normative heterosexuality.  The main purpose for this paper is to examine such contradictions  in the visual representation of gender transgressions within cinema, specifically in three Hollywood westerns from the early 1950s. Rarely discussed in contemporary film scholarship is William Wellman’s Westward the Women.  The film, based on a true story, is often overlooked in place of other queer film classics such as Calamity Jane and Johnny Guitar.  However, all three of these films were produced at major studios within a couple of years of each other, and all of these films’ narratives incorporate women as central characters within the western genre. 

     Many critics, including Judith Halberstam, have explored Calamity Jane and Johnny Guitar in their analyses of subversive female representations of gender with a focus on the functions and meanings of the female masculine or butch character film history.  The work of these film scholars informs this analysis.  I will build on their exploration of gender, with particular attention to Westward the Women, but with a methodological approach based on Judith Butler’s theoretical analysis of gender, especially her foundational work Gender Trouble.   Judith Butler’s work offers an opportunity to reflect on the origins of gender by highlighting its social construction within a historical context.  She argues that “gender is performative, and that no identity exists behind these expressions of gender, and these acts establish-rather than express-the impression of a fixed gender identity.  Also, if this impression of ‘being’ gender is a result of social and cultural influenced acts, then there exists no real ‘universal’ gender” (14).  I argue that Butler’s methodology can be applied to the study of gender outside of feminist/queer discourses and, in particular, to visual representations of masculinity and femininity within film.  As Robert Shail did with in his essay on masculinity and British film star Dirk Bogarde, I will borrow three of Butler’s central methodological concepts: gender construction with a specific historical context; gender identification as transient; and the role of fantasy or “masquerade” in reaction to social repression.  However whereas Shail stayed in the domain of masculinity and focused the figure of Dirk Bogarde,  I will navigate the mythic terrain of gender identification within classic Hollywood westerns.  I propose that the filmic text of Westward the Women should be included in the same filmic canon as Calamity Jane and Johnny Guitar, arguing that these three films display subversive gendered representations within the constraints of Hollywood films of the early 1950s.[1]

Gender within Historical Context

      All three of these films can be placed within the conservative climate of early 1950s Hollywood, where beyond the patriarchal structure of the studio system, there is the historical dynamic of the production code as influential in promoting heterosexual norms.  Judith Butler  emphasizes the importance of historical and cultural context in relation to gender identity, suggesting that when one examines gender identity across historical eras and cultural environments the assumptions about gender inevitably break down.  Butler states, “As historically specific organizations of language, discourses present themselves in the plural, co-existing within temporal frames, and instituting unpredictable and inadvertent convergences from which specific modalities of discursive possibilities are engendered” (145).  Butler further suggests that the discourse itself is open to the effects of these “temporaral dynamics.”  

       The Hollywood production code in effect from 1932 to 1962 banned a host of images and discourses labeled amoral.  This institutionalized repression included representations of sexual activity outside of

 marriage, and any sexual depiction of homosexuality.  Halberstam specifically places her analysis of 

Calamity Jane and Johnny Guitar within the historical constraints of the production ban:

In Hollywood, films made during the production code, a butch character was a window onto the sexual variance that the camera could not reveal…….Ironically, during the years of most strict surveillance, the production code era, butch imagery signified an often creative tactic for introducing censored material to queer audiences. (Halberstram187)

Beyond the code there were other restraints, such as the patriarchal functioning of the studio system itself, 

which influenced the choice of films produced and the manner in which they eventually came to promotion.   Western films for instance had historically been a male focused genre; Westward the Women countered

 this notion with a narrative composition of 132 women to 15 men.  

     However, the western genre was one potentially liberating influence within these constraints.  Beyond 

the immediate historical context of these films’ production, these films were symbolic of a specific era.   

All of these movies carry the weight of cultural assumptions about the American west, and the role of 

women and men within this story.  A film viewer  most likely brought culturally constructed ideas about 

cowboy and cowgirls, such as the notion of cowboy as the rugged individual or as rebel, or the pioneer 

woman as persistent and strong.  The idea of the rugged pioneer woman is appropriated within these historical myths because the pioneer experience is deemed an extreme state of being.  However, the room for 

acceptance of an autonomous female within these filmic plots is, in the end, framed within the historical and ideological context of the 1950s studio system and the production codes.  As Butler notes, “Even if 

representations of gender, like the discourse they reflect, are always unstable and fluid, they nonetheless 

operate within perimeters that are historically specific, which can allow them to be used as signifiers of that 

context” (148).    

      In Westward the Women two characters, Patience and Ito, seem to function within these perimeters and

 yet also signify gender as unstable or fluid. Patience, a woman, is taller and larger than any man; while Ito,

 a man, is smaller than many of the women.  Patience is continually presented as stronger than the others,

 and quicker to take on a challenge.  In one scene where Patience gets a wagon through a treacherous

 ravine, the head guy, Buck, runs up to her and says “Patience I’d kiss ya if you weren’t so big and tall.”   

    Ito, like Patience, is presented as the voice of reason, a trait usually reserved for women in westerns.  

His character in general is subversive: he doesn’t wear a cowboy hat, speaks frequently in Japanese, and 

shies away from battles.  He is sensitive to the feelings of others and offers the counterpoint to Buck. 

 Buck eventually acquires more feminine characteristics as a result of his relationship with Ito.  Yet both of 

these characters are deemed suitable because they are useful and keep the journey alive.  Butler suggests 

that these gender identities are more often characterized both by their variety and by their tendency towards

 change and reapplication (Butler 67).  I would add that unlike the other two films, Calamity Jane and 

Johnny Guitar, where the characters’ masculine or feminine status seems quite rigid for much of the films, 

in Westward the Women the transient nature of femininity and masculinity is processed back and forth 

through the narrative.  These ranges of subversive moments erupt throughout the film, demonstrating the 

transient nature of gender identification.

Transient Nature of Gender Identification

    The transient nature of gender identification contains both the dominant hegemony of a culture and the inherent paradoxes of these culturally and historically constructed beliefs.  This ambiguity, the fuzzy nature

 of gender, is where transient representations of gender emerge within filmic text. As Judith Halberstram wrote in her analysis of Calamity Jane:

   Doris Day plays a butch cowgirl who has become one of the guys in Deadwood and shoots, rides, spits, and drinks as well as they do. ..But Hollywood transforms this transgender hero into a rather fluffy character who eventually settles into a properly feminine form of domesticity with Wild Bill Hickok.  On her way to finding a true heterosexual femininity, however, Calamity has some seriously queer encounters:  She is mistaken for a man and cruised by women in Chicago, and in a beautifully ironic scene, she sets up house with an actress called Kate while they sing a gorgeous Butch femme duet called “A Woman’s Touch.”  (210)

 Halberstram offers this about Johnny Guitar:

   The rough cowgirl who needs to be tamed and seduced into a mature        

   femininity.  In one scene, she stands tall above her angry neighbors, dressed   

   all in black, holding a gun and telling them to back off.  “That’ big talk for a

   little gun” says Mercedes Cambridge, her archrival and double, Emma.  It is        

   hard not to hear a Freudian Admonition in here:  the little gun, of course, is

   the woman’s version of a man’s big gun.  (Halberstam, 167) 

Both of these films suggest the malleability of gender performance and the idea that gender is transient.  Although the  heroines are eventually feminized through dress speech and heterosexual marriage, the earlier suggestions of their masculinity are not fully eclipsed.   

    In counterpoint to these previous analyses, I suggest that Westward the Women offers a fuller representation of gender transient behavior in its narrative closure and the range of female representation offered: teacher, farmer, rancher, nurse.  The relationships and characters do not narratively follow typical gender norms; the idea of what is a good or bad gender is much more nuanced.  At the end of the film, the marriages are for the most part set up as relationships based on companionship and economic cooperation.  These are not romantic fantasies per se; these women are not defined by their relationship to men, and only two were widows.  Film historian Jeanine Basinger offers this in one of the few critiques of Westward the Women: “It is almost a casebook of traditional attitudes toward women that will be refuted by the visual presentation.  These ‘masculine things that the women acquire now become absorbed into them” (TCM 2008). 

      The transient nature of gender is also carefully articulated in the films overall narrative arc.  From the

 start we come to know these women through their dress, bodily presentation and actions; by the film’s end, when they put on more “feminine” clothing, there is a sense that the clothing is an artifice.   Two scenes explicitly show the fluidity of gender and gender as a construction.  The first scene is when the women are meeting Buck the wagon master and he starts to question them about their skill level.  The women that show ability in this scene will come to represent a range of female masculinity throughout the film. 

Scene one:

           Buck: Any of you handle a horse? 

           (Several women stand; they are dressed in bonnets and dresses)

           Buck: I don’t mean ride. I mean handle a horse.

           (Several sit down, four remain standing)

           Buck:   Can any of you handle a team of mules; I mean a team         

                       of four iron mouthed mules?

           (The four remain standing)

         Buck:  Can any of you handle a gun, I mean shoot it and hit                                                 

         what you’re aiming at?  (Two of the four remain standing)

         (He throws gun, one of the women look around and see a poster for a   sheriff’s election.  Each of the women  consequently shoot out one of the eyes on the poster) 

         O’ Malley:  Is that what you meant? (sarcastically)

         Giggles (she tosses back and he can barely catch)

         Buck:     (amazed) That is what I mean.

         Giggles (the women in response seem pleased)

            (Then Buck begins to address their attire)

             Buck:   By the way I wouldn’t wear those frilly fluffy feminine                          things you’ve got on now or those high heels. You’ve got a long way to walk, sometimes you’ll ride but most of the time you’ll walk.  We are not going to overload our wagons; we’ve got enough to haul and  get yourself clothes that are rough tough and comfortable to wear.  It wouldn’t hurt you to wear pants, (giggles) I mean pants (he points to his).

            Buck:  You four, Jones Brent, Johnson and O’Malley You will have to 

                        teach these good women how to drive mules. 

 Throughout the film these women who can shoot are referred to by their more masculine sounding last names, a similar signifier to Halberstram’s take on the presentation of butch women: “The masculine woman…is often associated with clear markers of a distinctly phallic power.  She may carry a gun, smoke a cigar…she often goes by a male moniker: Frankie, George, Willy” (186). 

Scene two

The second scene brackets the last in almost perfect parallel as Buck now queries the men.  Here he specifically picks on one man, the smallest of the group. As Buck is talking he notices someone among

the group of men and says:                                          

                                           Buck:  Move aside there...what are you doing here?

                                           Ito:    I go to California.      

                                           Buck:  What is your name?

                                           Ito:  (says his very long Japanese name)

                                           Buck:  What was that?

                                            Ito:   (he repeats long Japanese name)

                                             Buck:   Stand up, Ito.

                                              (He stands)

                                             Buck:  Are you standing or sitting? (men around him laugh)

                                              Ito:  I stand.

                                              Buck:  Where is the rest of you? (laughter)

                                              Ito:  There isn’t much of me but I fight anybody here.  I fight                                           

                                                        you too big boss.  I get licked but I fight.

                                             (Buck smiles and asks)

                                             Buck:  Can you cook? You keep the coffee hot and handy.

                                                         I hate women’s cooking.

                                                 Ito: (Speaks in Japanese)

                                                Buck: What did you say?

                                                 Ito:     Enough already lets go

                                                Buck;  You heard the man let’s go

As they walk out Ito tries to copy their swagger, mimicking their walk, trying to play masculinity.  Ito does this almost in fun.  This role playing can sometimes take the form of masquerade.

Fantasy and Masquerade

     In Butler’s third strand, she considers the role of fantasy or “masquerade” as an expression of socially-repressed desires, and also its purpose within the construction of gender notions.  For Butler the breakdown of gender stereotypes is the inevitable outcome of suppression.  Fantasy therefore serves as a means for expressing ruptures within gender stereotypes; fantasy functions as a release from the bounds of conformity. Butler suggests that role playing, which points to the nature of constructions, is an aspect of masquerade.  For instance, some of the women clearly like their new role as female masculine, relishing their ability to shoot and protect others, such as when O’ Malley shoots a snake that scared another woman.  O’Malley is driving a wagon, while another  woman has wandered too far from the wagon.  The woman screams when she sees a snake.  We cut to medium long shot of O’Malley still driving the wagon and then reaching for her gun.  She shoots the snake in one shot and says: “Honey, if they scare ya, then stay closer to the wagon.” There is also one woman who seems to enjoy spitting tobacco and using a bull whip throughout the film; her behavior is clearly subversive yet the narrative never redeems this woman into an appropriated femininity.

       Oddly enough, the narrative sense of gender masquerade also emerges as we see the women dress in more traditional feminine clothing again. The viewer has spent the majority of the film watching these women in comfortable, functional clothes while they accomplished a range of physical feats; seeing them adapt back to these clothes is strange and appears forced. There is a wonderful moment of masquerade expressed in a scene with Patience.  This is near the end of the film as Patience drives the wagon into town with all the women behind her.  She shouts but then quickly changes her tone to a softer delivery as she realizes she need to play female again.  The fact that it is funny speaks to the acknowledgment of gender as a construction within this filmic text.  As Patience reconstructs her female role she will have relearn its rules and customs, suggesting that, for her, this performance of the female is not organic or natural:  

                Patience: Come on, Rosie, get up! (shouting)

            Patience (after a beat, smiles and says softly and sweetly): Come on,             Rosie darling.

                                    (The other women smile)

        William Wellman, the director, also does some cinematic role playing with viewer’s point of view.  Throughout the film, women and men equally objectify the other; we see the men looking at the women and visa versa.  We also as an audience then become voyeurs of both genders.  In a sense Wellman is troubling our notion of binary categories by offering us multiple points of view, with one not favoring the other.  This counters traditional cinematic norms which tend to reinforce heterosexual power through the framing of women as passive sexualized object. 

Conclusion:

Butler writes:

. . . the possibility of subverting and displacing the naturalized and redefine notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and heterosexual power…[arise] not  through  strategies that figure a utopian beyond, but through the mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity. (33-4) 

Deconstructing these “foundational illusions” of gender constructs was a key theme in this analysis. For 

my methodology, I employed three of Judith Butler’s specific analytical tenets from her work in Gender Troubles: historical placement of gender, gender as transient, and masquerade as an expression of varying gender identities.  This method offered me a rigorous yet adaptable method for exploring the functions of gender within three Hollywood westerns from the early 1950s.  I paid particular attention to the film Westward the Women for a few key reasons: firstly, the extreme spectrum of gender representations within the filmic text warranted a feminist textual analysis, and, secondly, this film has been oddly overlooked within film and gender studies scholarship.  My analysis helps demonstrate that the film deserves further critical attention.  Butler’s methodology provided tools to deconstruct the range of gender representation within all three films, and also provided the nuances necessary to compare them effectively.  Here we can observe the process of  heterosexual promotion, and yet also discover within the cracks and spaces of repression, subversive moment of transient, masquerading gender; which challenges the very nature of gender identity and our own gendered selves.

                                                         Bibliography

Butler, J.  (1990)  Gender Troubles:  Feminism and The Subversion of Identity.  New York

Halberstam, J.  (1998)  Female Masculinity.  Duke University Press.

Shail, R.  (2001)  Masculinity and Visual Representation:  A Butlerian Approach to Dirk     Bogarde.  International Journal of Sexuality and Gender studies, Vol. 6  

Films

Calamity Jane.  Directed by David Butler, 101 Minutes, Warner Bros., 1953, DVD

Johnny Guitar.  Director Nicholas Ray.  Republic Pictures., 1954, DVD

Westward the Women.  Director William Wellman.  MGM, 1952, Video Tape

TCM Website.   Turnerclassicmovies.com     assessed May 14th 2008

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[1] Film Synopses: Westward the Women follows the journey of 132 women who traveled 2000 miles from Chicago to Whitman’s Valley in California to get married.  The film was made by MGM in 1952.  Johnny Guitar, made by Warner Brothers in 1953, tells the story of rival women who fight for their place in a small town.  It stars Joan Crawford and Mercedes Cambridge and was directed by Nicholas Ray. Calamity Jane,also produced by Warner Brothers in 1953, is a musical story of the western legend Calamity Jane.  The film shows her progression from buckskinned rough rider to appropriated bride.  

1.