"Bringing Up Baby" and Gender Roles
Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks in 1938, shares a similarity to many other films in his body of work. The existence of the so called, among the film studies discipline, Hawksian woman. Indeed, Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn) does have several characteristics of this type character, like being heavily determined and following her goals assertively. The focus of this assignment will be related to her characteristics and the way she plays alongside the male character, David (Cary Grant). I will explore how does the film, specifically concentrating my analysis on a short extract, subvert the ideological dominant view over gender relationships, in such elements like courtship patterns and role reversal. Furthermore, I will examine how does the construction of both the male and the female character is shaped in the extract, and influenced by the social context in which the film was created and that configured the codes and conventions of screwball comedy.
The American society in the beginning of the 1930s demanded for a renewed view over marriage and the male-female relationship. This introduced a new set of values into the middle class couple and had implications over the expectancies of people regarding love relationships and marriage. This change was greatly driven by entertainment mediums, and screwball comedy played an important role in it. Many of these new values can be evidenced in the extract of Bringing Up Baby.
In the extract sequence Susan and David search for George (the dog) that has stolen the brontosaurus bone and for Baby (the leopard) that has ran away from Susan’s house. They run around the Connecticut woods while Susan tries to lure David into a love relationship with her. This setup serves perfectly for the emergence of the redefined values of couple relationships. Firstly, it provides the background setting for a courtship marked by adventure, excitement, romance and even peril, all of these being central to the conventions of screwball and the newly established social model. Secondly, Susan and David work as a couple taking a joint endeavour, which will potentially set them in a ‘love-companionship’ type of relation. Thirdly, this endeavour will eventually allow them to achieve an understanding based on shared experiences of fun and play.
The female character, Susan, is very much constructed based on the star factor of being Katherine Hepburn playing it. She is in many ways the real life impersonation of Susan Vance, as she is often seen as a symbol of a re-defined model of femininity in the 1930s. Susan, the character, is shown in the extract as having an androgynous side to her. Her clothing is very plain, and she reveals an easiness in relating to the male gender that, even considering the changes in society that were occurring, would not be expected from a high-class young woman. However, she does have a very particular femininity and she is very aware of her sexuality, playing with it to her advantage. Susan is also a very anarchic character, constantly pushing the boundaries of social conventions. Furthermore, she is very determined, self-minded and aware of her ultimate goal, without ever stopping to be playful and enjoyable. This strong character profile provides her with the necessary qualities to assume the active role in the courtship ritual, and indeed fight towards making David fall in love with her, and ultimately marry her.
These characteristics are in complete opposition to those found in David. He is mostly passive and powerless before the stunning energy that Susan displays. He is the archetypal character of the intellectual professor/scientist. He is excessively rational and in a way it is as if he is ‘dead for life’. He doesn’t enjoy his life, and it is through the shock relation with Susan that he will learn to liberate his tensions and have fun. The extract shows exactly this moment. It is the catharsis sequence that will set him free of social conventions and imprisonment. However, this process is not an easy one for the character and it will be based on a series of humiliations that he suffers throughout the sequence. For example, upon an initial intention to lead the search for Baby and George, David quickly misjudges his movements and accidentally falls, sliding down a slope. This event immediately triggers an outburst of laughter in Susan, which further contributes to mark his failure and humiliation. It is important to refer that this laughter, a typical characteristic of the unruly woman, will mark the whole of the sequence and stress each of David’s humiliations and progressive loss of power in relation to Susan. Following this event, Susan assumes the lead of the enterprise to find Baby and George.
In the extract there are several evidences that suggest a clear symbolism between characters and animals. Again, the very action of the sequence - Susan and David searching the woods for Baby and George - sets up the possible symbolisms. The passion of the dog for the bone and David’s obsession for it, immediately suggests the symbolic link between George and David. Furthermore, both share a similar characteristic – loyalty. Contrarily, Susan is symbolically linked to Baby (as the name itself implies) and its wildness. Also, the presence of two leopards, with opposite characters, also hints at the fact that Susan, and in this case women as a whole, are potentially deceivable because they have double character. As Kathleen Rowe writes:
“Women, it [Bringing Up Baby] suggests, can be gentle like Baby pr dangerous like Baby’s double, and their appearances are deceiving. Yet the alternative is worse, and life without the danger Susan brings to it resembles something like death.”
. Moreover, there is also a symbolism between Susan and Baby/the circus leopard that expresses a role reversal in courtship patterns. Both the leopard and Susan do the hunting after men, that run away incapable of facing them. Susan is also clearly associated with the whole setting of nature. Unlike David that is utterly lost, and unease about it, Susan reveals total integration with the natural setting of the woods.
The reading of the extract also revealed the presence of several Freudian symbolisms. Particularly important is the obvious connection between the water and the sexual tension that, by then, clearly underlines the relationship between Susan and David. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem plausible that Susan went into the water with David accidentally. Considering the easiness and control with which she relates to the natural environment, it seems more likely that she intentionally lead herself and David into the water. This event results in a subsequent scene where another symbolic element is very prominent – fire. Here, Susan dries hers’ and David’s clothes near a fire. Having already managed to get David half undressed due to the water, and now to the possibility of getting the clothes dry, she goes further by getting some of his clothes burnt by an ‘intentional accident’. Other symbolisms can be seen in events like: Susan and David watching while George and Baby engage in a courtship ritual that manifests a strong opposition between the two animals, suggesting a kind of ‘battle of the sexes’ that draws back to Susan’s and David’s relationship; or, the moment when Susan literally catches David with a net.
The end of the extract, similarly to the ending of the film, does undermine all this construction of Susan as the powerful character in the relation. In the last scene of the extract Susan turns herself into a powerless figure and assumes a strategy of emotional blackmail, in a desperate attempt to lead David out of his incapacity in acknowledging any feeling for her. By playing the conventional helpless feminine character she eventually succeeds in getting David to mention the fact that he likes her company. The underlying message of this appears to be that only by eventually giving the power back to men, can women achieve the emotional response that they desire. Furthermore, the very basis of Susan’s character motivation premise might cast doubt on the true power of her actions. Throughout the whole film she is driven by the ultimate desire to make David fall in love with her so that they can marry, and implicitly she can become a mother and housewife.
In conclusion, Bringing Up Baby as a whole and specifically the extract under analysis plays extensively with role reversal and inverted courtship patterns. However, I would suggest that the main reason behind this is probably more related to the potential comedic effect that events based on this role-playing might have, rather than an attempt to invert the cultural norms and conventions. This becomes established at both the end of the extract and the film, when the characters assume their positions within the conventional roles of male-female relationships and the dominant patriarchal ideology is re-affirmed.
The American society in the beginning of the 1930s demanded for a renewed view over marriage and the male-female relationship. This introduced a new set of values into the middle class couple and had implications over the expectancies of people regarding love relationships and marriage. This change was greatly driven by entertainment mediums, and screwball comedy played an important role in it. Many of these new values can be evidenced in the extract of Bringing Up Baby.
In the extract sequence Susan and David search for George (the dog) that has stolen the brontosaurus bone and for Baby (the leopard) that has ran away from Susan’s house. They run around the Connecticut woods while Susan tries to lure David into a love relationship with her. This setup serves perfectly for the emergence of the redefined values of couple relationships. Firstly, it provides the background setting for a courtship marked by adventure, excitement, romance and even peril, all of these being central to the conventions of screwball and the newly established social model. Secondly, Susan and David work as a couple taking a joint endeavour, which will potentially set them in a ‘love-companionship’ type of relation. Thirdly, this endeavour will eventually allow them to achieve an understanding based on shared experiences of fun and play.
The female character, Susan, is very much constructed based on the star factor of being Katherine Hepburn playing it. She is in many ways the real life impersonation of Susan Vance, as she is often seen as a symbol of a re-defined model of femininity in the 1930s. Susan, the character, is shown in the extract as having an androgynous side to her. Her clothing is very plain, and she reveals an easiness in relating to the male gender that, even considering the changes in society that were occurring, would not be expected from a high-class young woman. However, she does have a very particular femininity and she is very aware of her sexuality, playing with it to her advantage. Susan is also a very anarchic character, constantly pushing the boundaries of social conventions. Furthermore, she is very determined, self-minded and aware of her ultimate goal, without ever stopping to be playful and enjoyable. This strong character profile provides her with the necessary qualities to assume the active role in the courtship ritual, and indeed fight towards making David fall in love with her, and ultimately marry her.
These characteristics are in complete opposition to those found in David. He is mostly passive and powerless before the stunning energy that Susan displays. He is the archetypal character of the intellectual professor/scientist. He is excessively rational and in a way it is as if he is ‘dead for life’. He doesn’t enjoy his life, and it is through the shock relation with Susan that he will learn to liberate his tensions and have fun. The extract shows exactly this moment. It is the catharsis sequence that will set him free of social conventions and imprisonment. However, this process is not an easy one for the character and it will be based on a series of humiliations that he suffers throughout the sequence. For example, upon an initial intention to lead the search for Baby and George, David quickly misjudges his movements and accidentally falls, sliding down a slope. This event immediately triggers an outburst of laughter in Susan, which further contributes to mark his failure and humiliation. It is important to refer that this laughter, a typical characteristic of the unruly woman, will mark the whole of the sequence and stress each of David’s humiliations and progressive loss of power in relation to Susan. Following this event, Susan assumes the lead of the enterprise to find Baby and George.
In the extract there are several evidences that suggest a clear symbolism between characters and animals. Again, the very action of the sequence - Susan and David searching the woods for Baby and George - sets up the possible symbolisms. The passion of the dog for the bone and David’s obsession for it, immediately suggests the symbolic link between George and David. Furthermore, both share a similar characteristic – loyalty. Contrarily, Susan is symbolically linked to Baby (as the name itself implies) and its wildness. Also, the presence of two leopards, with opposite characters, also hints at the fact that Susan, and in this case women as a whole, are potentially deceivable because they have double character. As Kathleen Rowe writes:
“Women, it [Bringing Up Baby] suggests, can be gentle like Baby pr dangerous like Baby’s double, and their appearances are deceiving. Yet the alternative is worse, and life without the danger Susan brings to it resembles something like death.”
. Moreover, there is also a symbolism between Susan and Baby/the circus leopard that expresses a role reversal in courtship patterns. Both the leopard and Susan do the hunting after men, that run away incapable of facing them. Susan is also clearly associated with the whole setting of nature. Unlike David that is utterly lost, and unease about it, Susan reveals total integration with the natural setting of the woods.
The reading of the extract also revealed the presence of several Freudian symbolisms. Particularly important is the obvious connection between the water and the sexual tension that, by then, clearly underlines the relationship between Susan and David. Furthermore, it doesn’t seem plausible that Susan went into the water with David accidentally. Considering the easiness and control with which she relates to the natural environment, it seems more likely that she intentionally lead herself and David into the water. This event results in a subsequent scene where another symbolic element is very prominent – fire. Here, Susan dries hers’ and David’s clothes near a fire. Having already managed to get David half undressed due to the water, and now to the possibility of getting the clothes dry, she goes further by getting some of his clothes burnt by an ‘intentional accident’. Other symbolisms can be seen in events like: Susan and David watching while George and Baby engage in a courtship ritual that manifests a strong opposition between the two animals, suggesting a kind of ‘battle of the sexes’ that draws back to Susan’s and David’s relationship; or, the moment when Susan literally catches David with a net.
The end of the extract, similarly to the ending of the film, does undermine all this construction of Susan as the powerful character in the relation. In the last scene of the extract Susan turns herself into a powerless figure and assumes a strategy of emotional blackmail, in a desperate attempt to lead David out of his incapacity in acknowledging any feeling for her. By playing the conventional helpless feminine character she eventually succeeds in getting David to mention the fact that he likes her company. The underlying message of this appears to be that only by eventually giving the power back to men, can women achieve the emotional response that they desire. Furthermore, the very basis of Susan’s character motivation premise might cast doubt on the true power of her actions. Throughout the whole film she is driven by the ultimate desire to make David fall in love with her so that they can marry, and implicitly she can become a mother and housewife.
In conclusion, Bringing Up Baby as a whole and specifically the extract under analysis plays extensively with role reversal and inverted courtship patterns. However, I would suggest that the main reason behind this is probably more related to the potential comedic effect that events based on this role-playing might have, rather than an attempt to invert the cultural norms and conventions. This becomes established at both the end of the extract and the film, when the characters assume their positions within the conventional roles of male-female relationships and the dominant patriarchal ideology is re-affirmed.
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