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After finishing up reading the Molly Haskell essay “From Relevance to Rape: An Examination of the Female Star in the 1940’s”, I got to thinking about the idea of gender in the classic detective film. In particular I wondered if it applied to a multinational idea of filmmaking. Although Haskell is talking specifically about stars of the 1940’s, I believe her thoughts on gender structure in the detective films still reign true till much later than that. In her essay she makes a point of saying “the proliferation of women—broads, dames, and ladies in as many shapes and flavors, hard and soft centers as a Whitman’s sampler—was a way of not having to concentrate on a single woman, and again, of reducing woman’s stature by siphoning her qualities off into separate women.” (Haskell pg. 620). For the Alan Ladd adaptation of the Glass Key this is clearly the case, however, if you move east to the Kurosawa adaptation “Yojimbo” we are presented with a far different depiction of gender rooted in the individual women and a varied type of female character. There are number of possible ways that this can be explained. The first is that it is simply a difference between the way that 1961 Japan viewed women and the way in which 1942 America saw women. The second is the drastic difference in the way the films are stylized. The final possibility is simply the difference in female characters offered in the two films.
The Japanese legal system offers equal opportunity for men and women in political economic and social relations. Although, women may entertain many of the same legal rights as men in Japan, the status of women is still very different. Even today women only represent a total of 39.5% of the workforce. Furthermore, more than 1/3 of those women are only part time workers who make on average 69.5% of a man’s wage. In the 1960’s, Japan however, experienced a second women’s liberation movement led by feminist leaders such as Tanaka Mitsu. The gender climate in Japan when Akira Kurosawa began to make Yojimbo was one of change. Women were trying to escape their culturally entrenched position.
Since as far back as seventh century, the idea of women as the quieter counterpart has been a part of Japanese culture. Women were expected to be much like European culture the “angel in the house”. This idea became expectation in Japanese culture. In fact, when many people think of the Japanese women, the Geisha is the first thing that comes to mind. Graceful, quiet, and built for male pleasure, the Geisha was always made up to dollish standards and dressed impeccably.
During the 1960’s, Japanese women began to strive to join the workforce at an equal standing as men. They were escaping these gender molds and stereotypes such as the Geisha and “angel in the house”. The gender construction in Yojimbo in many ways is a reflection of this social revolution. The film presents four different women. The first is weaving women. The weaving woman appears at the very beginning of the movie. She is portrayed as in the house, which is buying into cultural expectations. However, the camera also turns to put her on a higher plane than her husband. She is represented with a sort of reverence. She is calm and collected even while her husband is much like many American mothers would be depicted, hysterical. She is rooted in reason and pragmatism and works meticulously.
The second representation of women in Yojimbo comes when he enters the town. This is the classic Japanese stereotype, the Geisha. These women are interestingly portrayed as well. Kurosawa chooses to portray them as trapped and kept women. They are shown only behind a fence and in performance for men. They are in complete reliance on the male population of the town as a means for movement and independent thought. Kurosawa chooses to reflect the 1960’s mentality of trying to shed this idea as the ideal. He portrays them as chattering and mindless and basically sheep being lead around the city of scoundrel men.
The third portrayal of woman in the film is an interesting anomaly. While up till the introduction of the spinster wife, it seems Kurosawa is trying to represent the 1960’s Japanese feminist revolution, he then introduces a women in obvious power as evil. The wife is conniving and a pimp. She is constantly trying to gain something in the most underhanded way possible and is portrayed as rude and unrefined. This is an interesting choice and kind of a setback to the idea of Yojimbo as a feminist film.
However, the spinster wife isn’t the only time that Akira Kurosawa returns to gender norms. With a number of radical portrayals of women, he chooses to include the damsel in distress as a public opinion safety net of sorts. The mother in the film is a great person and loves and protects her child. However, she still relies almost entirely on the male “knight” to rescue her from the villains compound. Sanjuro is the only one capable of bringing the women out of danger; she has no agency of her own.
The filmmaking culture in the US was in fact actually less radical. In the 1942 adaptation of Kirk Hammets’ “The Glass Key”, gender stereotypes were strictly adhered to and firmly bought into. Haskell’s essay “From Relevance to Rape” presents the earlier mention point that in the American detective film a plethora of women are used to divert attention from just one. “The Glass Key” is loaded with dames, broads and ladies. There are so many different women vying for the attention of Alan Ladd’s Ned Beaumont that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish them as individuals.
Haskell even brings up the point that chauvinism and man driven movies were actually built into Alan Ladd’s contract. The studio was contractually bound to include at least one scene in every Alan Ladd picture in which Haskell says “he left the little women in the outer office or some equivalent, while he went off to deal with the Big Problem that only a man could handle” (Haskell pg. 620).
Films were actually a means of gender oppression at the time “The Glass Key” was made. In her essay, Molly Haskell brings attention to the fact that even films geared towards women were subject to the same female identity construction. Musicals such as those by Donen-Kelly like “On the Town” focused only on a man’s moral redemptive quest and never or at least very rarely on that of a female.
The second way in which to explain Yojimbo’s drastic gender difference from “The Glass Key” is to just chalk up it up to film genre and style difference. “The Glass Key” functions as a nourish pop-detective film. The character focus is primarily on Ned Beaumont and the way in which he interacts with the case. Yojimbo functions similarly although it is more of a myth and Meta film than “The Glass Key”.
“The Glass Key” has all the elements of a good detective thriller. The alpha male Ned Beaumont, the villainous Nick Varna, the friend and moral voice Paul and the cast of many sirens that are all entwined in the charm of Alan Ladd. As a result, gender choice is just part of the elements of a good detective film. The number of women who want him makes Ned Beaumont more of a man. With deeper female leads this becomes more of a challenge because they are no longer one-dimensional objects of lust and conquest. Characters would be forced to have other needs outside the carnal.
Yojimbo is a different story. Although it is in many ways a western, it also functions a lot more on the use of myth and archetype. The film’s scope is much broader and encompasses the world and not just one man vs. a dirty city. Sanjuro is fighting evil as a force; the same Christ was viewed to have come to save the world, Sanjuro was sent to rid the world of gamblers, pimps, liars and the cowardly. The film opens on a shot of Sanjuro standing up against the mountains. The man is meant to be of mythical proportions and the film is meant to match such a Herculian myth again and again. Sanjuro is even resurrected and conquers death after escaping the clutches of evil and being brought in a casket to the cemetery. In the scene in which he is throwing a knife into a floating leaf, he has conquered death and now even can control nature. Yojimbo’s scope as a film is so much larger than that of the “Glass Key” which means it can encompass so many different portrayals of femininity.
The final explanation for the difference could just be that each film simply called for different characters. Yojimbo was driven by a single man against other evil men. Sex wasn’t as much of a factor for Sanjuro as it was for Ned Beaumont. His mission was far too important to be littered with one-night stands and female conquest. The result of this is women who are not simply serving as compliments to Sanjuro’s masculinity but rather as actual contributors to the storyline. For “The Glass Key” this isn’t the case. The story focuses on the life of a single man in a dirty city. Women are there to bring out the masculine traits of Ned, thus women serve as a bolster for the men. This is simply the difference in writing styles of the two films.
In order to truly understand the gender roles, one must examine the discourse surrounding it. If we look at the other blog entries. One of the more interesting analyses of the way femininity functions in the film is a still shot breakdown from the blog, Things That Perplex Jimmy Stewarts Disembodied Head. The blog author contributes some interesting observations in terms of how the wife and the Geisha dancers functions in terms of the men based on single frame stills from the film. Supporting my theory that the spinster wife is a negative female image, the author points to a still (seen below) showing the wife in control of an array of prostitutes.
She is beckoning at Sanjuro to take some of the sex she has to offer as a controlling and underhanded businesswoman. Similarly, the clip below, shows the wife as a determined smirking force. She is bent on decision, and her husband is the only thing blocking her from her foe.
Similarly, Stephanie Breijo’s Rear Window Ethics presented a comparison between “The Glass Key” and Yojimbo that agreed with my reason number two for difference, the idea that films are so different because of the way in which they are stylized. She goes on to say in her post “Happy belated blog post, Yojimbo”, that “In terms of Yojimbo’s relation to The Glass Key, I found that there were more archetypal characters and less genre (uggghhh) folk (in my mind, I’m comparing the old helpful man of Yojimbo to well, I suppose…no one in The Glass Key, really because there was no one like that in there). There are more “stock” characters as Professor Campbell said, in genre movies…there were almost none in Yojimbo” This analysis tends to support my thought that characters in the Kurosawa adaptation function more as a mythical version of the novel rather than the 1942 version which functions as a pop niche film.
Once again the discourse tends to agree with the difference between adaptations in She’s my Rushmore. The Blog author raises the example of Sanjuro’s ability to follow through on actual violence as a means to separate myth from the cunning that Ned Beaumont exhibits.
There are a number of possible explanations for the ways in which different adaptations handle Hammet’s “The Glass Key”. The first is that it is simply a difference between the way that 1961 Japan viewed women and the way in which 1942 America saw women. The second is the drastic difference in the way the films are stylized. The final possibility is simply the difference in female characters offered in the two films. The overall discourse tends to agree that it is a little bit cultural and a huge portion stylistic.