The Challenging of Representations of Women in Film in "Dance, Girl, Dance" (1940)

In this paper, I argue that in the film Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940, U.S.A), typical representations of women in film are challenged by directly addressing their objectification through Judy’s (Maureen O’Hara) speech to a cat calling audience. By directly addressing audience members, both in and outside the narrative, Arzner successfully challenges the demeaning ways women are visually portrayed in film, as well as the gendered implications of sound in classical Hollywood through Judy’s speech itself.

In order to illustrate Arzner’s challenge of the patriarchal structures surrounding silence in the film in Dance, Girl, Dance, it is important to first understand how this power of silence came to be by going back to the early 20th century and women’s role during the silent film era, as well as how it was impacted by the transition to sound. Women have always been very involved in the film industry, and this was especially so during the silent film era. During this time, women made up a large portion of the film industry on all fronts; some of the top screenwriters were women, and they wrote about half of all silent films (Stamp 5). Women held leadership roles in the industry as executives, heads of various departments such as photography, editing, and screenwriting, and at one point, the highest paid director was a woman (Stamp 1). Dorothy Arzner was heavily involved as well, working as an editor and making the transition to directing with her 1927 film, Fashions for Women (Stamp 9). Women were heavily involved on the viewer/receiving side of film as well, making up a great majority of cinema attendees by the 1920s. Because at this time women were not the breadwinners of the house, they were thought to be the main consumers of film as they were the ones most available throughout the work week to attend screenings. As a result, the film industry considered the input of their women workers of significant importance, as they wanted their films to appeal to their main audience (Stamp 6). Despite the prominence and importance of women’s work at this time, it is still often dismissed and for the most part unknown, likely due to their essential dismissal with the introduction to sound films, or ‘talkies’, in the late 1920s.

This is not to say that women did not work within the talkie film industry at all. In fact, it was during this time that Arzner is now credited as having invented the boom mic, by attaching a microphone to a fishing rod in order to more clearly record her actress’ dialogue in a dance scene in her film The Wild Party (1929) (Bryant 347-348). Rather, the ‘dismissal’ of women in the film industry refers to the way that, historically, there has been more emphasis on the contributions made by men to the introduction of sound in film and contributions by women (such as Arzner) are less documented and thus they are forgotten (Porter 768). This also refers to the ways in which talkies and silent films became gendered. The introduction of sound in film occurred around the same time as studio consolidation, which significantly reduced the representations of women in the film industry (Bryant 349) (Nunas Amaral et al. 2). One study found that the number of women in the industry decreased drastically on all fronts during this time, from casts to screenwriters to producers and directors. This decrease was evident across all genres, meaning it was not simply a matter of male dominated genres becoming more popular and thus reducing the amount of women present (Nunas Amaral et al. 5-7). It is this change in representations of gender in the industry that perpetuated the gendering of sound films versus silent films, as silent films were rich with working women, and talkies with men. In this way, sound and speech is made male/masculine, and silence is made female/feminine, both within narrative and in the film industry itself; women were silenced and their historical contributions are often forgotten, essentially reducing them to only the silent era. Not only this, but with the decrease of female writers, there was likely a decrease in the content considered to be ‘female’/for female audiences, which further adds to this gendering of the two types of films. Moreover, with an increase of male writers, directors, etc, there would inevitably be an increase in men’s depictions of women on screen, which leads into the concept of visual pleasure and the male gaze.

While Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and her concept of the male gaze did not come about until the 1970s, that is not to say that it was not still present prior to that. In fact, Mulvey calls out Classical Hollywood specifically in her essay for using a “skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure” (16). When Mulvey refers to the male gaze, she is discussing the objectification of women in narrative cinema and how they are made into an object of desire for male viewers to project their desires. She discusses the concept of scopophilia, the act of finding enjoyment in looking, and how women are eroticized through three male looks/gazes; the look of the camera, the men within the story, and the male spectators. The look of the camera refers to where things are being filmed and while it is neutral, it is also inherently male in the sense that it is a man who is controlling the look of the woman on screen. The gaze of the men within the narrative of a film refer to how men within the story make the women in the story into an object of their desires and the last look, that of the male spectator, is the viewer, who is positioned to view the women in the same ways as the first two looks (18). It is through these looks that women on screen are objectified and made into a spectacle for male viewers.

Objectification is of particular importance in discussing these gazes, as it is done not only for the purposes of sexualization, but for the purposes of destroying any threat that women possess (this comes from psychoanalytic theory which holds that females pose a threat or fear of castration to males due to bodily differences). Another point worth noting is that this objectification and sexualization of women occurs any time they are on screen, regardless of what they are doing or what the plot is, even in instances where there is no sexual content (Kaplan 121).

These three male looks that Mulvey points out are evident in essentially all films, even feminist and female directed films such as Dance, Girl, Dance. One scene in particular where this can be seen is when Judy is performing and being cat called by the men in the audience. The look of these men within the story is a very literal, almost comical, representation of them making her into an object of their desire and projecting their fantasies onto her, with one man even yelling, “don’t mind us, we can take it!” when she is trying to hold up dress so as to not expose herself to the audience. The look of the camera switches between close ups of Judy’s face while she is performing and speaking to the audience, and the view of her from the cat calling audience’s perspective. As a result of placing the camera from the viewpoint of the men within the story, the viewer of the film is placed with them and set up to view Judy in the same objectifying way that they are. While these looks and the objectification that comes with them is present in this scene, the power they hold is challenged when Judy begins her speech, calling the men out for the way they are watching and treating her: “I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you…What’s it for?...” By previously setting up the spectators of the film to essentially be a part of the audience that is objectifying her, they are also set up to be a part of the audience that is scolded by her. Arzner is thus able to successfully challenge these visual representations of women in film and bring to the audience’s attention, both in and outside of the narrative, the demeaning ways in which they view women and, in doing so, attempt to take back some of the power their gaze holds by almost turning it on them and forcing them to recognize the harm that said gaze can cause.

There is also power held in Judy’s voice itself. As previously discussed, sound and silence became very gendered in classical Hollywood with the end of the silent film era, with silence and silent films being very much attributed to women. Judy’s scolding speech not only challenges the patriarchal structures which construct the ways in which she is viewed, but she also breaks down this gendering of sound by using her voice to do so. When she is dancing, the men in the audience are yelling and whistling at her, but when she begins speaking they become quiet. The only sound during Judy’s speech is her voice and any time she takes a pause, the scene is silent. Arzner essentially flips the script in terms of what is deemed male versus female by silencing the men in the scene and having Judy’s voice shine, and this is even more so given the content of what she is saying, and in doing so, arguably takes back at least some of the power held by these men and their gazes. It may be debatable how much power is being taken back; on the one hand, this scene is critical of the demeaning ways women, specifically Judy, are viewed by male spectators. The way the scene is filmed as well works to break down this objectification in film, as it does not position Judy in any explicitly sexual or eroticized way. On the other hand, women in film are sexualized no matter what they are doing or what is happening in the story (Kaplan 121), which is where the question of how much power, if any, is being reclaimed by Judy. Regardless, there is increased feminist agency both on screen and off in the case of Dance, Girl, Dance, so it seems safe to say that there is at least some power taken back from male spectators in this scene.

Women in film are objectified both visually and auditorily; Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze and the different looks of cinema explains the ways in which women on screen are visually objectified by male spectators, while the end of the sile

nt film era and the transition to talkies illustrates the ways in which sound and silence became gendered both within the narrative of films and the industry itself. Dorothy Arzner challenges these gendered notions of film on screen and off, as she was active in the film industry in silent and sound films, was involved with the transition to sound with her films and her being the inventor of the boom mic, and through her feminist films such as Dance, Girl, Dance. Through the character of Judy and her scolding speech to an audience of catcalling men, Arzner successfully challenges typical representations of women in film, both visually with the ways in which she frames Judy on screen and positions spectators of the film with the audience in the narrative, and auditorily by flipping the gendered roles of sound by silencing the men in the crowd and having Judy’s voice be the only sound in the scene.