- Watch the film Some Like it Hot. Write a brief response on the blog continuing to think about how the category of gender is under critique through filmic elements of the comedic; how is the transvestite as a subject/function/signifier being used to interrogate the possibilities (or limits) of identity, and ultimately the performative nature of identity. Draw any relevant connections between the film and 12th Night, but attempt to avoid obvious comparisons. Due by Noon 3/19.
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Twelfth Night and Some Like It Hot hit on the same gender fluent identities of characters and how that particular orientation affects how the character is viewed by others. In Twelfth night when Viola dressed up as Cesaro, she attracts Olivia but as Voila she is attracted to Orsino. In Some Like it Hot, Joe and Jerry dawn the personas of Josephine and Daphne; Jo falls for Sugar while Daphne attracts Osgood. This comedic error plot highlights the power struggles between men and women and shows how as women, the characters of Joe and Jerry, as well as Voila, are seemingly more powerless. Voila as Cesaro convinces woos Olivia but as Voila, she is being carted everywhere by the Ship Captain. I understand that Shakespeare was above all making an exciting play but to me, Voila was completely capable of getting around on her own. Similarly, as Daphne, Jerry is more submissive towards Osgood and can not fight off some the advancements the millionaire makes. I would love to see this as “love triumphs all” narrative because the characters of Olivia and Osgood liked characters of the same sex but I felt that attraction only adds evidence to how the character’s attraction was dependent on their sex.
Also, after seeing Some Like It Hot, I saw so many parallels to one of my favorite movies, White Chicks. I was maniacally laughing at the thought of Terry Crews playing Osgood.
In the film “Some Like It Hot,” there is a strong sense of challenging gender norms, with respect to having male characters cross-dressing, but also the ending scene stood out a lot. In the ending scene of the film, the way Jerry is exemplifying so much insecurity in terms of his masculinity, because he runs down everything until he says “I’m a man,” to which Osgood said, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” I think that the whole film was challenging traditional masculinity in a lot of ways, especially with the whole idea of it being this satire of society, having the rich playboy of the time being won over by this golddigger, and having a woman using her wit to win over the man with the money that she wanted. Something I can connect from having learned in another class, Film Comedy, is that this era of film is actually one in which the reversal of gender roles was a key part of developing romantic comedy, and it was something Billy Wilder was exceptionally skilled at as a writer and director. I think when he challenged gender norms the most was with how he redefined “the chase” for films of the time, essentially the aforementioned idea that instead of a man charming a woman, it was a woman who picked a man and got what she wanted.
Both Joe in Some Like it Hot and Viola in 12th Night struggle against the limitations of their assumed gender identity. They have both made someone fall in love with a false version of themselves. In 12th Night, this falseness is a barrier that cannot be overcome. Viola has to revert to her original self in order to obtain true love, and when she does so Olivia no longer loves her but Count Orsino marries her. Some Like it Hot does not portray gender as a barrier at all. Sugar loves Joe in every form that he takes: woman, timid millionaire, and himself. Osgood too loves Jerry both as a man and a woman. In many of Shakespeare’s plays, including 12th night, affections shift from person to person. In Some Like it Hot, the underlying people remain the same, but their lover’s affection follows them from identity to identity. Gender identity is used by Joe and Jerry as a tool, they assume whatever identity is most expedient. Society accepts the masks that they put on, and they are able to make escapes and manipulate people just by changing their external forms. Gender in Some Like it Hot is not a fixed characteristic, but a tool used to achieve some end. The intangibility of gender is reinforced by the constant love Sugar and Osgood express regardless of Joe and Jerry’s performance of gender.
“Some Like it Hot,” by Billy Wilder, is a comedic romance about two men named Jerry and Joe, who disguise themselves as women named Josephine and Daphne, in order to get out of town undetected by the mob. The category of gender is under critique here because this film is proving that gender is simply a non factor as long as personalities and behavioral norms are upheld. The transvestites in this film are upholding that there are no limits of identity; as long as one looks the part from the outside, humans are just humans and no one can tell the difference. Osgood, a man of great wealth, falls in love with (Jerry) Daphne, despite the fact that she is actually a he. This is similar to “12th Night” where Olivia falls in love with Cesario (Viola) despite the fact that he is actually a she. “Some Like it Hot” is incredibly similar to “12th Night” in that they each prove that love is a concept independent of gender. While both are a comedic stories, they each share the same important message regarding their ideas of gender; it is fluid and not necessarily as important as society makes it seem. I thought the scene in the end of the movie where Daphne finally reveals that she is a man to Osgood was hilarious, as Osgood responds to this by saying “Well, nobody’s perfect,” alluding to the message of “Some like it Hot,” in a more comedic and light hearted tone. While “12th Night” had a more happy ending filled with closure, I believe this scene from “Some Like it Hot” shows the evolution of comedy and endings to stories through the years.
Both Some Like it Hot and Twelfth Night broach the topic of gender and its malleability. Each explores how individuals can craft malleability: Joe and Jerry in Some Like it Hot build their own new identities; Viola shapes her own character in Twelfth Night’s Cesario. While every character that cross-dresses and masks themself in a different gender has a different aim, it’s evident that the gender chosen by characters shapes their experiences. When Joe and Jerry become Josephine and Daphne, respectively, they engage with Sugar and Osgood differently than they would as men. When Viola adopts her facade as Cesario, she has different interactions with both Orsino and Olivia than she would as a man. Both Shakespeare and Some Like it Hot’s director, Billy Wilder, push and mold the gender identities of characters to spill over onto others. What is notable about each work, though, is that women lack the agency to craft their identity and impact others with it. In Twelfth Night, the actor playing Viola is actually a young boy, and can transition to the role of man easily; in Some Like it Hot, the two men are the ones shaping their newfound female personas. It is interesting to trace the gendered identity changes in each work, as women are not able to undertake such an identity shift. Women were marred from acting in Shakespearean theater and even attending the theater; a woman would never be asked to play the role of man – even a crossed role – and thus the experience of having a cross-dressing character is limited to the male expectation of what comedy may ensue from being female. The more modern movie also depicts its main woman, Sugar, as being a subject of the gendered change; it’s difficult to imagine Sugar defining the roles of her co-stars through a transition into male in the film. The men of Some Like it Hot define the consensus view of the transition throughout the film, to the very ending, when Osgood cedes that he’ll have Daphne in any bodily form; Osgood decides what will be acceptable, and not Sugar. Though each of the works depicts a comical transition from man to woman, which inserts a certain sense of liberation in the work for characters being freed from gendered boundaries, each work is also fixated on the male perspective. Both works disregard catering to women in the transition process, as their respective author and director are fixated on how a gendered change will create hilarity for the men of the show and in the audience.
When Jerry insists that he and Joe take jobs as female musicians, Jerry asks “Why couldn’t we do it?”. They have been men before, while wearing a skirt or gold earrings, because they have demanded on being considered as such. Now, they could and do become women just as easily—by insisting that they are women. Again, gender belongs to whoever demands it. So long as someone stoutly demands they are of a certain gender, they do have that identity. Especially for someone transitioning between the gender binaries, conforming to stereotypes of gender helps one to claim that gender, to embody that gender, and to fit more seamlessly and without question into societal conventions. Still, that gendered identity originates in the demand of it. These gender stereotypes—a dress, a higher pitch of voice, a demure smile—applied by Joe and Jerry within Some Like It Hot simply make the demand more normatively convincing. An outward appearance does not define gender; an inward demand does. Accordingly, Some Like It Hot mocks our ideas of gender as they are so closely tied to performative presentation. Joe and Jerry are men at the end of the film, though dressed like women, because they have decided to be men.
Additionally, it’s interesting to note that the bellhop, a young man, is not seen as a risk to the women, as well as Joe when he is unable to perform sexually. This reflects the concept of Viola in Twelfth Night being construed as harmless to women when dressed as a man, perceived as young and not yet fully a man.
In Billy Wilder’s film, “Some Like it Hot” the theme of gender is both critiqued and used as a comedic device. Both of the movie’s central characters Joe and Jerry (Josephine and Daphne) use their newly formed identities to find love from other characters in the film. The main characters want something which is universally relatable; these men are looking for the ‘security’ that comes from being in a relationship. This concept has been experimented with in countless other plays and movies, but perhaps most famously in William Shakespeare’s play, “Twelfth Night”. Like Joe and Jerry, the protagonist from “Twelfth Night” (Viola) uses a false persona to find security in a relationship with a specific love interest. Knowing this, the audience views Joe and Jerry as two very relatable protagonists; the audience wants to see them succeed. However, because the methods Joe and Jerry use to find love is both unconventional and somewhat unethical, it is exciting and nerve-racking to watch them accomplish their goals. Joe’s character falsifies his economic standing, by taking on the persona of multi-millionaire bachelor “Junior”. Joe does this to appear more attractive to his love interest; Sugar. This chosen persona shows how women during the 1920s and 30s viewed men with immense wealth. The relationship between the characters is supposed to be awkwardly funny; Sugar is so obviously interested in Junior’s financial status. Despite this, the audience wants to see Joe successfully charm sugar because of his charm and relatability. Similarly, Jerry’s newly formed identity ‘Daphne’ is perused by grungy millionaire who is not aware of the fact that he is wooing another man. When Jerry decides that he wants to in fact marry his suitor both Joe and the audience are shocked and opposed to this notion. The relationship between Daphne/Jerry and Osgood is preposterous; it was unconventional and not acceptable for a man to love another man during this time. The movie mocks this anomaly and uses it for comedic relief (etc. showing Jerry lead Osgood while they are dancing and using other methods to show Jerry is clearly not a woman). This being said, at the end of the film when the four are exiting on Osgood’s motor boat, Osgood is not deterred when he finds out that Jerry is indeed a man, showing the progressiveness of this film. Overall, the movie focuses mainly on the idea that relationships which break societal norms in a harmless way are supposed to be very funny.
Some Like It Hot pushes the boundaries of inter-sex relationships through the twisting of gender presentation, as Jerry and Joe move back and forth between their male and female personas. For the men, being a woman is their ticket to freedom; this subverts common ideology of women’s roles at the time, especially as the movie is set in 1929. Though women were becoming more independent, the idea that womanhood equated to free movement within society was still unattainable. It is their female disguises, however, that allow the men to not only escape with their lives but also to experience a different side of life.
One of the most interesting parts of the movie is how easily Jerry slips into the role of being a woman after Joe simply tells him “You’re a girl,” and he begins to repeat it. The transition from fumbling in his heels in the train station to falling in love with Osgood (however lightly or pragmatically he takes the situation itself) is almost seamless, despite repeated reminders from exterior forces (mostly Joe’s antics) that he is not who his exterior presents him to be. He does not lose the essence of himself; it simply transitions from a male exterior to a female exterior. The transition away from Jerry’s ogling, uncertain masculine self to his self-assured, playful feminine self allows different aspects of the character to be highlighted, and the manner in which Jack Lemmon presents the character does not make it seem that these two personas are radically different people but instead two sides of the same coin. It would have been easy to have the feminine personas of both men be completely different from their male personas and continue to have them flip back and forth between the two; instead, they blend into one another, not using the female persona as a comedic button but instead imbuing it with a sense of real dimension. This occurs in Twelfth Night as well, as Viola as Cesario does not deviate from her normal personality, nor is her cross-dressing used for any comedic purpose.
Like Twelfth Night, the Some Like It Hot ends without resolving the cross-dressing plot; Jerry confesses to Osgood that he is a man, but this doesn’t seem to faze him, as he simply responds, “Well, nobody’s perfect!” Though Jerry, like Viola, has revealed his true gender to his partner, we do not see him return to men’s clothing, nor do we get closure about what actually happens to their relationship beyond the final scene. This ambiguous ending allows for the movie (and the play) to push the boundaries of a traditional heterosexual couple. In the movie, it teases at a latent homosexual desire within the pairing; in the play, it ‘rights’ the pair from a homoerotic state into the neutral heterosexual partnership, though without removing that homosexual subtext, as Viola never returns to her female clothes. Both Some Like It Hot and Twelfth Night utilize the performative aspects of gender to break beyond norms for both gender presentation and marriage customs, forcing the audience to reconsider exactly what is ‘standard.’
The criticism of the category for gender is illustrated through the conversation between the two protagonists. The film illustrates that gender is performative instead of genetic. The formulation of gender is the result of social construction. The categorized behaviors for boys and girls result from the standard that society shapes for them. It is demonstrated in two special scenes: one is when Joe tells Jerry that he needs to remember “he is a girl,” which results in the following lady-like actions of Joe. another one is when Joe tries to wake Jerry up from his fantasy being a girl who can engage with another man. At the end of the film, the strict social expectation for gender is torn down when Osgood ignores the biological boundary for marriage even after Jerry confesses to Osgood about his true identity. The transvestite expands the possibilities of identity and breaks the limits of identity that is conventionally based on biological features. The transvestite of the main characters ignites the possibility for homosexual romance and demonstrates that identity can form as a result of the social impact. Jerry’s transformative actions succeeding Joe’s definitive statement for Jerry’s identity illustrates one’s gender-related actions can purely be another’s expectation because Jerry can immerse himself in another world of gender while holding such a self-convincing belief. Both the film and 12th night end with the happy heterosexual relationship even if after the biological gender identity is revealed. Such arrangement of a plot is sarcastic and ridiculous as while all the dramatic romance is actually the result of the transvestite and masquerade, in the end, all characters do not show any rejection or anger towards the tricks that are played on them. The overturning ending leaves the question about the significance of the role of identity in society and social relationship. When Olivia accepts Sebastian as her husband because he carries the same physical features as Viola, the story criticizes the impact of socialization that only agrees with heterosexual marriage. When Osgood accepts Jerry as a man to marry, the film explores the nature of identity and overrides the impact of socialization.
The 1959 film titled, Some Like It Hot, produced by Billy Wilder, tells the story of two former speakeasy musicians, Joe and Jerry, who are forced to flee from Chicago and find refuge as singers in an all-girl band in Florida. Joe and Jerry disguise themselves as Josephine and Daphne, respectively, in order to remain undetected by infamous mob boss, “Spats.” Throughout the film, Josephine and Daphne experience what it is like to be women. This includes being treated much differently by men as well as engaging in homosexual relationships with other men. Similar to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, movement between different genders is very fluid as men are easily able to assume the role of women and partake in flirting and further engagement with other men. In both Twelfth Night and Some Like It Hot, individuals have no problem disguising as the opposite gender and assuming the appropriate roles (Viola as ‘Cesario’ wooing Olivia & Joe and Jerry taking part in relationships with Osgood and Sugar). Thus, I believe that Shakespeare and Wilder are making a point that gender is solely based off physical gestures, appearance and the pitch of one’s voice. Another parallel that I noticed between the movie and the play was the relationships between Joe and Sugar and Viola and Duke Orsino. Although Joe is dressed as a woman throughout the movie, he falls in love with Sugar and in the end, when his true identity is revealed, Sugar is able to look past his initial lies. Similarly, Viola, dressed as a man, falls in love with Duke Orsino and the two of them end up together despite appearing to be the same gender throughout the play. One difference, however, between the two productions is that the audience for Some Like It Hot reacted much more negatively to the gender fluidity. The audience for Twelfth Night saw the play as a comedy and possibly nothing more than that. However, being that the Wilder film was released at a much more modern time in history, the film received a lot of backlash and was even discredited by the Catholic League of Decency and even banned completely in the state of Kansas.
The two biggest connection between 12th Night and Some Like It Hot is that people fake their identity and gender. In two of the situations people faked their identities for love. In 12th Night, Viola pretends to be a male and takes on the role of the Dukes servant in order to try to have him fall in love with him. In Some Like It Hot, Joe pretends to be Junior who is very wealthy and in the oil business. He takes on all the characteristics of the type of guy Sugar has been looking for in order to try to get her to fall in love with him. In the end, he ends up kissing Sugar as Josephine (a women) and confesses to her that he is really Joe and a saxophone player. In both of these situations the person who was pursing the person they were in love with changed their class standings to try to get the other person to love them. However, in the end the person loved them for who they were. One of the biggest differences between 12th Night and Some Like It Hot, is that in Some Like It Hot it ends with allowing an open interpretation for a possible same-sex couple. In 12th Night while Oliva falls in love with Viola without knowing she is a woman, they do not end up together. However, in Some Like It Hot, Oliver falls in love with Daphne not knowing she is a man. When Daphne tells Oliver that she is actually a man, it does not bother him and he says, “no one is perfect”. I wonder if since the movie was written later than 12th Night if that is maybe why they ended it differently then 12th Night.