Brown and Lemmon
Film Friday
Sometimes my different classes overlap in interesting ways. I am currently teaching Twelfth Night in my British Literature survey class and Some Like It Hot in my senior-level film genre class. Thanks to an article on the Billy Wilder classic by film scholar Chris Straayer, I can now label both as “temporary transvestite comedies.”
Straayer applies the label to those films in which a character is forced to dress as a member of the opposite sex. There are a surprising number of such films, including I Was a Male War Bride (Cary Grant), Tootsie (Dustin Hoffman), Victor/Victoria (Julie Andrews), and Mrs. Doubtfire (Robin Williams).
As Straayer explains it, the genre gives audiences two things they want. It allows them to vicariously experiment with alternative gender possibilities but then delivers them safely back within traditional categories. It is important, Straayer explains, that the characters are forced to cross-dress. If they did it of their own free will, then audiences would be rendered uncomfortable. Therefore, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis are running from the mob, Dustin Hoffman and Julie Andrews are desperately seeking for work, and Williams is circumventing a restraining order that keeps him away from his kids.
Interestingly, Some Like It Hot pushes to the limit some of the conventions of the temporary transvestite film. For instance, Daphne (Lemmon) appears to be having a bit too much fun being a woman in her tango number with Joe E. Brown. Furthermore, in one of the greatest final lines in movie history, Brown seems to take it in stride when he discovers that his “bride” is a he. “Nobody’s perfect,” he remarks. Wilder’s daring had audiences laughing nervously in 1960.
The 1996 film version of Twelfth Night plays Twelfth Night as a temporary transvestite comedy. Adding a plot twist that is not in the original, director Trevor Nunn imagines that there is conflict between Viola’s country and Orsino’s. She must therefore disguise herself as a soldier in Orsino’s army. In other words, she chooses to become a man unwillingly.
Shakespeare’s version, by contrast, is more free-flowing. Following the shipwreck, Viola is at first prepared to serve Olivia. When she discovers that Olivia is not accepting suits from anyone, she switches effortlessly to a decision to serve the duke as a man. One has the sense that it doesn’t matter to her whether she takes the female or male route.
This gender fluidity, I think, is what makes Viola such a liberating force in the play. When Orsino is stuck in self-pity as the rejected lover, Viola is able to play the sensitive male confidant and pull him out of his self absorption. When Olivia is prepared to play the mourning sister for seven years, Viola steps into her life with an assertiveness that penetrates her posturing and gets her thinking about life again. Other people may be stuck in roles. Not Viola.
Shakespeare, in other words, doesn’t play things as coyly as do 20th century temporary transvestite comedies. He believes in acknowledging the full complexity of human beings. He knows that men have a female side and women a male side.
To be sure, like Billy Wilder and the other directors of such dramas, he also knows he must get everyone to match up heterosexually at the end of the play. But amid the rejoicing, there’s also a hint of sadness, perhaps over the other possibilities that have been closed down. “And the rain it raineth every day,” sings the fool. It’s a more powerful ending than the happy marriage dance that concludes the film version.
Some like it hot? No one’s hotter than the bard.
