Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Fourth Essay: ET 19

 

Some Like It HOT!!

SomeLikeItHot

Some Like It Hot was a film far beyond your wildest imagination. What can you expect from a screwball comedy? Funny characters, hilarious events, humorous chases, interesting dialogues, glamorous costumes, etc. You can find them all in this film. Indeed, this film were rich with semiotic meaning. Look at the ‘three’ bombshells in the movie poster, what would you think of? It must be an amusing, sexy, and comical film. In the film, Sugar Kane(Marilyn Monroe) was a vocalist and a ukulele player in an all-girl musical band. Joe(Tony Curtis) and Jerry(Jack Lemmon) the saxophone and the bass player witnessed a gangster’s massacre, in order to run away from the mafias, they dressed as women, named themselves Josephine and Daphne, and playing in an all-girl band headed to Florida, which they met Sugar.

 

Jack LemmonTony Curtis 2Marilyn MonroeOsgoodBellhop

There was a sequence that Marilyn Monroe’s sang ‘I Wanna Be Loved By You’; Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Osgood, and a bellhopnice ballroom were appearing in this sequence as well. In the opening of this sequence showed an establishing shot of the sumptuous round-ceiling ballroom, with a huge sparkling chandelier hanging in the middle of it. The grand decoration of the ballroom signified a social class, the upper class, men and women wearing tuxedos and dresses, drinking cocktails and champagne, which was Sugar's dream about being one of them.

monroe pointing small fingermonroe's figuremonroe's back

When singing ‘I wanna be loved by you’, Sugar signified a performer, an entertainer, she tended to be flirty and seductive. Every gaze, every smile, every dances, every little movements like pointing her small finger, the way she sang, it associated with seduction and she made your heart pumped. The lyrics of the song gave you a pleasure of hearing, like she was whispering beside your ear, and the sound ‘Boo boo bee doo!’ was like blowing airs into your ear, naughty and tickling. From a feminist point of view, she embodied the visual pleasure of the audience. Look at that dress, how could you not aware of her wonderful figure with that dress on. This fulfilled the male gaze theory according to Laura Mulvey, ‘that women role are simultaneously looked at and displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.’ (Mulvey, 1975). As we know, Marilyn Monroe was one of the famous sex symbols in the 50s, so she was absolutely up to the role.

Moving on, Josephine realized Osgood was waving at Daphne. ‘She’ encouraged Daphne to react nicely and be with Osgood that night.

Lemmon stands real straightdaphne's waveosgood's wave 2

And we look at Daphne, Jack Lemmon had well-portrayed Daphne with his movements in their musical performance, Daphne was standing real straight like a girl, and the way ‘she’ gazed, just like any other confident girl who played bass in a music band. Daphne waved back, with an awkward straight-palm gesture. It was like a ‘stop’ sign, asking him to stop showing affection for ‘her’ because at that moment Daphne really doesn’t like Osgood. Josephine was the encourager, ‘she’ encouraged Daphne to spend the night with Osgood and keep him ashore, so ‘she’ could sort of steal Osgood yacht and be with Sugar. Josephine was like a conspiracist here, making her own plans and forced Daphne to collaborate, no matter how unwilling Daphne was. ‘She’ even asked Daphne to wave nicer, this showed how eager Josephine was to date with Sugar. Daphne signified the ‘victim’, being controlled by Josephine. Although Daphne ended up happily engaged to Osgood, which was hilarious.

bellboy pulling necktiejoe faking the flowers

Josephine was quite a pretty ‘lady’ after disguised, ‘she’ caught a bellhop’s attention, the bellhop kept seducing ‘her’ after they first met. Look at the way he leaned towards Josephine, that bellhop actually acted as a dominant male in a feminist point of view, he was being arbitrary that he won’t stop chasing Josephine until ‘she’ says yes.

The bellhop was sending a basket of flowers to Daphne from Osgood, later he picked one of the flowers and gave it to Josephine and ‘threaten’ her, then Josephine put a card on the flowers and gave it to Sugar as it was a gift from him to her. Flowers are a sign of courtship-romances, normally a guy would send flowers to a girl he adores. Like this whole flower-sending scene, Osgood gave them to Daphne; the bellhop gave one to Josephine; and Josephine(Joe) gave them to Sugar. One basket of flowers had been sent to three ‘girls’ from three ‘guys’ within minutes. What a lovely scene.

Back to Marilyn Monroe, she played Sugar, Sugar was a ukulele player. As we know, ukulele was a small guitar-violin-like instrument, it seemed quite easy to play. It was like a symbol for Sugar that she was an easy and vulnerable blonde. For instance, she was so easily believed in Joe who acted like one of the millionaires, Junior. Joe was acting quite illogically but still Sugar buy it. However, Marilyn Monroe usually signifies dumb blonde in most of her movies, they were all so beautiful, fragile, naive, sweet, blond hair, etc. Daphne and Josephine were quite alike from a feminist point of view, they were a couple of nice sweet girls with nice ‘sweet’ voices; Joe and Jerry tended to disguised themselves as one of those blondes like Sugar/Marilyn Monroe, and they named themselves Daphne and Josephine, some very girlish names. These were how men thought of women.

This was an amazing sequence, there were still a lot of other sequences with semiotics and feminist theory, but this was the most significant and representative one in the movie. Well, some like it Hot!

 

1 comment:

  1. Your writing is articulate and lively. Your observations are very well taken. You are a bit wordy when you try to describe every action in the scene. Better to refer rather than describe.

    8/8

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