Images of false Victorian idealism in those 'Happy Days: 1950s'

~ Images of false Victorian idealism in those 'Happy Days: 1950s... ~

The 18th century bourgeoisie, Victorian middle-class family, is reflected in 1950s and contemporary melodramatic cinema. It was within this kind of genre that a lens to the unseen private sphere of the 'family unit' (one where female oppression was masked through the public sphere of male domination) is unmasked. In films, melodramatic plots (storylines) were used to create the image of a ‘stable society'. By stable society, I refer to a society whose obligations were to preserve morals, values and traditions. These plots (storylines) typically featured the protagonist, which was usually a female lead who experiences or has experienced a traumatizing event or events. The woman is usually introduced to sever trauma and who in the end of the film finds comfort and closure. This allows for the genre to set the stage for the female lead's act of martyrdom (martyrdom definition: extreme suffering of any kind) but also, one who shows acts of (forgiveness, impermanence and fragility).  With that in mind, melodramas then fall into two categories. The first is through the views of male critics, a genre that is based around the structures of the bourgeois family ideologies.  The second through a feminist view, a genre in which stresses the white female’s view of suffering and frustrations within a patriarchal, middle-class family context.

The 1950s, the years of virtue, marriage and innocence; helped melodramatic cinema give rise to stars like Rock Hudson and Audrey Hepburn. A decade that had proven to be dedicated to having its citizens live a more pro-family lifestyle.  It was during the 1950s  that birthrates were on the rise and social problems such as gangs, drugs and violence were practically out of sight and out of mind (or at least in the films).  In particular, the United States had become a place that encouraged women to invest in motherhood. With the many identities women had as mothers, wives, daughters and home-makers, the United States became a place of

traditional values of home and the family.  The 1950s in relation to the melodramatic films produced during this time had set the stage for being an emotional and ethical genre that depicted the struggles of good and evil, and emphasized on the ideologies of fate. Melodramas themselves exaggerate how lives are determined by forces outside of human control. Domestic melodramas of the 1950s were concerned with problems of

individual identity and the family unit’s internal affairs. These concerns in relation to the idealized gender roles were acted out in the context of power and patriarchal rights.

 

          ~The Roots of Adam and Eve...~

 

Masculine ideology is the traditional expectations and or standards for men to follow in order to perform their male gender roles accordingly. The relationship of gender role and social ideals gave cultural attributes to

the masculine personality characteristics. Though, what could be said about these ideologies is that they convey how internalizing the beliefs about masculinity and the male gender are. Also, that these beliefs are rooted in the fundamental relationships between the individual and society. These ideologies of masculinity that are upheld by society exist, and they do so in order to create for men unrealistic standards that serve to stimulate then to live day by day in attempts of reaching fulfillment.

The rules of idealized femininity was for most women learned through a kind of physical dialogue with images from the TV, magazine/newspaper and advertisements. These images would tell a woman what kind of clothes she should be wearing, and what body shape she should be trying to achieve. They would also be conveying how a woman should behave (facial expressions), and her body movement. The 1950s was a time for feminine ideal to be reaffirmed with domesticity and dependency. A woman being independent and not taking up the roles as wife and home-maker were seen as ‘bad,’ just the thought of female independence was ‘dirty.’ It was the ideology of 'true femininity' that was exaggerated in television shows and movies through a females

performance of childlikeness, non-assertiveness and helplessness (basically characteristics that help men achieve masculinity). It was because of these idealizations that the norm for women was to be content and satisfied in the home, tending to the housework, the children, the kitchen with the cooking, and the sex which she was obligated to give her ‘providing husband' (the ideal female woman was obedient, modest, but sexy for her husband's pleasure and nurturing).