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Khanh Mai
Professor Erin Dietel McLaughlin
WR 13300
November 14, 2014
Women on films in the 1960s

Femininity had always been defined by others, especially by men. On the media, women
used to be depicted as objects and controlled by men. However, throughout the history, the
portrayal of women seems to improve from being seen as object and to being recognized as
object and subject. Only recently have women begun to perceive themselves as social subjects.
They throw off interpretations of their inaccurately assumed nature and see themselves and the
society with their own eyes. The media also respond to this by depicting women's preferences for
certain genres, materials and forms, which seem to express particularly feminine aesthetic
concepts. All the organized expression of these changes, in fact, comes from the movement in
the 1960s.

The purpose of this paper is to show the Hollywood New Wave and the Second Wave
Feminism and how these movements affect the portrayal of women on films in the 1960s.
Although there was also Hollywood New Wave that did not support women, the feminist
movement led to a new image of women on movies. Eventually, a new film era was born, in
which women are stronger and more independent. In this paper, I explore the women who broke
through this male barrier through the films Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Breakfast at Tiffany's
(1961), and Daisies (1969). These films, featuring female-centered narratives, seriously explored

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feminist issues, such as equal sexual identity for men and women, its relation to the patriarchal
system, the depression of domesticity, which is sense of dissatisfaction that plagued the
repressed female.
Before 1960s
Firstly, in order to understand women's portrayal on films, people should understand the
historical context. In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, an American feminist, notes that the
World War II and the Cold War created Americans' longing for the comfort of home, many
idealizing a home life with mother as the housewife. (29) Friedan also notes that this longing was
even deepened by the fact that "many of the women who worked during the war filling jobs
previously filled by men faced dismissal, discrimination, or hostility when the men returned."
(30) Furthermore, many housewives have sought fulfillment in sex, unable to find it in
housework and children. When sex cannot fulfill all of a person's needs, the attempts to make it
often drive married women to have affairs or drive their husbands away.(31) Friedan also
mentioned Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and noticed that women have been trapped at
the basic, physiological level, expected to find their identity through their sexual role alone.
Friedan says that women need meaningful work just as men do to achieve self-actualization, the
highest level on the hierarchy of needs. (32)
In the early 1960s, the media also heightened the dissatisfaction and unhappiness among
women. Women's magazines were written and edited mainly by men, with many stories and
articles that showed women as either happy housewives, creating the "feminine mystique"the
idea that women were naturally fulfilled by devoting their lives to being housewives and
mothers.(Friedan 32) Although the lives of housewives in the United States although they did not
have to worry about the economy but to merely take care of children, yet the widespread trend of

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unhappy women persisted; By stating that "We can no longer ignore that voice within women
that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my home."(Friedan 32),
Friedan acknowledged the changing attitudes of women about their roles.
Hollywood New Wave
The Hollywood New Wave is the movement in the 1960s that favored men over women ,
and the portrayal of women on films is rare and insignificant
In the Hollywood world, the men had freedom and privileges, but the women did not have the
same. Women were advocating for social and political change at protests, but they were not yet
lobbying in the entertainment world.
This movement occurred after the fall of the Hollywood studio system from the 1930s to
the mid 1960s, which is known as the Production Code (1934). This code censored content in
film for sexuality, drugs, improper behavior,
Ppl started asking why? why do producers have to censor something that really happens in real
life? Why do they have to hide?
So beginning in the late 1960s, this studio system began to fall, as films' content was no longer
censored strictly.
Second Wave Feminism

The Second Wave Feminism in the United States history starting from 1960s and lasting
through the 1980s when women demanded equal rights and fought for social, political, and
economic freedoms. This movement overlapped with The Hollywood New Wave. During the
Hollywood New Wave, women were largely absent from the filmmaking process. This lack of
involvement was directly counter to the fact that the feminist movement was on the move.

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However, if women really wanted a change in the society, "its often necessary to put
idealism in the most understandable context and for many people that context is the popular
culture thats consumed as entertainment."(Zeisler 12) Therefore, given the "feminine mystique"
that falsely depicted the roles and desire of women, there was a call to change the content of
representations and to present realistic images of women in cinematic world that had typically
treated women as passive and dependent objects. Three films Bonnie and Clyde, Breakfast at
Tiffany's, and Daisies are examples that went against the stereotypes about women that will be
further examined.
Bonnie and Clyde
After the abolition of the restrictive Production Code, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) marks the
beginning of a time when sexuality became more openly expressed onscreen, and thus the gender
equality could be explored by filmmakers. The film is about Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker,
who embarked on a life of crime. They are adventurers; they are lovers; they mean no harm.
They began a crime spree that extends from Oklahoma to Texas. They rob small banks and soon
became famous across the country.
When Bonnie and Clyde premiered in 1967, the United States was in the height of the
sexual revolution. The film is a revolution for women's role, which Jana Kay Lunstad stated in
"But You Wouldn't Have the Gumption to Use It", was first demonstrated in the beginning with a
scene showing Bennie's naked neck and shoulders. (69) Throughout the film, there are scenes
that show the sexual experiences of the couple. The audiences can see a change in the view on
females, which is less conservative and more sexualized than before.

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The second point in the film is that many things Bonnie did and said in the film are
merely driven by her sexual frustration, because the man she loves is not adept in their sexual
encounters. Before the 1960s, sexual desire was mostly shown by men. Portraying this idea on
the screen, Bonnie and Clyde was coherent with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and
showed what women desired in real life.
Another point worth examined is that Bonnie gets sexually turned on by violence and
crime. In general, before the 1960s, gangster movies, violence, and crime were rarely linked with
women. Boldly depicting this idea on film, Bonnie and Clyde is one of a few films that broke the
stereotypes, shocking older audiences who had become familiar with the 1934 Production Code.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly Golightly, a female protagonist from the 1961 film adaptation of Truman Capotes
Breakfast at Tiffanys, is another figure that broke the barrier. The film is about a single, selfsufficient Holly Golightly who lived a life that largely did not reflect the reality of women in the
1960s and the writer Paul Varjak, who moved into a New York apartment building and became
intrigued by his pretty neighbor Holly Golightly. Holly's lifestyle both confused and fascinated
Paul; in public she joined parties with a sexy, sophisticated air, but when they were alone she
changed into a different person.
Holly Golightly rejected the conventional ideals of her time and swapped them for
nontraditional values, showing clearly the impact of 1960s feminist movement on films.
Although her Midwest tradition required her to marry Doc Golightly and lived the idea that
women were born to fulfill roles of being housewives and mothers, she rejected that tradition and
started living a free, independent life as Kavita Nayar described, "the absurd vision of a waiflike
woman dressed for a cocktail party in a black frock and pearls gazing into the famed jewelry

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store's window in broad daylight has become an emblem of the American dream." (174) The idea
that women chased after men and money was not the image usually portrayed in the Hollywood
New Wave.
Another interesting point depicted in the film is the dependence men and women have on
each other. Golightly is depicted to be dependent on a man's finance, which is not abnormal in
the conventional 1950s and 1960s theme. However, depicting Paul Varjak to depend financially
on the woman on reversal, the movie shows the equality between two genders. This is interesting
in terms of the feminist aesthetic contrast to the New Wave Movement and relevant to the
feminist movement.
Daisies
Daisies (1966) is another film that is also used to illustrate the change in the depiction of
women. The film is about two young women, Marry 1 and Marry 2 who believed the world was
to be spoiled. They thought that many things in the world, including food, clothes, men, war are
not to be taken seriously. Emily argues that at first, it seems to be a slippery film, but if it is
considered in the context of feminism, Daisies is an aesthetically and politically film that
remains one of the great works of feminist cinema.
In the film, the two women took advantage of older men, and they trashed an elaborate
banquet reserved for government officials, which shows that they had some sort of control over
their lives. One important visual scene that is relevant to the context that is important in the film
is when Marie 1 and Marie 2 sat in bikinis in front of a wooden board, with a tiny man visible
above their heads, lying on the top of the board. The placement of the man above them in small
form may present the idea that women can exploit men of power. From the beginning of the

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movie to the final frame, Marie I and Marie II show their alignment with the agenda of women in
a totally new format, boldly acknowledging their independence and control over men as well as
over their roles in the society.
The characters of Bonnie, Holly Golightly, Marie I and II are important to discuss
because they all portray a woman finding her own voice and independence in a mans world.
These women are shown as sexual beings that had desires just as male characters shown in
previous generations of filmmaking. Both women were powerful in making decisions that would
affect their lives and ultimately both find happiness with men and they are not threatened by their
heightened sense of power. Liberation from societal norms is an important theme in each of these
films and was an important theme in womens liberation. The characters of Bonnie, Golightly
and the two Marie provide sharp contrasts to many of the male dominated themes discussed in
many Hollywood New Wave films, which is why it is important to explore what they stood for in
a feminist context.
Male Gaze
However, there are arguments stating that in Bonnie and Clyde and in Breakfast at
Tiffany's, the directors applied the concept of "male gaze" predominated in classical
Hollywood filmmaking, which is counter to the feminist movement. The "male gaze" is a term
discussed by Laura Mulvey, a British Feminist theorist, in her book "Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema (1975). It is used to describe when the audience is put into the perspective of a
man. Female characters are sexualized, and the camera may zoom in on female body parts that
are considered sexual. (4) This concept emphasizes the passive role of women in cinema to
provide visual pleasure, and male actors are those that actually dominated the screen.

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Mulvey also identifies three looks or perspectives that are used in films which serve to
sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how
he perceives the female character. The second is the perspective of the audiences as they see the
female character on screen. The third is the combination of the first two looks: it is the male
audiences' perspective of the male character in the film. This third perspective allows the male
audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate
himself, through looking, to the male character in the film. (6) None of these three types of
looks, however, relate to the active role of women. Instead, women are only regarded as objects
for men's pleasure. It is true that both Bonnie and Clyde and Breakfast at Tiffany's had the "male
gaze". Still, if these works are interpreted in the context of the feminist movement, they in fact
supported the main thesis.
In Bonnie and Clyde, Academic Jana Kay Lunstad discussed about the male gaze as
"men wanted to see them rather than how they really were".(17) Yet, the image of Bonnie on the
screen does not play into male fantasies regarding the female body, but rather her presence as a
fully sexual woman, within the context of the women's movement, affirms women's rights to
exert sexual desire.
The gaze in Breakfast at Tiffany's, like Clyde and Bonnie, is another aspect that deserves
a closer attention. The gaze in Breakfast at Tiffany's is even more valuable than that in Bonnie
and Clyde, for it is not of a man, but of a woman. Director Blake Edwards successfully portrayed
this idea by Golightly's passionate and desirable gaze she gave to the men. This is clearly
demonstrated in a scene that Holly Golightly threw a party in her apartment and invited her
friends to come over. Within the space of fifteen minutes, the place was filled up with strange
men, many of them much older than Holly. In the crowd, Golightly noticed Rusty Trawler, a

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short, plump man with a babyish appearance. A point noteworthy point is that the scene captured
a book titled The Baseball Guide, inside there were several articles about Rusty, identifying him
as one of the richest men in America. Although the articles further described Rusty's adulthood,
which were three messy marriages and divorces, the camera caught Golightly's eyes fixed on
him. She even gave him a desirable gaze, which infers her unconventional interest in his wealth.
This gaze from a woman has marked an era when not only men could show their desires, women
too could also express their needs in real life, breaking the stereotypes in the society.
Although the number of women on film who were portrayed differently was still limited
in the 1960s, Bonnie and Clyde, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Daisies are still exemplary films that
depict feminist issues in terms of female sexual identity, their relation to male and the change of
women. Indeed, these films are served as useful tools for the field of feminism study. In other
words, these films manage to stay rooted in the history of feminist film study while functioning
as a source of inspiration for future feminist scholars.

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Works Cited
Andi, Zeisler. Feminism and Pop Culture: Seal Studies. N.p.: Seal, 2008. Print.
Burstyn, Ellen. Lessons in Becoming Myself. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006. Print.

Emily, Caulfield. "Self-Realization and Destructive Feminism in New Wave Cinema."

Film Matters. Vol. 1. N.p.: MLA International Bibliography, 2011. 27-31. Print.

Friedan, Betty. "The Feminine Mystique." Five Hundred Years America in the World.
5th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2006. 335-42. Print.
Lunstad, Jana Kay. "But You Wouldn't Have the Gumption to Use It": Bonnie and Clyde
and the Sexual Revolution." Left History, 1999 1st ser. 6

(1999)

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford
UP, 1999: 833-44
Nayar, Kavite. "Review of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's,
and the Dawn of the Modern Woman." The American Journal of Psychoanalysis
71, 174-178. N.p., June 2011. Web
Smith, Allison A. "Leading Ladies? Feminism and the Hollywood New Wave." Pell
Scholars Senior Thesis (2010): 1-25. Print.
Walsh, Kenneth T. "The 1960s: A Decade of Change for Women." US News. N.p., 12
Mar. 2010. Web. 7 Nov. 2014.