Million Dollar Baby: A Feminist Message?

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--- Mary Schweitzer <marymsch  AT  COMCAST.NET> wrote:
>
> While on this thread, I also wanted to put in a vote
> for not romanticizing boxing for women.  Now that we
> know that the damage of multiple concussions is
> cumulative, boxing really should not be sanctioned
> as a sport any more.
>
[...]
>
> If boxing is the only thing young women can find in
> their lives that's empowering, then it's a sign
> women are not getting adequate opportunities to
> wield REAL power, through education and careers.
> That's what we should be fighting for.


I would like to respectfully disagree with this point.
I think this opens a larger question of the role of
physical aggression in women's experiences, which is a
question that few feminist theorists have dealt with.
Most theorists, with a few notable exceptions such as
the feminist bodybuilder Leslie Heywood, tend to be
dismissive of physical projects in general: they
regard them as a form of disciplining the body, and
hence, negative. If I wish to teach about this in a
class, I have few resources that explore the
productive dimension of women's physical aggression
and strength.

I realize that it's hard to understand the allure of
any combat sport, from boxing to martial arts.  People
outside the sport see only the combat portion, and
usually the showiest elements of it. So, for example,
most people think of wrestling as the antics of the
WWE, involving large men pounding one another
theatrically with folding chairs. This is the same
thing as assuming baseball as played recreationally by
hundreds of thousands of people is the same as
baseball played by drug-pumped millionaires.

And yet if you have actually done these sports, as I
have, you may realize that 99% of those martial arts
do not involve this. They involve hard training,
conditioning, technique practice, and mock combat -
not real fighting. Most people who do martial arts do
not compete.  However, in competition, most sports are
not graded by damage; they are graded by accomplishing
a task, such as moving your opponent into a certain
area on the floor, putting them into a position from
which they cannot escape, or executing a particular
number and type of techniques.  These activities are
highly strategic and demand an exceptional level of
conditioning. We also know as instructors that skill
mastery leads to self esteem.

And most importantly for women, this training involves
learning to move the body in ways that have been
socialized out of them. Nice girls do not hit things,
even inanimate things like punching bags or target
pads. Nice girls do not yell.  Nice girls do not pick
up heavy things - they might "bulk up" and be
unfeminine. Nice girls do not sweat or get dirty. Nice
girls do not build strength and enjoy using it.

Does this sound familiar? Many of these sports were
banned from competition if performed by women. Women's
wrestling was only very recently added to the
Olympics. The RCMP arrived in the 1980s to prevent a
Toronto gym from putting on a show of women's boxing.
And this has been true of many other sports that were
slow to gain general acceptance because patriarchy did
not want to see women expressing physical power (see,
for example, Helen Lenskyj and Pat Griffin's works).
Do folks remember the famous scene of the man
attacking the female marathoner to pull her off the
course?

Feminists have been great at getting women to yell, be
aggressive, and put their anger into appropriate
projects in the political and social sphere. Why,
then, do we reject appropriate expressions of
aggression in the physical sphere? I train women to be
stronger, and they tell me that building physical
strength and learning to express their aggression
outwards (rather than self-destructively inwards, as
women typically do) has enabled them to make better
life choices outside the gym. They boot out the
no-good deadbeat partner. They walk taller and take up
more space. They stop starving their bodies and start
eating for performance. They enjoy being a bigger size
than the emaciated skeletons in bikinis that pass for
female physical ideals.

Physical training, and learning to express physical
power and aggression in appropriate ways, literally
changes their life in other arenas.

To claim that this is not "real" empowerment dismisses
an important and quite concrete dimension of women's
lives -- namely, their bodies. Feminist theorists have
noted that control of women's bodies has been a key
concern.  I believe that we need to address the issue
of women's physical aggression in ways that are
feminist and productive, and to take up these
questions in our classes and research.

Now, I do strongly agree that women's sport and
fitness should not be controlled by men who do not
have their best interests in mind. I also agree that
women's sports should not serve as circus
entertainment. But to dismiss combat sports outright
as false empowerment does a disservice to the women
who enjoy these activities and experience them as
genuinely positive.

By the way, I run a little website devoted to the
feminist project of teaching women the benefits of
weight training. There are also a few articles I've
written on the feminist issues raised by bodybuilding.
It might be of interest to some folks here.
http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html

Regards
Krista Scott-Dixon
York University
Toronto, ON

Mary Schweitzer wrote:

>A strong-minded or forceful woman must be unloveable and
>unloving - must make everyone around her miserable, and then
>be left lonely and unhappy

Not true. There are plenty of examples even in the post-code
period where this scenario does not play out.

Perhaps the best example of this is His Girl Friday. The plot
of the film concerns Rosalind Russell's decision to accept the
traditional female role: marriage, life in the suburbs, giving
up her career. But she gets so caught up in the excitement of
reporting on "one last story" that by the end, she realizes
she loves being a journalist and cannot possibly give it up.
And not only is she NOT punished for this decision - she ends
up with Cary Grant!

And there are other examples of this - one of my favorites is
Stage Door, a film in which neither of the two main heroines,
Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, end up being paired off
with men. But they each have varying degrees of professional
success as actresses, and, in the film's terms, that's fine.
Neither of them are punished and the film ends on an upbeat
note for them, at least, though the "endings" for other
characters range from tragedy (one actress's obsessive
devotion to her art drives her to suicide) to a certain
pragmatic resignation (the Lucille Ball character's lack of
professional success causes her to marry her longtime,
hometown beau).

In fact, more often than not, the heroines of the screwball
period are notably strong-minded and forceful characters. See
Maria DiBattista's book Fast-Talking Dames, for more about this.

Now, it's true that, in general, heroines of the melodrama, as
opposed to comedy heroines, are often punished for their
ambition, or for violating traditional sexual mores. And it's
also true that, after World War II, there were notably fewer
independent-minded heroines.

But even then, strong-minded heroines were often not left
"alone and unhappy." Many of them come to see the "error" of
their ways, and "reform" as a result; they are then rewarded
with marriage. This is the basic plot of two of Katharine
Hepburn's best-known films, The Philadelphia Story and Woman
of the Year.

Also, even in the postwar period, there were still prominent
examples of independent-minded career women who are presented
as admirable and who are not shown giving up their careers for
their men. Katharine Hepburn as a lawyer in Adam's Rib and an
athlete Pat and Mike, and Doris Day as an interior decorator
in Pillow Talk and an advertising exec in Lover Come Back, are
two good examples of this.

God knows the "punishing the strong woman" trope is a powerful
one, and one that is frequently invoked to this day. But let's
not forget that there are many exceptions to this rule. And
interestingly, they seem to occur more in comedies than in
melodramas.

Kathy Geier
kgeier  AT  uchicago.edu

In reference to Kathy's post, "There are plenty of examples even in
the post-code period where this scenario does not play out".


His Girl Friday, Fast-Talking Dames, Adam's Rib - Regardless of what
the heroines in these movies accomplish look at the titles!!!  The
titles still focus on the man and are disgusting!  Although Kathy's
intentions in what she wrote are good, and she did acknowledge that
there have been some films that sway from the traditional, a strong
woman must be punished, theme, they remain few and far between.  And I
would be interested in a study as to how many of the non-traditional
films actually won Best Picture.  Not many, to my recollection.  And
as Kathy pointed out, strong women are portrayed as comedies.

As for, "And not only is she NOT punished for this decision - she ends
up with Cary Grant!" and "they are then rewarded with marriage."
PLEASE - marriage is NOT a reward!  At worst it is bondage and at best
it is a loving unity of two lives that would be joined by spirit and
heart with or without the endorsement of a patriarchal government.

AND, "true that, after World War II, there were notably fewer
independent-minded heroines" there's a repulsive reason for this.
During the war they needed women to be strong and aggressive, they
needed us to go to work in the factories to support their war.
Afterwards, the men were again given jobs instead of women and popular
culture did its best to brain wash us back into our kitchens.


Allowing ourselves to be side-tracked and even perhaps thankful for
the few crumbs they throw us does not benefit any of us.  I admire
your positive attitude, Kathy, and some days I think perhaps I should
have a little more of it myself.  But then I go see another movie that
pisses me off :)

Dana

dana-ws  AT  earthlink.net

> Dana wrote:
> His Girl Friday, Fast-Talking Dames, Adam's Rib - Regardless of what
> the heroines in these movies accomplish look at the titles!!!  The
> titles still focus on the man and are disgusting!

I have trouble arguing to students that feminism is necessary when I
read quotes like the above on the most active women's studies
list-serv. It seems ineffective for any feminists to have so much anger
towards "disgusting" film titles from over 50 years ago; films produced
before the advent of the second wave of feminism.
It seems to me that there are countless contemporary issues - affecting
women, children and men right now - that require righteous anger and
feminist fury.

Chrystie Myketiak
School of Modern Languages & Department of Computer Science
Queen Mary, University of London
chrystie  AT  dcs .qmul.ac.uk

I am all for strengthening, training, discipline, and empowerment.

But I see a big difference between martial arts, many of which have a
spiritual component, and a sport based only on punching until the
opponent is knocked out or battered into submission. I can't speak to
whether this happens at Wu Shu tournaments, but the damage of boxing
is well-documented. TV wrestling displays aside, I don't see a
problem with matching strength to strength. It's the brutality of
pounding that is revolting.

Women's hunger for physical attainment can be satisfied in so many
other more productive ways that will not leave them with neurological
damage or other permanent blow-induced disabilities.

>And yet if you have actually done these sports, as I
>have, you may realize that 99% of those martial arts
>do not involve this. They involve hard training,
>conditioning, technique practice, and mock combat -
>not real fighting. Most people who do martial arts do
>not compete.  However, in competition, most sports are
>not graded by damage; they are graded by accomplishing
>a task, such as moving your opponent into a certain
>area on the floor, putting them into a position from
>which they cannot escape, or executing a particular
>number and type of techniques.  These activities are
>highly strategic and demand an exceptional level of
>conditioning. We also know as instructors that skill
>mastery leads to self esteem.

--
Max Dashu
Suppressed Histories Archives
Global Women's History
http://www.suppressedhistories.net

At 12:23 PM 7/2/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>I am all for strengthening, training, discipline, and empowerment.
>
>But I see a big difference between martial arts, many of which have a
>spiritual component, and a sport based only on punching until the
>opponent is knocked out or battered into submission. I can't speak to
>whether this happens at Wu Shu tournaments, but the damage of boxing
>is well-documented. TV wrestling displays aside, I don't see a
>problem with matching strength to strength. It's the brutality of
>pounding that is revolting.


This is partly a class issue.  I grew up in a predominantly Black
neighborhood in Detroit, and we all worshipped Joe Louis.  To go into
boxing was one of the ways out of poverty -- running numbers was another,
and so was selling drugs.  If you could get a factory job, the chances of
it doing bodily harm to you were about equal.

It's like, who goes into the Army?  My niece did.  She is more vehemently
anti-war that most women from the middle class because she was in Viet Nam
and she doesn't glorify it or her other Army experiences.  She joined. To a
lot of working class kids, it looks like a way up.


marge piercy

Dana wrote:  <<Regardless of what the heroines in these movies accomplish
look at the titles!!!  The titles still focus on the man and are disgusting!
Although Kathy's intentions in what she wrote are good, and she did
acknowledge that there have been some films that sway from the traditional,
a strong woman must be punished, theme, they remain few and far between.
And I would be interested in a study as to how many of the non-traditional
films actually won Best Picture.  Not many, to my recollection.  And as
Kathy pointed out, strong women are portrayed as comedies.>>


    Well "frankly, my dear"--you forgot Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the
Wind"--I think it won Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Whitewashing of a
Historical Atrocity (well, it should have).  But, "as God is my witness",
Scarlett O'Hara is no blushing violet--she leaves the city of Atlanta in
flames, and rebuilds a plantation from ashes.  In the end, Rhett doesn't
leave her because she is a strong woman, but because she's a nasty person.

    For movies that do not revolve around men, how about "The Women"?--from
1937, I think.  Written by Clare Boothe Luce, and not a single male role.
Bunch of women living in Reno waiting to establish residency so they can get
a "quickie divorce."  I think one woman decides not to divorce her hubby,
and do the rest of them form some lesbian utopian commune (compare with the
film "Desert Hearts")?  Heck no--they tear each other apart with wisecracks,
deception and revenge.  Still great fun to watch, and the phrase, "Jungle
Red", will never mean the same to you again.

   Hepburn is wonderful, not just for Adam's Rib (I love the woman scientist
who wows the Court by listing her degrees).  I also love "The Philadelphia
Story" and "Bringing Up Baby."  One should remember that her mother, "Kit"
Hepburn, was as great a lady as her daugher--she helped found the
Connecticut Birth Control League.
    What about Barbara Stanwyck?  She make a romantic fool of Henry Fonda in
"The Lady Eve", but she loves Gary Cooper in "Meet John Doe" (1940?) because
he restores her faith in the human race--Stanwyck's love for Cooper has a
strange androgyny, I submit.  That's my favorite plot, btw--a cynic becomes
an idealist again by witnessing an act of real courage--but I've mentioned
"Casablanca" (1942) before.

    My biggest complaint is with films where real wild women become tame
pussycats in the last reel.  For example, in "Morocco", Marlene Dietrich
puts on a tuxedo, kisses a woman full on the lips, but she winds up waiting
for some man to return.  And will someone remake "Queen Christina"?--the
Swedish queen wasn't forced to abdicate and forced to leave her country
because she loved a man, like she does in the movie, but because she
couldn't stop loving women.  But my gods!--who could take the place of Greta
Garbo?

    I'm barely a playwright, but I think that creating an interesting story
based on perfect feminist woman who is also a moral paragon is almost
impossible.  Have you seen "Iron-Jawed Angels"?--for all its production
values, acting, and direction, its like watching a feminist version of the
"Lives of the Saints."  Even Margaret Sanger is more interesting the more
one knows about all the compromises she made to accomplish what she did.

Hannah Miyamoto
hsmiyamoto  AT  msn.com

"I'm sick of these conventional marriages!  One woman and one man was good
enough for your grandmother, but who wants to marry your grandmother?"
    -- Groucho Marx

I hardly think it necessary to apologize for feeling disgusted with
Hollywood's representations of women.

And I think the wave of female (relative) heroines in film does make for
fascinating discussion in the classroom, especially when used as an
example of the cultural /historical construction of womanhood in pre-
and post-WWII.  My students hardly believe me when I describe the
educated, worldly, multilingual Kate Hepburn character of Woman of the
Year.   I assigned some of these films as Extra Credit options for my
WS101 class during the week we watched Rosie the Riveter (and did
Catherine Lavender's excellent study guide
<http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/rosie.html> on
the film).

s.

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~
Susana L. Gallardo
Instructor of Women's Studies
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192
(408) 924-5740
prof  AT  chicanas.com

> Women's hunger for physical attainment can be satisfied in so many
> other more productive ways

Uh oh.  I'm positive you mean well, but I think we want to be very
careful in prescribing women's behavior here.

And I have to thank Krista for a thoughtful post (and an excellent
website) on the physical aspects of gender (what else do we call
this?).  I've been thinking a lot lately about the relationship of the
physical self to feminism....

When I was learning to play basketball at age 35, with undergraduate
women, it was a huge education in generational gender socialization
(mine, mostly).  I had to learn _not_ to apologize for bumping into
someone, _not_ to stop play when someone hit the floor, _not_ to
apologize for winning.  I was absolutely thrilled the first time I hit
the floor myself, rolled, and jumped back into the game.  Playing bball
drastically changed my relationship to my body, in a good way.   I can
only imagine that boxing as an art, a sport, a discipline, must be an
equally thrilling and viable option for young girls and women.

And to bring this message back in line with list purpose, I should say
that I've started including at least one class in my WS101 course on
sports, the body, and Title IX.  It seems to encourage young women
athletes to speak up and think about their experiences, a group that
hasn't always been very vocal in the past, in my experience.

Also, some essay collections on similar topics that I enjoyed:

Joli Sandoz & Joby Winans, eds. /Whatever It Takes: Women on Women's
Sport/. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999.

Cahn, Susan K., /Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in
Twentieth-century Women's Sport/  New York: Free Press/Macmillan
International, 1994.

Shelia Scranton & Anne Flintoff, /Gender and Sport: A Reader. /New York:
Routledge, 2001. //

Michael Messner, /Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports.
/Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. //

Leslie Heywood, /Pretty Good for a Girl/.  New York: Free Press, 1998//

Sabo, D., Miller, K.E., Melnick, M.J. & Heywood, L., /Her Life Depends
On It: Sport, Physical Activity, and the Health and Well-Being of
American Girls./  East Meadow, NY: Women's Sports Foundation, 2004.

Susan Birrell and Mary G. McDonald/, /eds. /Reading Sport: Critical
Essays on Power and Representation/.  Chicago: Northeastern Univ Press, 2000

Pat Griffin, /Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in
Sport/.  Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1998.

Nancy Theberge, /Higher Goals: Women's Ice Hockey and the Politics of
Gender/.  Albany: SUNY Press,  2000.



~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~
Susana L. Gallardo
Instructor of Women's Studies
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192
(408) 924-5740
prof  AT  chicanas.com

...and the director was blacklisted.  On an unrelated film topic, read 
in today's LA Times that the DVD of MDB includes info on, including an 
interview with, the woman whose life is the basis for the film.  I'll 
be interested to hear from those of you who have been researching and 
analyzing the film about your views on what's included (and not).

Jill Fields, Ph.D.
Department of History
CSU Fresno

This is all I could find of an LAT article referencing the DVD of MDB

>>Clint Eastwood has yet to do a commentary track for a DVD of one of his
movies, a tradition he doesn't break on the three-disc set of his Academy
Award-winner as best picture, "Million Dollar Baby" (Warner Home Video, $30).

Still, the extras are as low-key and unfussy as Eastwood's haunting pugilist
drama. "Born to Fight" offers a compelling look at parallels between the
movie and real-life boxer Lucia Rijker, who appears in the film. The
documentary also features intelligent interviews with Eastwood, who picked
up his second Oscar for best director, and actress and supporting actor
winners Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman.<<

My understanding from the preceding discussions and another article in the
LAT 

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-plaschke10jul10,1,6991646.column

is that Rijker is not the woman whose life the movie is based on, but rather
appears as the boxer who nearly killed protagonist. The protagonist is based
on Katie Dallam, according to what I have read here.

Anyone want to clarify?

Georgia


******************************************************************
Georgia NeSmith, Ph.D.
Adjunct Associate Professor (online)
Communication Department
University of Maryland University College
http://homepage.mac.com/georgia.nesmith
http://georgia_nesmith.tripod.com
gnesmith  AT  frontiernet.net
******************************************************************