The classic combo of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn is an easy piece of appreciation for film nerds. It also ranges between an apathetic afterthought and complete unfamiliarity for just about anybody who saw “Transformers 3” or “Twilight: Breaking Wind”. Regardless of any real legacy, the real life couple filled the movie screen for more than a handful of films, perhaps none more explicitly than the 1949 romantic comedy, “Adam’s Rib.” More socially aware than most romantic comedies then or now, this film explicitly challenged the gender stereotypes of American society--in theory--while reinforcing them in presentation. Justifiably remembered or not, the film is a peculiar marker for how far our society has come/fallen.
Tracy plays Adam Bonner, an assistant D.A. in New York City (with the most hyper-masculine name this side of Gregory Peck) who is determined to enforce the law as completely and as often as possible. It is for this reason that he seeks an attempted murder conviction for a woman who shot and injured her adulterous husband while in the presence of his lover. However, Tracy (for he barely plays a character) didn’t reckon that the defense attorney would turn the courtroom into a battleground for feminism. Tracy also didn’t reckon that the defense attorney would be his wife, Amanda (played by Katherine Hepburn). In the courtroom and at home the married couple battle over the legal system, cultural perceptions and gender expectations. Unfortunately after each day and night of verbal sparring (and in one case, spanking), the couple becomes more hurt and discover both are in danger of losing more than a court case. Hilarious? I guess so, but I also think audience’s had a slightly different sense of humor in 1949 than I do in 2012.
They don't make trailers like they used to....thank God.
(This trailer literally boasts that the movie is "a swell show.")
As Hepburn’s defense is entirely circled around the idea that her defendant is being unfairly accused and characterized because of her gender, the film is obviously making some point on post-war gender relations. In fact, the casting of the fiery Hepburn would likely be enough cause to label this film as an early representation of Hollywood feminism, but the story enthusiastically pushes the concept into purposeful clarity.
Immediately into her defense, Hepburn argues that the accused shooter was metaphorically "defending her home" and had the three principle parties (injured husband, shooter wife and by-standing home wrecker) been reversed in gender, no jury would find the shooter guilty. Sitting in the audience/jury, I found this assertion lacking plenty. Hepburn gave no legal precedent for a man getting away with shooting an adulterous wife, nor was she challenging an unjust law. Indeed, a cursory memory of classic films set in the same time period recalls the conviction (of an innocent) Andy Dufresne in “Shawshank Redemption” for the exact situation Hepburn decried as impossible.
Hepburn claimed to fight for equal rights but at no point were her (or any woman’s) rights legally restricted. Unlike the African-Americans of 1949, white women weren’t legally forced to ride the back of the bus, drink out of different water fountains or go to different schools. Real sexism, like racism, isn’t about just being ‘uncomfortable’—it’s institutionalized. That’s not to contend women were (or are) treated entirely fair by all members of society, but that the film failed to question its own hypothetical argument and drive said argument to its paradoxical conclusion.
Another major part of Hepburn’s defense brings women with no direct baring on the trial to the witness stand. Legally unorthodox/preposterous, these women include a young biochemist and a heavyset weight lifter. These women demonstrate their own intelligence and physical strength to the jury/film audience, though any conclusions are ambiguous at best. Obviously the women were meant to display some sort of normalcy in their excellence, but the fact that they were exceptional seems to hinder, if not disprove, the point the defense grasps at. Not to mention the court room talent show highlighted Hepburn’s willingness, or even desperation, in manipulating the jury’s feelings outside of the cold, legal evidence.
But all of Hepburn’s prickly wit, bafflingly irrelevant witnesses and over-articulation couldn’t make me forget that the movie started off with a woman (the shooter) being pushed around on a city street and shoved into a subway. Clearly out of her element and surrounded by stone-faced men, this woman’s beginning montage did nothing but fuel the notion that a regular mother of three can’t handle city life. Rather, only the exceptionally bright, law school-educated, surprisingly-female Hepburn can somehow rise above her gender and match her male counterparts in the courtroom and on the streets. When somebody goes to extraordinary lengths to prove themselves normal, they have failed to do so.
Set in 1949, the year the movie was released, I have to imagine the film thought itself accurate to its depiction of American women. This film is undoubtedly some shade of feminism, but it doesn’t have the depth necessary for any audience member familiar with our post-nu-wave-chill re-modernism.
Nobody in the film or viewing audience is allowed to know what legal inequalities, restrictions or social prejudices Hepburn is ever referring to, but only told that Hepburn—if for no other reason than she is Katherine Hepburn—is in the right to make pathos arguments. By taking itself relentlessly serious, the comedy fails to be as fun as “Bringing Up Baby” (where Hepburn gets to be “the clown”) or as culturally balanced as “The African Queen” (where Hepburn’s screen authority is easily matched by Humphrey Bogart).
Most unfortunately, while the film is philosophically simplistic, it still has multi-dimensional characters and crackling dialogue--the likes of which have vanished from modern romantic comedies. Tragically, the same can be said for Katherine Hepburn, whose ghost invariably gags at the stench of cinematic, female-geared drivel such as “Bride Wars,” “When in Rome,” and “What’s Your Number.”
I suppose the armchair feminism displayed in “Adam’s Rib” might evoke clap-ter from the loudest womyn interested in marginalized cinema, but it’s just ultimately too willing to jump into constricting connotations—as hinted in the film’s title (i.e. the rib of Adam = a disposable part of man). Perhaps the better idea comes from the old joke that when God created woman, he gave her three breasts. However, the middle one got in the way and God took it back. The woman then asked what should they do with the useless boob…and so God created man.
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