Bringing Up Baby continues the time honored and continued tradition of women's entrapment antics in order to secure love. Since the movie offers a rather strong, well rounded, and independent character depiction, I don't want to spend much time academically analyzing how cliches of the past reflected social norms in that moment of time. Instead, I have been thinking about how this frame of reference pervades our notions of gender and sex, and specifically with today's news that all sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn have been summarily dismissed, at the request of the prosecutor. Since the first few hours of the assault first broke the news, the media framework has been about the credibility of the victim, and her intentions. Was she completely honest? Is she an honest woman in her life otherwise? What does she have to gain? This is not a new or surprising narrative, other than by virtue of the fact that it still occurs every time a sexual assault or rape makes the mass media airwaves. Other crimes rarely have such lines of questions, and when hearing about muggings, robberies, or other assaults, the credibility of victims is rarely brought into the discussion, and if it is raised it is done by the police and courts during an investigation, and not the public consciousness.
Flashback to Katharine Hepburn as Susan, assuring her aunt that David (Cary Grant) will marry her "he just doesn't know it yet." Susan has a number of antics lined up to "entrap" David, ranging from stealing his car, to stealing his clothes, and on and on. What is fascinating about this film is that Susan's character seems to be a joker, kidder, and slapstick kind of gal from the beginning, so it's not simply her romantic overload that prompts her antics. But what is it about women that leads us to conclude their intentions are to manipulate, coerce, and lure men? It's a tale as old of time: woman is temptation, and can easily control men because of their uncontrollable attraction.
And today, little has changed. Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser never had to prove he did it, but instead had to prove she was trustworthy, believable, and capable of being taken advantage of, in a framework where we believe women are usually in control of sexual manipulation. In today's case there is a great deal of intersection, including race (she is black, he is white), class (she is a maid, he has a massive amount of wealth), and power (she works for customers like him at the hotel, he controls much of the global economies), but it is notions of sex and gender that result in this grossly misogynistic view.
Bringing Up Baby is a more well-rounded film when it comes to gender roles than others, including many of today's films presenting even more predatory, two dimensional women. However, the film still can't escape the idea that an aloof, klutzy, practical joker of a woman, particularly one who is sharp-witted, is out to control men's desires and destinies. The idea that Susan is a con artist even comes to a head in the grand climax, when she rather hysterically cons the sheriff by pretending to be a criminal (is she pretending, the movie seems to ask?) to try and get out of prison, along with all the other characters who have fallen victim to the lies and manipulations of the set-up.
Flash forward to today's news, in which a prosecutor cites the unreliability of a victim of sexual assault, in part because she has potentially misrepresented herself in an economically and socially dangerous situation (immigration) years ago. Clearly, women of today who are somewhat sharp-witted (or even those who may be less so) are still a danger to men, and a danger to justice, as our current system understands it. One can't help but see that had Susan been sexually assaulted by David, it would have not been assault, as it is what she really wanted all along, and what else can she expect when she tries so hard to get his attention? There is more than enough to enjoy this movie for what is is, and to separate out the skewed depictions as a specific moment in time that presents a valuable discussion point (a la Gone With The Wind or Song Of The South). However, it becomes rather shocking that 80 years later, perhaps our skewed depictions are still in control of our public consciousness.
