A Page I Inserted into A Library Book At SHU (with thanks to Kim Noble)

Kim Noble gave me a homework assessment - to find a library book, rip out a page and insert my own page, looking exactly like the original.  I found a book I love 'Popcorn Venus, Women, Movies and the American Dream' by Majorie Rosen, a kind of love letter to the stars of Hollywood, with historical contextualisation that takes in the social status of women at the time the films were made.  I couldn't bring myself to rip the page out, it felt too important in its analysis of Rita Hayworth in Gilda.  I did slip in this new page though.  


212           THE FORTIES - NECESSITY AS MOTHER OF EMANCIPATION

I am interested in asking whether it is possible to claim Rita Hayworth as a feminist icon.  She is my heroine.  I love her.  And, so does Majorie Rosen.  She says some great things on the previous page about her sexuality.  In one line she states that through her performance of 'Put the Blame on Mame' in Gilda she is saying 'This is my body.  It's lovely and gives me pleasure.  I rejoice in it just as you do.'  That’s a great idea.  I think that exemplifies why I like that performance so much.  I want to do a performance where that’s what my performance says.  That's about as subversive as you can get with the male gaze.   A disregard for it because you are so pleased with yourself.  Is that ever possible, do you think? 

However, this page makes me sad.  This book is written in 1973 and the writer does not know that Rita Hayworth was the victim of early onset Alzheimer's Disease.  In fact, the disease was far less understood then than it is today.  When Rita had difficulty remembering her lines on set people thought she was an alcoholic.  She started to drink because that was what everyone said about her.  She was unemployable and became a joke in Hollywood.  Her daughter by Aly Khan, Yasmin Khan, nursed her at the end of her life.

She infamously said that men fall in love with Gilda and wake up with Rita.  And here we have the problem of Rita Hayworth.  Her image as a sex symbol is so wonderfully joyous, so celebratory.  She IS an incredible dancer.  But, her life story and the biographies of her life paint her as so deeply tragic a person.  She was repeatedly raped by her father and entered marriage after marriage with men who exploited her.  But she said, looking back on her life, that she did not want people to be sad when they thought of her, she wanted to be remembered as giving joy. 

Interestingly, one of her closest friends and confidants throughout her life was Hermes Pan, a choreographer she met on one of the films she did with Fred Astaire.  It's as though her really understood her because he understood her as a dancer and that’s where she lived.  She was a dancer first and foremost.  I maintain she was the best partner that Astaire ever had.  Way better than Ginger.

Lower down on this page there is a sentence underlined.  I think it deserves to be read as a stand alone sentence, without reading on:  "1946 emerged as a landmark for the female breast".

I like this book because the author reads the text and image of film, something I do as an art viewer.  It's a slightly instinctive.  It is interesting because she uses a personal subjective approach that was outmoded with the semiotic and psychoanalytic methods of the film-feminists later in the Seventies and Eighties.  I get more out of this style though, and I return to this book often.  It's not printed anymore so it's hard buy.  Sometimes it comes up on Amazon, but they are ex-library copies with stamps and marginalia.  I want a clean copy!  A similar book 'From Reverence to Rape' is still in print.  I wonder why that is.