Female actors, then and now (revised)

[I revised this post because I decided my analysis wasn't clear enough.  It may still not be clear enough, but at least I gave it another shot!]

As usual, in one of my curious junctures, in reading a book on a particular topic, I begin to see parallels all around me.  In this case, the book is Elizabeth Howe's The First English Actresses (1992, Cambridge University Press).  Note the date, please.  1992 suggests that the scholarship behind the book probably took place during what I like to consider the Last Great Age of Feminist Scholarship; i.e., the 1980's. 

Howe explores English Restoration drama with the advent of actual, live women on the public stages, beginning in 1660.  She profiles prominent actresses from that time to approximately 1700.  In addition to well-known stars, such as Bracegirdle and Barry, she uncovers others that I have heard less of.  Most importantly, she outlines the types of roles created for these actresses, and the connection between their public personae and their roles onstage. 

Reading Howe's book takes me back to my fairly poor theatre history courses.  Some of what she notes, for example that playwrights wrote for particular companies, applies, but in my history classes, the profs emphasized the customization of men's roles for the great male actors of the age, leaving out women's roles altogether (except to note that there were, in fact, women performing for the first time).  Howe shows that certain genres, such as tragedies, became very female-dominated at one point, apparently in light of the abilities of some great female actors to perform these types of roles.  At one point, the "heroic tragedy", which was male-centered, was eclipsed by "she-tragedies" in popularity.  Howe is not able to really place any reason for the shift, except that certain female actors were so good at tragic roles, playwrights had to accommodate their skills in order to get audiences to keep coming to the theatre.

So, that's the history lesson.  At the same time, I took a couple of long plane flights.  Thanks to modern entertainment technology, long flights are the only time I watch movies.  I watch old ones on TV, but I don't go to movies (between the cost and the time they take up), so a long flight is a perfect time for me to catch up on a few releases that I thought about seeing when they came out, but of course did not go to.  Over two long flights, I saw four films - Django Unchained and Lincoln (on one flight - talk about disjuncture), and Cloud Atlas and Skyfall on the return.  There's a good deal of comment that could be made about each of these films (and there were reams of code written about each of them upon their releases) but in particular I was struck by the types of roles played by women compared with Howe's historical investigations. 

Restoration actresses played, in broad categories, strumpet-type roles, and virtuous roles.  The strumpet roles included actual whores (Howe's word, based on historical descriptions) and breeches roles, in which "loose" characters wore trousers, more to show off actresses' legs than for any more substantial reason.  These were comic roles.  Whores, of course, could be married or not, as could the breeches-wearing roles.  The other type of role are the tragic types, in which women are either punished for their sins with death (natch) or are victims of rape or other kinds of personal violence, depicted in order to show them in some form of dishabile.  Aside from the penitent women, the tragic roles included virtuous women wronged in some way or other, for whom the only way to find justice is to seek the divine type (i.e., they kill themselves).  Strumpets, of course, could be good or evil, depending on whether we are talking about comedy or tragedy.  And then, among the virtuous roles, there are the innocent women, usually young girls.  Generally, these were non-comic parts, except when they were played by actresses whose public personae suggested they were anything but.

So, let's look at the films.  In Django, the women's roles include Django's wife, who needs to be rescued, or the small role of Leo DiCaprio's sister, who is a very cold fish indeed, and is an evil type.  In Lincoln, the only real female role is Mary Todd Lincoln (awesomely acted, by the way), who could be very much seen as a virtuous tragic victim type.  In the background of both films are women slaves who have virtually no personalities whatever.  In Cloud Atlas, the female roles are innocent victims (one of Tom Hanks' many characters' wife and children), with one evil role, that of the psych hospital nurse.  What of Hallie Berry?  She plays a fairly resourceful character, but she needs a man's help to do what she needs to do in the film.  As a reporter, she needs the help of a friend of her father to stay alive.  As a powerful off-worlder, she needs Hanks' help to reach the temple on top of the mountain.  She can cure deadly illness and is a great shot, and seems to possess a great deal of wisdom, and yet she needs his help for a mountain climb? (If he had not helped her, there would have been no redemption for him in the end, which introduces yet another trope, though one not covered by Howe - the female as helpmate)  The Asian woman's role as a kind of seer is an innocent victim in need of rescue who suddenly becomes a pronouncer of platitudes on people's mutual dependence as her male rescuers are slaughtered below her.  She goes to her martyrdom with a faint smile on her face. 

And finally, Skyfall.  I liked this film more than I thought I would.  I am, paradoxically, a Bond film fan, in spite of the overt sexism in every Bond film ever made, because I love good stunt work.  In Skyfall, the real "Bond girl" is Judy Dench, who shows that resourcefulness and courage (not to mention skill at producing IEDs out of any available material) bust through all the role types mentioned above. 

So, we had virtuous victims, innocents, and a villain or two, plus one role that defied stereotype.  Times being what they are, there were no whores, though on the other hand, none of these films were comedies.  (Actually, the whore role is rife in so-called reality TV, a point so obvious it almost does not really bear mentioning.)

Berry has a happy ending.  Having been rescued by Tom Hanks, she rescues him in return.  Django gets his wife back.  Mary Todd loses her husband. 

M, in spite of all of her resourcefulness, dies.  Considering her age in the film, one can imagine M climbing through the ranks of male agents, busting rhrough the glass ceiling.  In the process, her temerity creates a villain who takes her transgression into male privilege too personally, resulting in her downfall professionally, and, ultimately, her death.  In some ways, she does fit one of Howe's role types - as the woman who gets her comeuppance for stepping out of her place (though in Restoration times, she would have been an adultress, not a bureaucrat).  She's replaced by a man of action.  The other female agent in the field decides she would rather be an administrative assistant, and balance is restored to the universe.   It's a balance that Mary Betterton, Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle would recognize.