Pillow Talk 1959
An extremely big hobby of mine is watching movies, specifically older movies from the 50’s,60’s, and 70’s. Personally, I would like to analyze one of my favorite movies. The name of the movie is Pillow Talk released in 1959 starring Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall. My favorite types of movies usually revolve around romance, suspense, and fairytale endings. Recently, I decided to add a sociology minor to my degree here at Whittier. In doing so, I have gained an exceeding amount of knowledge on all the foundations that society has built itself upon. By this I mean the way we dress, act, the way in which we behave in society, and social norms that dominate society. Recently I re-watched this movie after not seeing it since my elementary school days, and I noticed a lot of social cues, and societal norms that were okay in the 1950’s versus now in 2020. Currently, in the United States, we are moving toward a more accepting America where the ability to express oneself should not be limited, curbed, or stopped in any way. Seeing where we are in society today versus back then raises a lot of questions for me.
A scene in particular from this movie that I would like to do a close read on is when the main character Jan (Doris Day) goes into the local telephone company’s office to complain about Brad (Rock Hudson) whom she shares a party line with. Brad is constantly on the phone singing to various women at all hours of the day and is portrayed as a playboy making sexual advances to women he hopes to hook up with. The telephone company tells Jan that unless she were to have an immediate emergency of some kind there was no way they could give her own telephone line. By emergency, the man in the telephone office was referring to her being pregnant. Most women during this day in age were expected to birth children and stay at home. Jan on the other hand smashes this social norm as she is an ambitious career oriented women. At the conclusion of her meeting with the telephone company, they tell her they will send someone over to investigate Brad’s behavior over the telephone. Ironically, they send a woman to investigate Brad, and with his charm he is able to evade any warnings from the telephone company, and get Jan into trouble at the same time by having the investigator state her complaints are unwarranted and false.
There are many other examples of how women were constantly taken advantage of or dismissed in this movie. This is one of my favorite movies, and it makes me a little sad that women were subject to this kind of negative behavior from men in the 50’s. In youth, the themes in this movie went right over my head, as a young adult they intrigue and make me think more about what this movie was really trying to say. Yes, it is just a movie, but this kind of behavior toward women was common back then.
