Here it is, probably the most misogynistic film ever made. Takashi Miike had a prostitute get her nipples sliced off in Ichi the Killer and drowned one in feces in Dead or Alive, but those scenes were so forcefully repugnant that they became about themselves, and the core idea of the sexual violence was almost incidental. The way that I view Miike is that to refuse to be offended is not really any more evolved than going ahead and being offended. It's a primitive position; refusing to be offended suggests that you have been offended anyway. I think Miike's films are offensive, but once we acknowledge that, the effect is diluted a little. It's recognized as something juvenile and then doubles around itself and becomes funny and even sort of warm. So yeah, he's using sexual violence as a means and not the end. No nipples get sliced off in 42nd Street, but it's sleazy and hateful toward women in a way that stuff like Dead or Alive or Ichi the Killer were not.

The film has a very particular pedigree; it was made by Warner Brothers, a film studio with a tough and gritty reputation, in 1933 shortly before the sheriff came to town and neutered American cinema through the Hayes code. There isn't really any real onscreen sex, but the film is filled with double entendres. There's always sex bubbling down under the surface. Along with All About Eve, the film is one of the major structural influences on Paul Verhoeven's 1995 Showgirls. The only time that I saw the two films compared really was on the comment section of the Internet Movie Database, and Showgirls came out as the bad one. Showgirls is filth apparently, but the dancers in 42nd Street are praised as being "scantily dressed but never vulgar." I'm reminded of the fight between Cindy Margolis and Danni Ashe about who was the most downloaded woman on the Internet. Apparently Danni has the most in pure numbers, but Margolis is distinguished by never doing any nudes. Cindy Margolis' pictures are porno that the whole family can masturbate to. The distinguishing of the sex in 42nd Street from that of Showgirls seems to be symptomatic of American attitudes before and after Super Bowl XXXVIII. You can gyrate and dry fuck all you want, but once the areola makes an appearance it’s pornography.

We see the origins of the now infamous "Show me your tits" scene in Showgirls, only here the line of dancers has to show the producers their legs. I complained about this in an earlier review that I published on Epinions and an irate 42nd Street fan complained that of course they had to show him their legs, they were performing in a multimillion dollar musical, where I suppose the paying public wants to see legs. And of course the dancers in Showgirls had to show off their tits, they were performing in a multimillion dollar musical, where I suppose the paying public wants to see tits. The idea that this is to be their job apparently acquits 42nd Street and by implication Showgirls of any wrongdoing. But isn't there something to be said about why this aspect of the selection process was included in the film, or why we even need to see a film about strippers or pseudo-strippers? It's such bullshit, and I guess that you know that it's bullshit. The person who complained about my review was obviously a simpleton, or at least offered a simplistic defense of the film, and so I fear that he comes off as a bit of a straw man.

More significant, probably, is the implied celebration of the film's covered-areola aesthetic. The problem, to begin with, isn't so much that the dancers have to show their legs as part of the audition. It's that the revealing of the legs is seen as less demeaning as the revealing of the breasts. Well, that's nonsense as well. Both scenes dehumanize women into bags of body parts. In fact, I think 42nd Street is far worse than Showgirls. Even on Showgirls's intended level we sympathize with Elizabeth Berkley's character; we're meant to feel her nervousness and humiliation while simultaneously enjoying seeing her breasts. That's just on the intended level, mind you, and most of the virtues of Showgirls are decidedly unintentional. 42nd Street never attempts anything that complex. Never even goes close. In fact, it seems that we are meant to sympathize with the men. As Abner, the balding middle-aged financer of the show leers on in the "show me your legs" scene, one of the assistant directors or somebody snidely remarks, "They got pretty faces too." There was nothing like that in Showgirls.

More of that "wonderful" pre-Code dialogue regarding how women are basically playthings for men: almost at the very beginning of the film Abner looks over his mistress Dorothy's contract and then looks up to see her legs cut off from the rest of her body by a door frame. He licks his lips and says in reference to both contract and disembodied legs: "Looks good to me." Then there is "Anytime" Annie, who got that name we are told, because "she only said no once, and then she didn't hear the question." Smooth.

Dorothy is sleeping with Abner, because she knows that it'll help her score the lead part, when she begins seeing her old boyfriend and dance partner Pat Denning. The director, Julian Marsh, wants to preserve his show's relationship with Abner, and so he hires some goons to rough Denning up. Dorothy gets drunk and refuses Abner's advances. Abner threatens to walk, but the producers assure him that they'll make Dorothy apologize and go over Denning a second time. Wide-eyed innocent Peggy Sawyer gets wind of this plan and tries to warn Dorothy, but for some reason or another she thinks that Peggy is trying to get her man and sloppily attacks her, breaking her ankle as a result. When Marsh learns of this, he laments the fact that she didn't break her neck instead. Smooth. "Anytime" Annie becomes Abner's new whore, but gives up her spot at the lead to Peggy. Marsh trains Peggy with dancing and acting lessons; not feeling that she has the right amount of passion in a line he grabs her and kisses her, telling her, without a shred of irony, that that ought to put her in the right mood. Really smooth.

The last scene of the movie shows Marsh waiting outside of the theater, deeply exhausted. The show is a hit, but the theatergoers go on about how great Peggy Sawyer was and lament the fact that Marsh will get credit for discovering her. "Some guys get all the breaks," they sigh. And this is how the movie ends! With some cutesy-pie irony for the benefit of Marsh. The film is saying that the creation, the product (which is all that we are meant to think of Sawyer) is the only thing that is appreciated. Nobody gives a damn about the creative forces behind the product.

While it seems that both Marsh and Sawyer could be described as two-dimensional caricatures, I believe that the film retains some sort of affection for Marsh. He is indeed very demanding, but we constantly see heavy doses of humanity soaking through his anxiety. The night before the premiere he tells all his dancers to go out on the town and enjoy themselves, but be ready tomorrow morning at ten o'clock sharp. When he kisses Sawyer, well, I still believe that it's symptomatic of the diseased gender dynamic of the film; I don't believe that he has the right. But it's clear that he isn't doing it just to get his jollies. His feelings toward her are more fatherly than romantic. In the most famous scene, Marsh gives Sawyer a pep talk before she goes on: "You can't fall down. You can't, because your future's in it, my future and everything all of us have is staked on you. All right now, I'm through. But you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out - and Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star." It's very much like he's sending his daughter out in the world, not only investing years of blood, tears and sweat, but his dreams as well. Very importantly, however, we never get to know how Sawyer feels about her newfound popularity, about the show, or about her relationship with Marsh. It's not that the male characters are given more depth than the female characters; they're not. It's that Marsh is the only person in the whole film who has any semblance of depth or personality, and so the film as a whole is weighed toward him. Marsh carries the movie, it becomes his story. Sawyer is so broadly characterized that her status as created object in relation to Marsh is then accentuated.

For the most part the women in the film don't get much of a say. Before the big show, Dorothy meets Peggy in the dressing room and gives this speech: "Come here - Peggy, isn't it? You know, Peggy, when I started for the theater tonight, I wanted to tear your hair out. And then I started thinking, well after all, I've had my chance. And now it's your turn. I've had enough. For five years, it's kept me away from the only thing I ever wanted. And a funny thing, a broken ankle was the thing that made me find it out. You know, Peggy, most anyone can have success with the proper breaks. As for me, I'll take Pat and vaudeville or whatever goes with him. We're being married tomorrow." Oh Christ!

In preparation for my upcoming review of Showgirls (again! I'm hoping I can still find the strength when the task comes), I checked out Joseph Mankiewicz's mediocre but still far superior All About Eve which peddled the same pap: basically show business is hell on earth, women should give up trying to rule it and go back to serving in the heaven of the home. The thematic backbone of All About Eve doesn't seem to be designed to celebrate patriarchal domination, but to placate an audience of ordinary women who are unable or unwilling to give up their family life for success and/or a career. All About Eve isn't a sick movie, just a square one. In All About Eve, Bette Davis' Margot is a successful stage actress who takes on an assistant, Eve. Eve studies Margot's every action, does some backstabbing and sweet-faced maneuvering and eventually takes Margot's place in the pecking order. Margot genuinely cannot care less; she's absolutely content to retire. The film ends with Eve getting an assistant of her own, one that studies her the same way that she studied Margot. It seems that Eve is getting exactly the punishment that she deserves: success!

In 42nd Street however, I'm not sure that Dorothy really believes what she's saying. I think she wants to believe it, but she ultimately doesn't. "Well, I've had my chance," she says. There is something sad about that; I can't help but wonder if she is really just giving up. Her song is "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me" which includes the lines "Every kiss every hug/seems to act just like a drug" and "You've got me in your clutches and I can't get free." This is her song, and it's blackly nihilistic about romance and by implication, her relationship with Denning.

But assuming that show business kept her from following what she "truly wants" for five years, well, where does that put Peggy? It's okay for All About Eve to demonize show business, because by putting Eve there they are punishing her. Is Peggy entering a nightmare in becoming a star, is she going to spend five years or more being the plaything of the male directors, producers, trainers, not to mention the paying public? God, I just don't know. It's not there in the film; it doesn't ask those questions or provide any way for us to find the answers. Complicating things further is the general consensus that Ruby Keeler (who plays Peggy) isn't much of a dancer. Theories range from the sad fact that she wasn't given a very good number to perform to the idea that she simply may not have the talent. The film is letting us know that it's very cynical about success in the entertainment industry. As Dorothy says, most anyone can have success with the proper breaks, including/especially Peggy, a mediocre dancer and a sweet but emotionally and intellectually simplistic human being. There is little questioning that Peggy does not deserve the success that is heaped on her; all she did was be in the right place in the right time. Maybe Dorothy doesn't deserve it either, but she's the one that we hope to see rewarded for growing a sense of esteem and values.

I don't think that refusing her the lead spot and leaving her in a life of starvation with Denning is really where the films values lie. The film is either actively punishing her for not playing ball, for not being a whore, or it's utterly cynical, saying that you can follow your heart if you want but following your heart means that you are severely fucked in every other aspect of your life. But again, I really don't know. Ending the picture with Marsh, in effect, leaves the film with a whole lot of unfinished business.

But I feel like I'm asking questions about things that nobody really cares too much about. What they do care about, I suppose, are the Busby Berkeley-choreographed musical numbers. In his review of the 1973 yeah-it’s-pretty-damn-bad version of Lost Horizon, Roger Ebert calls the musical numbers “Busby Berkley meets Leni Riefenstahl." The Rog was just trying to be cute, trying to write something clever. He goes on to describe in detail how lazy Lost Horizon’s musical numbers are, and whatever you think of Busby Berkeley or Leni Riefenstahl they aren’t lazy. What they are is mechanical and sort of icy. They don’t use dancing as a way to express human emotion; they use it to reduce human beings into a cog in the machine. To coin a phrase from another critic on a different movie: it’s not art, it’s heavy labor, which people tend to respect more than art anyway. (The problem with Lost Horizon of course, is that it was neither art nor heavy labor.) Busby Berkley is a Choreographer with a capital C. There is nothing organic or human about how his dancers dance, they are mere puppets on a string. This is especially well-illustrated in the geometric designs that the dancers form for the benefit of an overhead camera.

The misogynistic opportunities for such an approach are similarly exploited in a sequence where the camera glides between the legs of several dancers. Danny Peary says that Berkeley was mimicking the sex act. Indeed, but it’s the sex act idealized; the penis metamorphosed into a camera and never stopping the act of penetration, sliding right through one cunt and into another. Dirty, but dirty for the benefit of the men. Much like when, I think it was Anytime Annie, sits on a dancer's lap and, when asked what she thinks she's sitting on, replies, "a flagpole."

And then there is the climactic "42nd Street" musical number, where we see all the various going ons at 42nd Street. This is Busby Berkley attempting to be organic. It's a mechanical perfectionist aiming toward something spontaneous. For the most part, the visual gags are dreadfully obvious, overwrought and square: an apple vendor juggles his fruit, two others sneak out of work carrying bags of golf clubs, the barber dances, his patrons dance, a cigar store Indian comes to life and frightens a passerby. The worst little bit has a smiling dancer spanking a doll's tuchis in beat with the music! Huh? Whuh? Come again? They seem to be trying to explain public corporal punishment as being the rhythm of the street. The big highlight of the entire number involves a woman escaping out of her sleazy apartment from a near rape. She's shot at twice, but survives that, only to be stabbed in the back by another pursuer. The camera swerves up to see a drunk singing: "The big parade goes on for years/It's the rhapsody of laughter and tears/Naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty/42nd Street." In other words, I suppose, nobody cares. We're in New York as gesellschaft; where life goes on independent of what happens to anybody else.

Again, I'm forced to go back to that ending, which leaves everything on a cutesy-pie high note. Maybe it's truly nihilistic, maybe it really doesn't care. The film never inhabits or explores the void; there is never a moment of silence, reflection or poetry in it. The trailer for the film has the cast chanting the title song. It's mournful and eerie, like they are wasting away in the bowels of hell, half-heartedly hoping that someone will hear their cries. We do not, of course, ever get half an inkling of any of that in the actual film.

I wonder, and I do wonder about this from time to time, if some will accuse me of not just sitting back and enjoying what is meant to be a mindless entertainment and stopped trying to analyze it. Yeah, I'm not sure mindless entertainment is ever really OK with me. It's not that I do not appreciate a good popcorn movie, understand; I loved Planet of the Apes, mind you, and Freddy vs. Jason. Those were not high art, they were fun pictures, but I would argue that they were not at all mindless. Because it's old primarily, I think that the sort of mindless diversion that 42nd Street provides has and will be regarded as somehow superior to stuff like Freddy vs. Jason. Whatever complaints that you can make about this year's or last year's summer blockbusters, I'm sure that you can make about 42nd Street. It doesn't have a lot of ideas, the characters are broadly drawn and trite, and it's really little more than a glorified fireworks show. Especially the ones where, thinking that they're giving us a big finale, they just let off all the rest of the fireworks at the very end. I don't think that 42nd Street really works very well on the rather undemanding terms of being a brainless entertainment; as you can tell, I was not entertained.

Furthermore I would argue that the kind of cheap thrills that a movie like Freddy vs. Jason or Die Hard et cetera are superior to those of 42nd Street. I don’t like the conventions of the cinema of the 1930s. I don’t like how chatty everybody is; people talk too damn much in these movies. I don’t like how everything is in quotations either, how the emotional effects of these movies seem to be wearing some sort of coat of irony, keeping you from getting high or even sick off of them. And I don’t like the gender stratification of the period, in this film in particular.

The world of musical theater forces the women to be physical and athletic and affords the men a bit of swish. (Pencil thins seem to be part and parcel to the appearance of men in the theater.) In terms of body types they meet somewhere in the middle. This is very much a problem; the men do not take the women by force or through biological entitlement, they take them because, well, that’s the way that their society has been designed. Not only is the film misogynistic in a bad way, it’s feminist in a bad way; masculinity has been reduced to nothing more than a social construct. And still patriarchal domination in this universe is regarded as an unconquerable fact; the women really have little choice but to sell it up. The film browbeats you with the banality and emptiness of its worldview. It’s as if everything poisonous about the concept of light entertainment has been boiled down to one vomitous downer.