Tootsie Compared to Course Reading Concepts - Essay Example

Film review of Tootsie (1982 Summary Micheal Dorsey (Dustin Huffman) is a perfectionist actor to the extent that no producers or directors hire him to work in New York. With no work for the past four months and hoping to realise his dream with his best friend, Jeff Slater (Bill Murray) for a stage drama, he needs US$8000. Therefore, he decides to cross-dress and audition for a role in a soap opera set in "South West Hospital. He knows about the role through his friend Sandy Lester (Teri Garr) who fails at the audition to get the role. Eventually, he wins the role. He also becomes involved in a relationship with Sandy after sleeping together once. With Micheal's terrific acting skills, he becomes so popular, acting as the hospital administrator, Dorothy Micheals. Dorothy becomes so popular that she is featured on several well-known magazines. During his work in the soap drama, he is attracted to his co-actress, Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange). Julie is in a complicated relationship with chauvinistic director, Ron Carlisle (Dabney Coleman) with whom she has a baby girl, borned out of the wedlock. Julie has told him once that she is receptive to men who approach her with a drink. Thus, when Micheal meets Julie at a party, he approaches her with a drink. To his surprise, she pours the drink on him. On an occasion after Julie decides to end the relationship with Ron, Micheal (as Dorothy) makes advances to console her by kissing her. Julie is shocked and misunderstands Dorothy to be a lesbian. She explains to "her" that she likes "her", but not the romantic way. To make things complicated, Dorothy has her admirers. They are John Van Horn (George Gaynes), Dorothy's co-actor in the soap drama and Julie's father Leslie 'Les' Nichols (Charles Durning). After Micheal knows about the existence of these admirers, he talks to his best friend who is also his roommate, Jeff and George Fields (Sydney Pollack) about his problems of being misunderstood. Soon, Micheal decides to resolve this situation by finding solutions to leave the cast. However, George is against her to leave the cast since there is an increase in her salary for her popularity. When the cast has to perform live one day, he reveals that he is the character's twin brother who replaces her to avenge her. This is kind of the best way for him to reveal himself in a graceful and responsible way. However, Julie is so shocked and angry that she punches him. After weeks of cooling period, Micheal looks for Julie outside the studio and confesses to Julie "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man". She then forgives him. The reason why I want to analyze this film is that Tootsie reveals how the same person can actually display different personality and identity as a man and a woman. This person can therefore, be able to understand the different expectations set by the society for different genders at a work place and gives critical thoughts regarding gender identities. Specifically is Dustin Huffman's role, Michael Dorsey who is also acting as Dorothy Michaels. In the film, he also described that he became a better man after some experience as a woman. As a result, "Tootsie" is a strong film, which can help to understand the gendered identities from the same person, be it a man or a woman. Therefore, in this paper, we look at how women are frequently defined by appearance or by relationships with others, but men are more typically defined by activities, accomplishments, or positions. In addition is how communication plays a primary role in shaping our gendered identities, and how society defines masculinity and femininity. 2. How women are frequently defined by appearance or by relationships with others, but men are more typically defined by activities, accomplishments, or positions 2.1 Women are frequently defined by appearance or by relationships with others Women are frequently defined by appearance. This line can be evidenced from two scenes of the film. This first scene is when Micheal was trying clothes for himself as Dorothy and asked opinions from Jeff. Micheal commented that Dorothy would look fat because of his butt. The second scene is when Micheal was curling a wig, which belongs to Dorothy (himself). He went on to describe how he could make Dorothy prettier. This shows that he, himself paid great attention to Dorothy's outlook but paid very little attention to the appearance of the manly Micheal. This is similar to what Julia Wood gives as an example in her book.1 The book describes that the media focus a lot on the appearance of female athlete, rather than the athletic abilities. It was a reverse scenario for male athlete. Similarly, in Tootsie, Micheal who dressed as Dorothy put in huge effective efforts to make sure that Dorothy's image is a well-groomed woman. Therefore, we can say that he was doing his part to project the politically correct image for the cast and society. In addition is that during Dorothy's audition, her lines were "Oh I know what y'all really want is some gross, caricature of a woman to prove some idiotic point that power makes a woman masculine, or masculine women are ugly. Well shame on you for letting a man do that, or any man that does that. That means you, dear. Miss Marshall. Shame on you, you macho shit head." Specifically, it defines masculine women to be ugly. This shows that the society and media do define appearance of women to be either masculine or feminine. This, is thus the psychology of stereotyping by the society.2 For Micheal who is an actor, he understood very well the stereotypes of women who have power and try to project the image of Dorothy to be as such. We will talk in depth on how society defines masculinity and femininity in the next section. Women are also very often defined by what types of relationships she has. One strong example is that for Dorothy, she was seen as a hospital administrator, which again, categorized her as a powerful female liberator. Another example is when Micheal told Jeff that he did not promise Sandy that she would not see other women, which was a similar line to what Ron said to Dorothy regarding his relationship with Julie in the later part of the film. Even though Ron had many girlfriends, he was not defined negatively. This is the same for Micheal. On the other hand, when Jeff caught Dorothy at home with John, Jeff said that Dorothy is a slut. This is to say that it is right for men to have many relationships but not right for women. To reiterate, women are defined by the appearance and/or the relationships they have. 2.2 How men are defined by activities, accomplishments, or positions Something different from what Julia described is that after Dorothy became popular, she got to be known as "a liberator", winning support from fellow women as a strong and independent woman. This shows that women can get recognition through their activities, accomplishments, abilities or positioning using their effort. This is thus, not really in line with as what Julia Wood described about the example of male and female athletes. This shows that both men and women are able to be defined by activities, accomplishments, or positions. However, women seem to have to put in the extra effort in order to be recognized for their achievements. 3. How communication plays a primary role in shaping our gendered identities, and how society defines masculinity and femininity. 3.1 How communication plays a primary in shaping our gendered identities Verbal Communication plays a big part in shaping our gendered identities. One example in this film is that, Dorothy Micheals had an intense argument over chauvinistic Ron's derogating name-calling actions. Names that Ron once called Dorothy included "Tootsie", "Toots", "Sweetie", and "Honey". Ron was then surprised over Dorothy's reaction. This was not surprising for the audience because Dorothy was actually also a chauvinistic man in disgust of a woman. This shows that men minds a lot, about how they are termed. Therefore, we can say that men, in general are direct and honest. It is a different situation for women. Julie, who compromised Ron a lot, did not have the courage to speak about her feelings. It was after Dorothy influenced her to be honest with herself that she managed to leave Ron. For nonverbal communication, it also plays a big part in shaping our gendered identities. There was a scene where Ron patted Julie's butt in front of other colleagues. It was as if to show that Ron owned Julie. This shows that men actually displayed their power and dominance over one through body gestures.1 However, women seldom have any body gestures. 3.2 How society defines masculinity and femininity. In the above example, during her audition, her lines like "Oh I know what y'all really want is some gross, caricature of a woman to prove some idiotic point that power makes a woman masculine, or masculine women are ugly. Well shame on you for letting a man do that, or any man that does that. That means you, dear. Miss Marshall. Shame on you, you macho shit head." Specifically, the society and media defines that masculine women are ugly and women becomes masculine because of their desire for power. Therefore, simply put, powerful women are ugly. But, does it mean that the reverse is true If, indeed reverse is true, this means society categorizes masculinity and femininity according to appearance for women. In Richard's book, it suggested that masculinity means more negative than positive when applied to women and femininity means more positive than negative when applied to men.3 This could explain why in the film, masculine women are defined to be ugly. This also relates to the gender identities that men should be the ones who desire for power and women should be the ones who are more domestic.4 This is also to say that when the traditional roles of man and women are reversed, it affects the way in which societies view the appearance of both men and women. References 1. Julia T. Wood. (2005). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender & and Culture. Thomson Wadsworth 2. David J. Schneider. (2005). The Psychology of Stereotyping. Guilford Press 3. Richard A. Lippa. (2005). Gender, Nature, and Nurture. Routledge 4. Natalie Zemon Davis, Arlette Farge. (1993) A History of Women in the West. Harvard University Press. Read More