Comments on: Week-End Marriage

By: Johanna

Johanna — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 18:11:09 +0000

That’s true, there are a ton of women’s movies from the 1930s and 40s where the tacked-on “proper” ending that supports the status quo isn’t at all the point.

By: David Oakes

David Oakes — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:21:38 +0000

Sounds more like a Hays Code version of “Friday the 13th”. Truckloads of nubile teens having sex, but in the end it is OK because they are all dead. And aren’t you ashamed for watching all of it, yes you are…

Or perhaps more accurately pre-Rosie the Riviter “Feminist Porn”. Yes, Virginia, you can get a job, and yes you can be more successful than your husband, and yes you can make it on your own. But oh no, the credits are about to roll, so quick, give that stock speech about how all of this is purely for educational purposes, does not appeal to the prurient interests, and no one out in the audience better do any of this stuff, because it is wrong worng wrong.

I need a cigarette.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 23:41:02 +0000

There are a lot of good ones out there, but this one wasn’t one of them. I didn’t even mention the subplot about a friend whose brother forced her to marry an old thuggish bootlegger.

By: Rachel N.

Rachel N. — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 23:25:32 +0000

Yuck. Considering the circumstances (with his unemployment and his attitude), she should have kept the job and let him live with the floozy (the floozy alone should have been cause for divorce). Nice scare tactics: Women, if you get a job to actually support your family because your husband is a loser slacker, he’ll end up shacking up with a platinum blonde cardboard cutout!

Something tells me he would have gone that way anyway. I can easily imagine him becoming an abusive drunk when he has no job and a wife and kids to support.

There’s nothing wrong with being a housewife. And there’s nothing wrong with being a house-husband, either!

Gosh I love old movies.