Some may argue that the movie The General conforms to traditional patriarchal gender roles. Annabelle Lee, the heroine, is kidnapped (albeit inadvertently) by hostile soldiers and needs the heroic exploits of her lover to rescue her. She is portrayed as submissive to her father and brother, ineffectual in plotting her own escape (such as throwing a stick of wood into the train furnace or failing to stop the engine so her lover can board it), and often exhibiting domestic inclinations ( as when she sweeps the engine with a broom).
Do you agree with this picture of Annabelle Lee -- or is it more complicated? Is Annabelle a stereotypical damsel in distress or is she a more progressive figure? Is there something about her a feminist could admire? What is this film saying about gender roles?
Annabelle Lee’s role in The General is an interesting one. Interpreted literally it appears that her character is the quintessential damsel in distress that many nineteenth men liked to think represented the female gender. Given Buster Keaton’s knack for subtlety and the fate of Lee’s society, I believe that her character should hardly be interpreted literally. Throughout the movie Lee is shown to be submissive; her father and brother constantly order her around. She can’t fend for herself, and when in the presence of traditional southern men, constantly acts the part of a housewife. What we must remember though is that her brother and father, well respected southern gentleman, are on the losing side of a war. Their way of life is quickly coming to an end. Buster Keaton seems to almost say that with the fall of the old south women will no longer be forced to be domestic. Not only does the fate of Lee’s family reveal Buster Keaton’s opinion on women, but several of Lee’s actions similarly convey this opinion. When Lee is in the company of Johnnie Gray, a man who can be described as anything but a stereotypical southern gentleman, she not only holds her own, but saves the pairs life on multiple occasions. In a movie about the fall of southern society, the only man that is portrayed a hero is Johnnie Gray. Gray is an engineer not a fighter yet it is he who keeps the army alive to fight another day. As the hero of the story it is clear that Keaton believes that Johnnie Gray and men like him are the future of the country: not backward southern gentleman. Therefore, the way that Lee acts when she is around Johnnie is the way that Keaton believes that women should behave.
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ReplyDeleteIn The General, Annabelle Lee is portrayed as a domestic woman who relies on men for support in many scenes, yet she also crosses boundaries regarding gender periodically throughout her journey. This creates a contrast between how women were expected to act during the early 20th century, and how many of them tried to escape from such a constricted lifestyle. Annabelle Lee represents all oppressed women as she transforms from a domestic, powerless lady into a confident, reliable human.
ReplyDeleteWhen the movie begins, Annabelle Lee is depicted as a needy girlfriend with high standards for men and few skills that would be useful beyond her front door. Her reliance on men is obvious when she tells Johnnie to enlist in the army solely to see if he is "manly" enough for the job. When he is rejected from the army, she is no longer interested in him which shows that she only wants to be with a man who is considered “macho” or “manly”. This action makes Annabelle seem shallow and reliant on men to support her. Also, when she is stuck on the train with the northerners, she seems completely helpless and needs Johnnie’s help to escape. She doesn’t try to escape or fight them herself but simply listens to their every word like a puppet. This demonstrates that men are physically more powerful than women, and women can’t defend themselves without a man. Once she is rescued by Johnnie, she makes many mistakes while trying to help escape that would define her as a useless woman. At some points she doesn’t know how to stop the train, she throws tiny twigs into the fire instead of logs, and she even starts sweeping the floor depicting her role as a housewife.
As the movie progresses, a new side of Annabelle is unveiled as she helps Johnnie escape from the northerners using many sly tactics to stop the train chase. At one point she ties a rope to two trees in order to get the northerner’s train stuck on the track. While Johnnie looks at her like it is too small to make a difference, the trick ends up stopping the northerner’s train with trees stuck between the train and the tracks. She also learns how to operate the train as she figures out how to stop and reverse the train when Johnnie gets left behind. While these actions appear to be insignificant, they show the progression of Annabelle Lee’s character as she becomes a confident train engineer, with the ability to escape from the union army.
Going off from Susie's point, I think it is interesting how women start to have more freedom, even in the film industry. Comparing to the first movie we saw in class where a woman was being chased by a man, she was portrayed as very passive, submissive and very depending on help from a man, so Annabelle's acts of heroism would never have happened in the same epoch of the chase movie. I believe that is due to the First World War, as fathers and sons were sent to war and women were asked to replace them on industry and jobs, which made the world start to see that they were capable of doing things just as well and feminist movements started to appear. So even though there would still be a long way, Annabelle Lee is one of the first people to cross gender boundaries in the entertainment industry, operating a train and making a difference in the war.
ReplyDeleteAnabelle Lee’s role in The General, specifically in relation to portrayed gender roles, is complex and certainly not unidimensional. Keaton portrays her as both a clueless damsel in distress, and as an integral part to her and Johnnie’s success. While it is clear that there were many times where she is intuitive and independent, such as when she disconnects the trains or ties string between two trees to stop the enemies’ train, there were also many instances where she is portrayed as completely incompetent, because she is a woman. While the gags and jokes that centered around Johnnie were funny because of his reactions, cunning problem solving, or unexpected heroism, the jokes about Annabelle were specifically about her womanhood. The most prominent examples are when she is loading wood into the train’s furnace and throws away a piece of wood that had a hole in it because she thinks it is broken, or when she starts to sweep the floor of the train. These jokes obviously criticize and satirize her being both domestically inclined and inherently senseless. The General was released in 1926, at the height of the Jazz Age, when young women were anything but domestic or senseless. Women during this time period actively sought out intellectual, emotional, physical, and sexual equality with men and empowerment. With this in mind, the comedy surrounding Anabelle’s inability to do simple tasks, that any woman is obviously capable of doing, is a clear antifeminist choice that Keaton made to both reinforce backwards gender roles and make his male audience more comfortable. While the film is about the Civil War, a time when women were expected to stay within the domestic sphere and submit to men, films undoubtedly reflect the time period they are made in, and The General is no exception. Annabelle’s character is certainly bold and cunning at times during the movie, yet the overarching comedy surrounding her character is catering to the patriarchal society America exists in.
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with this picture. Although Annabelle begins the film as someone who seems to not know how to do much besides clean and cook, she eventually progresses through the film to becoming someone who can operate and engine. Why is operating an engine such a big deal? It is a big deal because at the beginning of the film we see Johnny get rejected from being drafted because this skill is so rare and sought after. Yet Annabelle managed to learn it in a span of 30 minutes. This is the quality that a feminist could admire, her perseverance and unwillingness to give in to her domesticity. She tries to learn how to operate the train under situations with pressure which also brings up another reason she is more than just a damsel in distress. If she were a damsel in distress then in the important situations she would freak out and look for Johnny to help, instead she takes it upon herself to learn how to accomplish the task at hand. She shows the audience that she is capable of thriving under pressure after she adjusts to the situation. At first she is lost and has no clue what to do on the train, but she quickly learns and becomes a problem solver.
ReplyDeleteThis film is trying to say that gender roles are not set in. Gender roles were there so that women such as Annabelle may break them.
In the movie, The General, the picture of Annabelle Lee is complicated. As the portal says, she was the heroine of the movie and sometimes seemed weak and not capable of doing things that others could. Some of the scenes that demonstrate her weakness include: not being able to stop the train, not being able to escape the north soldiers, and being thrown into the train like an object, and not a person. This description of Annabelle is inaccurate because she does show power and without her, the general would probably not have made it safely back to the south. She demonstrates her smarts in various ways. In one example, she pulls the pin out the train car thereby separating the train cars and prohibiting the majority of the north soldiers from following Annabelle and the general. Also, she did not know how to stop the train at first but when she did figure it out, she was able to stop it, put it in reverse, and save her hero that was left behind.
ReplyDeleteAnnabelle is a progressive figure in the movie. She does have the characteristics of a heroine and what people would expect of a woman of that time period to be like, but she also is able to carry herself and the general at times. In the film, stereotypes came out. For example, a common stereotype of women during that time was that women were to clean the house and stay home. In the film, this is shown when Annabelle didn’t know what to do with herself and she grabbed a broom and started sweeping the train. She was progressive because as mentioned above she saved the general and herself by pulling the pin. The film is saying, “Yes, stereotypes do exist,” but the film is wrong because without Annabelle, the general would never have survived and without the general, Annabelle would have never survived. They needed each other. Women of that time were a lot smarter and were not as stereotypes portrayed them. General is not as smart as he believes and would have died without the help of Annabelle and her smarts and ideas.
In this film, Annabelle Lee is a progressive figure in that she is portrayed as a stereotypical domestic woman, but then progresses to becoming a self-sufficient, independent minded woman. The film begins with Lee forcing her boyfriend to enroll in the army in order to prove that he is manly and macho because she is accustomed to living within the stereotypes of housewife and manly man. In addition, she is submissive to her father and seems almost incompetent without him. At one point, Johnnie Gray has to rescue her from a fairly easy to escape from house. All he had to do was climb out of the window, so she is definitely portrayed as helpless and in need of a man. Lee also fits this stereotype when she sweeps the deck of the train with a broom. This demonstrates the idea that women are domestic instinctively and are not meant for engineering a train, or other typically male tasks.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the film, however, Annabelle Lee progresses into a more independent and intelligent woman. When Johnnie Gray and she were trying to get away from the northerners, she tied a piece of rope across two trees in hopes of stopping the northerners train. This tactic works flawlessly, demonstrating her progression away from the stereotype. In addition, by the end of the film Lee is able to operate and engineer the train; this is something that the stereotypical housewife would be incapable of. In conclusion, this film depicts the stereotypical southern housewife breaking away from the stereotype and becoming an independent woman, which shows that while gender stereotypes are present, people have the capacity to overcome them.
At the beginning of the movie, The General, Annabelle was an average woman for her time period. But after her kidnapping and eventual rescued by Johnny she changes how she acts and breaks through gender roles. At the beginnings she stays at home with her brother and her father and is very complaint, as woman were supposed to during the time of the movie. But then she gets captured by the soldiers she has to change and fight back to break gender roles. After she breaks away with Johnny by her side she begins to break the gender roles. She quickly learns how to drive a train and helps Johnny in many different ways. Although she makes this breakthrough she still has some classic gender roles, she starts to sweep the train when she doesn’t have anything else to do with herself. Annabelle is a very progressive figure; she has a perfect mix of being very smart and adaptive to her surrounding but also reverts back to the gender roles set forth to her. She should be looked up to during that time period, in which the movie was shot; this mix is the first step to women getting their independence. This movie says a lot about gender roles. The main message was that gender roles are hard to break but overall should be broken. The movie shows that women are than what they are given credit for and should break through these constricting roles.
ReplyDeleteAnnabelle many times throughout the film could be looked at as clumsy and air-headed, however so is Johnnie. In order for this film to have gender inequality it would have to contain the man doing everything right with little to no error. This is not the case because we see in the film that Johnnie makes several stupid mistakes throughout the adventure as well as Annabelle. While keeping this in mind, Annabelle shows progression through traps that she comes up with along with her quick thinking. The trap involved her tying a rope around trees so that the train would get caught by the rope and the trees would then get stuck underneath the wheel of the train. This is something that Johnnie didn’t think of doing but then showed great appreciation towards her for coming up with the idea. In the middle of the commotion she is also quick on her feet. She figures out how to maneuver a train in no time, when normally it would take others including men a long time to get comfortable with. Her independence and her quick learning is something to be admired. Even though she was out of her normal element she wasn’t afraid to try to keep up with Johnnie. Throughout the film both Johnnie and Annabelle stumble and fall a bit, however they both contribute to each other’s success. This makes the film have more gender equality then most other films during this time era.
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