{"id":4577,"date":"2026-04-15T05:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4577"},"modified":"2026-04-14T15:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T23:02:28","slug":"raising-feminists-on-old-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/04\/15\/raising-feminists-on-old-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Raising Feminists on Old Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

My family watches a lot of movies, and many of them are old musicals\u00a0from the 40s and 50s. \u00a0Seven Brides for Seven Brothers<\/em>\u00a0is a\u00a01954\u00a0MGM musical based on a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet called \u201cThe Sobbin\u2019 Women.\u201d\u00a0Out in the pioneer northwest, a man decides he needs a wife, goes into town, finds one, marries her (she falls in love with him; what his feelings for her are is unclear), and brings her home to cook and clean for himself and his six half-civilized brothers. \u00a0Millie (the wife) civilizes the boys a bit, and eventually, after meeting some nice girls from town at a barn raising, the boys (led by big brother Adam, who read\u00a0Plutarch\u2019s \u201cRape of the Sabine Women\u201d) go to town and kidnap the girls. \u00a0The townsfolk are prevented from rescuing their daughters until the pass clears (convenient avalanche), but Millie staunchly defends the girls\u2019 virtue through the long winter that follows. \u00a0In the end, everyone winds up married. \u00a0The lesson about being kidnapped? \u00a0\u201cThey acted angry and annoyed, but secretly they was overjoyed\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

No, this is not a feminist movie.<\/span>\u00a0It\u2019s pretty much rape-culture with music.<\/p>\n

Why watch it? \u00a0It\u2019s pretty, the music is pleasant (although the lyrics are just passable:\u201dCan\u2019t make no vows to a herd of cows\u2026\u201d) and the stars work hard. \u00a0Mostly, it has spectacular, athletic, muscular dancing. \u00a0The barn raising dance, in particular, is just\u2026wow. \u00a0You briefly forget all about the political incorrectness of the surroundings and just gape in awe.<\/p>\n

My daughters loved\u00a0Seven Brides<\/em>. \u00a0It also led to interesting conversations. Oh, we had interesting conversations about all sorts of movies, which often led to what I call \u201cWell, dear,\u201d explanations. \u00a0As in: \u201cMama, why are all those men in turbans so angry with Shirley Temple\u2019s grandfather?\u201d \u201cWell, dear, the British occupation of India\u2026\u201d A movie like\u00a0Seven Brides<\/em>\u00a0required several conversations, which led to more \u201cWell, dear\u201d moments (\u201cNo, honey, girls couldn\u2019t vote in America until 1919.\u201d \u201cBut that\u2019s not\u00a0fair<\/em>!!!\u201d \u201cNo, sweetie, it wasn\u2019t.\u201d). \u00a0The fact that the hero of\u00a0Seven Brides<\/em>\u00a0is apparently a sociopath who doesn\u2019t understand why his behavior is reprehensible until he has a daughter of his own, led to its own subset of conversations, as did the fact that the brothers start out regarding Millie as a food-making, clothes-washing robot. \u00a0(\u201cWell, what are\u00a0they<\/em>\u00a0doing?\u201d)<\/p>\n

What made me think of all this was a short TikTok (or Reel… and does the difference really matter?) of a guy defending Seven Brides<\/em> as a film that is actually anti-misogyny. Because the young guy who was opining felt that it was so over-the-top ridiculous that no one could help but understand that the brothers were not modeling correct behavior. But I gotta tell you (and him) that when this film came out, the misogyny was real and it was unexeptionable.<\/p>\n

In fact, many of the films I loved and watched uncritically when I was a kid now reveal their age and the deep wells of misogyny of the time. \u00a0When my older daughter was about eleven, Adam\u2019s Rib<\/em>, one of the great Tracy-Hepburn comedies of the 40s, was on. \u00a0\u201cOoh, let\u2019s watch. \u00a0It\u2019s fun.\u201d \u00a0It\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0fun, but it\u2019s also blisteringly anti-feminist, and treats the heroine\u2019s job (she\u2019s a lawyer) with a kind of \u201cisn\u2019t that\u00a0cute\u201d contempt that is mind-boggling. \u00a0The plot revolves around a couple, both lawyers, who are on opposite sides in a case, with Hepburn defending a woman (Judy Holliday) who discovers that her husband has a mistress, and tries to kill them. \u00a0(The fact that Holliday and the \u201cother woman\u201d, Jean Hagen, are playing essentially the same character, is part of the joke.) \u00a0The jokes are classist as well as sexist\u2026the more I talk about it, the more appalling it looms in my memory. \u00a0And yet<\/em>. \u00a0The movie works because the cast\u2013all of them, Tracy, Hepburn, Tom Ewell, Hagen, David Wayne, and Holliday\u2013are so amazingly good. \u00a0With lousy actors it would be a dreary, humiliating mess.<\/p>\n

Julie watched it and turned to me with dismay. \u00a0\u201cDo all those men realize they\u2019re condescending to\u00a0Katharine Hepburn<\/em>?\u201d \u00a0We had discussions. \u00a0We did agree that while the movie made fun of Hepburn\u2019s character\u2019s passion and intelligence in the cause of her client, it also made it clear that what drew Tracy to her in the first place is that same passion and intelligence. \u00a0The movie also makes great hay of Tracy behaving like a manipulative creep\u2013although it suggests that he\u2019s using\u00a0women\u2019s tricks to get what he wants.<\/p>\n

This led to watching more Tracy-Hepburn movies:\u00a0Pat and Mike<\/em>,\u00a0Woman of the Year<\/em>,\u00a0Desk Set<\/em>. \u00a0In all of them,\u00a0Hepburn\u2019s character is a working woman: an athlete, a reporter, the head of a TV network\u2019s research division. \u00a0And in all of them, in the end,\u00a0the path to romance keeps coming up against career, pretty much to the detriment of career. \u00a0Until she gets her priorities straight, of course. \u00a0After each film the discussions flew thick and fast, and led to Julie\u00a0at one point holding up\u00a0White Christmas<\/em>, of all things, as a better movie on feminist terms, because no one thinks for a moment that there\u2019s anything \u201ccute\u201d or out of line about the two sisters in the show having jobs. \u00a0Except that the jobs are as two halves of a sister singing act, I pointed out. \u00a0If one of them had been a brain surgeon or a politician I doubt the people around them would have been so understanding.<\/p>\n

There are no right\u00a0answers to how to handle old material. \u00a0I will still watch\u00a0Seven Brides<\/em>, and\u00a0Adam\u2019s Rib<\/em>, and\u00a0White Christmas,<\/em>\u00a0and the rest, and enjoy what I find to enjoy in them. \u00a0And I\u2019m glad I showed them to the girls; I kind of think that seeing the films\u00a0encouraged the discussions that led to both of them becoming feminists (and they are, boy howdy). \u00a0Another mother might have refused to give them shelf space; as I said: no right answers.<\/p>\n

But honestly, how does\u00a0anyone get away with condescending to Katharine Hepburn?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My family watches a lot of movies, and many of them are old musicals\u00a0from the 40s and 50s. \u00a0Seven Brides for Seven Brothers\u00a0is a\u00a01954\u00a0MGM musical based on a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet called \u201cThe Sobbin\u2019 Women.\u201d\u00a0Out in the pioneer northwest, a man decides he needs a wife, goes into town, finds one, marries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4579,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4577\/revisions\/4579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}