In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films (Woman's Film Precedents)

286 Pages·1998·2.03 MB·English

by  Karen Hollinger

In the Company
of Women
This page intentionally left blank
In the Company
of Women
Contemporary Female Friendship Films
Karen Hollinger
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 1998 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hollinger, Karen.
In the company of women : contemporary female friendship films /
Karen Hollinger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8166-3177-8 (hc : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8166-3178-6
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Women in motion pictures.2.Female friendship in motion
pictures. I.Title.
PN1995.9.W6H66 1998
791.43′652042—dc21 98-2984
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Theoretical and Generic Contexts 1
of Contemporary Female Friendship Films
⏐
1 Women’s Film Precedents 27
⏐
2 The Sentimental Female Friendship Film 42
Julia, Girl Friends, The Turning Point,
Rich and Famous, Beaches, Steel Magnolias
⏐
3 The Female Friendship Film and Women’s Development 83
Desperately Seeking Susan, Housekeeping,
Mystic Pizza
⏐
4 The Political Female Friendship Film 106
Nine to Five, Outrageous Fortune, Thelma & Louise,
Mortal Thoughts, Leaving Normal
⏐
5 The Erotic Female Friendship Film: Lesbianism in 139
the Mainstream
Personal Best, Desert Hearts,
Fried Green Tomatoes, Go Fish
⏐
6 The Female Friendship Film and Women of Color 179
The Color Purple, Mi Vida Loca, Passion Fish
⏐
7 Backlash: The Anti-Female Friendship Film 207
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,
Single White Female, Poison Ivy
Conclusion: The Future of the Female Friendship Film 236
Notes 249
Index 267
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
My thanks, first of all, to my mother and aunt for the constancy and
generous, loving support that made the writing of this book possible. I
would also like to thank Virginia Wright Wexman and Linda Williams,
my professors at the University of Illinois, Chicago, for sharing with me
their love of film and their insights into cinematic representations of
women. Thanks also to Teresa Winterhalter, my colleague and friend,
who offered perceptive comments on the manuscript and unfailing en-
couragement. My appreciation also goes to the readers for the Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, who provided thoughtful, constructive sugges-
tions for manuscript revision. I am particularly grateful to Chon
Noriega for his generous support and advice. Also a note of thanks to
my students at Armstrong Atlantic State University, who inspired me
with their enthusiastic interest in film and their active engagement in
class discussions.
I am grateful to Micah Kleit, Laura Westlund, and Jennifer Moore
at the University of Minnesota Press for smoothly guiding the manu-
script through production, and to Judy Selhorst for her careful copy-
editing. Mary Corliss of the Film Stills Archive at the Museum of Mod-
ern Art (photos from The Dark Mirror, Letter to Three Wives, Julia,
Girl Friends, The Turning Point, Rich and Famous, Beaches, Steel Mag-
nolias, Desperately Seeking Susan, Housekeeping, Mystic Pizza, Nine
to Five, Outrageous Fortune, Thelma & Louise, Mortal Thoughts,
Leaving Normal, Personal Best, Desert Hearts, Fried Green Tomatoes,
vii
⏐
viii Acknowledgments
The Color Purple, Mi Vida Loca, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,
andSingle White Female) and the people at Photofest (photos from Go
Fish, Passion Fish,andPoison Ivy) were helpful in locating illustrations.
The library staff at Armstrong Atlantic State University and Leigh Ann
Williams, our departmental research assistant, facilitated my research. I
also appreciate the access I was given to the script collection at the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library in Los Angeles.
Finally, my gratitude and affection go to my husband, Walt, and my
sons, Geoff and Mike, for providing encouragement and amusing com-
panionship throughout the composition process.
Introduction: Theoretical and
Generic Contexts of Contemporary
Female Friendship Films
Genre: The Woman’s Film
Mainstream cinema, a term used to describe films that receive commer-
cial theatrical distribution in the United States, has seen a recent wave of
films focusing on friendships between women. One need only consider
such box office successes as Julia (Zinnemann, 1977), Nine to Five
(Higgins, 1980), Desperately Seeking Susan (Seidelman, 1985), Steel
Magnolias(Ross, 1989), and Thelma & Louise(Scott, 1991) to realize
the enormous popularity of what appears to be a newly created cycle of
films specifically addressed to a female audience. On the one hand, it
might be argued that the female friendship film is merely the women’s
version of the male buddy film that became a staple of mainstream cine-
ma in the 1960s and 1970s. Popular films such as Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid (Hill, 1969), Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969),
and The Sting (Hill, 1973) firmly established the male buddy cycle,
which continued to flourish throughout the 1980s and 1990s, repre-
sented, for instance, by the extremely successful Lethal Weapon series
(Donner, 1987, 1989, 1992).1 In spite of the obvious similarity that
both male buddy and female friendship films focus on the relationship
between two friends, the male buddy film and the female friendship film
are not really very much alike. Whereas the male buddy film typically
fits comfortably within the larger confines of the action/adventure
genre, the female friendship film is more accurately described as a
1