Analysis of 'Some Like it Hot'

Analysis of 'Some Like it Hot'

Some Like It Hot is a film of the fifties, a fact which provides an interesting point of departure when it comes to analyzing the ways in which it deals with subjects like love, sex and the role of women. The image of femininity offered by Some Like It Hot, mainly through Marilyn Monroe's part, emerges, then, as a practical construction made up of scenes which focus on her as an object of (male) desire, innocent, harmless and always available (as she seems literally to throw herself into Junior's arms). No matter how immoral the tricks used by Joe are, he succeeds in getting the girl while we suspect that his will be just one more name to add to the list of saxophone players who have takes advantage of Sugar and then have forgotten her once they have had the fun. Nevertheless, as has been argued at the beginning there are certain ambiguities in the film which enable us to negotiate the patriarchal construction of femininity and gender relations with other, different approaches to these same questions. Such ambiguities are basically produced by the male characters' recourse to disguise and have to do with the blurring of those gender limits on which the discourse of patriarchy bases 'the most privileged' of human relationships the heterosexual couples. [1]

Judith Butler critiques the distinctions made between sex and gender. What is sex? What is gender? They are both culturally constructed. While yes, I always knew that gender was a social construct, but to argue that sex itself was also culturally constructed seemed incredibly strange to me. While continuing to read Butlers piece I began to draw the connections that both of these are constructed culturally within today's society. There is no longer a ...