Gender Inequality In L A Confidential

Amongst corruption, lies, murders and the rest of the regular and intense, a subtle but important issue lingers in the film L.A Confidential. This issue is gender inequality. L.A Confidential reflects the views and status of many women in real life in the 1950’s, and how they are seen as lesser in comparison to their male counterparts.

In the 1950’s, females were seen as the lesser sex as opposed to males. Women’s roles in society were to cook, clean and have a maternal gift. Another expectation of women in the 1950’s that is heavily emphasised in L.A Confidential is to look good. In the film, all female characters, whether dead or alive, look glamorous. When the audience first meets Lynn Bracken, the female protagonist in L.A Confidential,

she is dressed in a luxurious and expensive looking black cape, her nails elegantly painted and her signature red lipstick painted on her lips. Another example of how L.A Confidential reflects the notion of women being expected to look good in the era of the 1950’s is the fact that the prostitutes, such as Lynn Bracken and Susan Lefferts, are made to look like beautiful film stars, Lynn as Veronica Lake, and Susan Lefferts as Rita Hayworth. Women having their hair dyed or their nose reconstructed to look like a glamorous movie star in order to appeal to their clients, further highlights the notion of an almost responsibility to look good FOR their male counterparts. In the scene when Bud White confronts Lynn about the photographs of her and Ed Exley, Lynn is stripped of make up, her Veronica Lake-esque hair is tied up and her clothes are a plain white. This scene also represents Lynn as the inferior in this scene; so the fact that she is seen as inferior, and her costuming is not seen as glamorous or desirable as usual, tie in together to send the message that if a woman is not looking good physically, then she is inferior. In the film, it does not tend to matter what the men look like, as it is not portrayed that they have to impress anyone with their physicality or fashion.

Perhaps the most important evidence in L.A Confidential that the female characters are seen as inferior to the male characters is the professions they work and their status in the social hierarchy.

Most of the male characters in L.A Confidential are top policemen and detectives, which are two honorable professions. The women that we see in the film are either prostitutes or administrators. This suggests that as well as being seen as inferior, the women were seen as lowly deserving of ‘decent’ careers, due to the fact that they simply are women. A profession such as prostitution is seen as much less desirable and mostly, respectable, in comparison to a profession such as being a police officer or detective. The low status that the female characters in L.A Confidential hold is further represented by the fact that mostly all of them (except for the female administrator in the L.A.P.D facility) are damsels in distress. The first character that exemplifies the ‘damsel in distress’ persona is Susan Lefferts. The audience first meets Susan Lefferts in a car with Pierce Pratchett with a bandage on her nose and looking highly uncomfortable. Although she is seemingly okay in this scene, her attitude and energy tells the audience that something is wrong. The audience soon sees that something is wrong after Susan has been murdered in the Nite Owl Massacre. The fact that Susan was murdered at such a young age suggests that because she is a female and a prostitute, she has not a lot to

give, so why continue living? The next character that we see as a damsel in distress is Susan Leffert’s mother. Her mother is a blubbering mess both whilst she has just seen her daughter’s dead body, and a while afterwards. This ditzy and unstable persona that Susan Leffert’s mother has makes her seem much more inferior to the policeman such as Ed Exley and Bud White who try to console her and investigate her daughter’s murder. The final character that embodies the notion of being a damsel in distress is Lynn Bracken. Not only is Lynn a prostitute, but after being hit by her lover Bud White, Lynn is left in distress and a physical and mental sense of inferiority in comparison to the strong Bud White who could take several punches to the face but still be okay.

Finally, L.A Confidential undermines being female and celebrates being male by making all the heroes in the film men. This is a simple but crucial element to consider. All of the heroes in the film are men, Jack Vincennes, Bud White and Ed Exley. Jack lost his life in the name of justice and good will, Bud assists Ed in the Victory Motel Showdown, and Ed shoots the main villain of L.A Confidential, Captain Dudley Smith dead. There are no major acts of heroism from the women in the film, which suggests that whilst the men are being tough and brave whilst killing the ‘bad guys’, the women are off down to the side looking pretty and sweet with no credentials.

In comparison to their strong, tough, brave and heroic counterparts, the female characters in the film-noir L.A Confidential are seen as inferior and substandard damsels in distress who are of lesser importance and legitimacy.