Our Dancing Daughters Analysis

For several years, films have been the medium for our nation to express ideas, such as societal norms, social justice movements, and politics. They have been a method to change perspectives and revolutionize the times and minds of viewers. As time changes, so does the average citizen, filmmakers, and the society. Due to the impact that films have, it does not come as a surprise that ideals about women have been expressed through films. Such should be noted, that sexism was very alive during these times, as films demonstrated women as submissive, needy, and swooning over men. Additionally, Teresa DeLaurentis, believed women in American film were “a fictional construct” and “distillate[d]” from the average American woman (Gunther, Archetypes,

Christine Gledhill’s writes about the melodrama that is a “welding of fantasy, spectacle, and realism” that “appear to operate in human life independently of rational explanation” (Thornham 47). Nonetheless, these films and characteristics of certain films are prevalent, especially in Our Dancing Daughters, where Dangerous Diana is struck in aw, as she meets the love interest, who she completely falls in love with. This attributes to the idea of spectacle, as the male is seen as a treat of sort for the women. Ann, another character within Our Dancing Daughters, who is characterized as a sinner, tricked the love interest and forced him into marriage which devastated Dangerous Diana. At the end of the film, Diana leaves her hometown for a couple years and Ann falls to her doom, quite literally, as she falls down a flight of stairs that leads to her death. This also has aspects of realism as Ann tricks the love interest into marriage due to the fact that he was wealthy, which was ideal in a partner at this time by several people, and fantasy as Dangerous Diana winning the love interest back and Ann falling to her death, which were not common in that time, at least separation of couples unless the man was the one leaving. Furthermore, Jane Caputi states that “Although all women are seen as inferior, some women are denounced as particularly “dirty” – women of color, prostitutes, poor women. They are

With this economic collapse also meant that the film industry experienced a decline. As people struggled to have enough money to pay their homes and to have food on the table, films were the last thing to go through a person’s mind. While occasionally films were released, films were made less. After the New Deal, films started to become popular again, and this brought new aspects to films. This brought the objectification in several films such as She Done Him Wrong, where indecency was shown (Gunther, Hollywood’s “Golden Years” were also the darkest years in our history). This is ultimately what leads to the future of our films where female are constantly objectified that it has become normalized by modern society. Some may argue that women were not objectified, and in some aspects of the The Busher and The Women, they were not, but as we know, further along time, women will be severely objectified, which is evident in Our Dancing Daughters. Ann is small, and is seen in what is known as promiscuous and revealing clothing, although she is one of the younger girls. This can be related to Barbara Churchill’s statement that “Film, like all cultural forms, has documented a veritable tug-of-war between the two poles of femininity, between the virtuous virgin and the femme fatale, in the cultural psyche”