Stereotypes In 'Annie Get Your Gun'

The world in the 1940s was very different for men and women then it is now in the 21st century and although things are progressing for women, men are still considered superior. The musical “Annie Get Your Gun” directed by George Sidney is about Annie Oakley, a young sharpshooter who manages to support her younger siblings with the game she hunts. Her amazing shooting skills allowed her to beat Frank Butler, the best show marksman, in a shooting match. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’s managers decide to recruit Annie, and even though Annie doesn’t even know what a show business is, she agrees to join them because she has fallen in love with Frank. Throughout the musical, Annie and Frank’s relationship faces difficulties because Frank cannot stand

The musical has several instances of sexism, one of them being Frank’s song, “The Girl that I Marry”, with the lyrics “The girl that I marry will have to be/ As soft and as pink as a nursery/ The girl I call my own/ Will wear satin and laces and smell of cologne/ Her nails will be polished/ And in her hair she’ll wear a gardenia” where he describes the “perfect girl” that he wants to marry (Sidney, "Annie Get Your Gun"). This song would be considered sexist today because of the high standards he puts his perfect woman to, while nowadays, feminists push women to be themselves without trying to live up to somebody else’s standards especially for a man. Furthermore, Frank would always become upset whenever Annie would beat or perform better than him. For example, when Annie and Frank reunite after being apart for each of their own show, they are declaring their love for each other but the moment is lost when Frank tries to offer his three medals as a gift but he sees that Annie already has a chestful of medals. The rivalry comes back and his pride takes over and Frank tries to take his gift back by saying, “No, these are too plain for you. They just got writing on the back, ‘To Frank Butler, The Champion Sharpshooter of the World’,” (Sidney, "Annie Get Your Gun"). By saying

Annie can shoot like no other girl can and she embraces that fact, and the fact that she can do anything Frank can do and even better. She expresses her confidence in being able to do so in the song “Anything You Can Do” where Annie sings, “Anything you can do,/ I can do better./ I can do anything/ Better than you,” and Frank argues back with “No, you can’t” (Sidney, "Annie Get Your Gun"). Annie does fight back against Frank when it comes to what she can do, but her “love” for him still makes her choose him over herself since she decided to lose on purpose at the last match so he would marry her for sure because he would be reassured that he was better than her. One might say that she only did it for true love, however it is not true love if Frank was not able to accept the fact that Annie was in fact a better sharpshooter than he was. Additionally, if this was a feminist movie, Annie would not have been able to stand a relationship where her man was only able to like her when she seemed below him. This shows that “Annie Get Your Gun” is a musical that ultimately represents male supremacy because of the way Frank acts and Annie eventually giving in at the