Sex Historian Reviews Iconic Female Characters in Hollywood Movies

Royal mistress was an official court position this is about him exerting power over this woman and you know why cuz he fancies her her aunt had the right idea she says that it's best just to be rich and not get married bang him I am Dr Kate liser and I am here to review the role of women in Hollywood films Little Women hello Amy I don't want to see you Amy don't be mad at me I'm sorry for how I behaved you been again why are you so hard on me such an important scene in the film and apparently this this whole speech he's about to give wasn't in the original script Merill Street requested it be put in I'm a failure Joe is in New York being a writer and I'm a failure that's quite a statement to make it 20 I have a lot of problems with the actual story itself I Louisa May alot created these feisty characters who wanted to pursue art and literature and then they all get married men I suppose cutting down the competition that's a very complicated argument to make me feel better do you know do you feel better I do think male or female I am of middling Talent middling she's gorgeous isn't she Florence we like her this is Amy the big of the sisters that's the academic phrasing but you will be if he goes down properly on one knee most likely yes he's Rich richer than you even I understand Queens of society can't get on without money although it does sound odd from the mouth of one of your mother's girls I've always known I would marry Rich why should I be ashamed of that there's nothing to be ashamed of as long as you love him the reason that Amy is says I want to marry and I want to marry well yeah girl you do that because she can't earn her own money that's exactly what she should be doing and the the Lori character who's all about oh but what would the poets say first of all he's rich on his own so we can just take a seat second of all the Romantic Poets were not poor people they did come from quite a lot of money Lord Byron is not someone that should be talking about poverty well I believe we have some power over who we love it isn't something that just happens to a person I think the poets might disagree well I'm not a poet I'm just a woman and as a woman there's no way for me to make my own money not enough to earn a living or to support my family and if I had my own money which I don't that money would belong to my husband the moment we got married and if we had children they would be his not mine they would be his property so don't sit there and tell me that marriage isn't an economic proposition because it is his view on marriage and Amy's view on marriage they're so different and I think that the scene doesn't a brilliant job of of contrasting especially when you've got lri kind of draped over that chair and the background is kind of open around him and he's sort of lounging and then it cuts to to Amy's character who's upright and S surrounded by all this stuff in the background they are talking about marriage from very very different perspectives oh that's Fred can you unbutton me please I think this scene is so articulate and really goes to the heart of what the condition was like for women in the the 19th century in fact until quite recent history they can't open their own bank accounts they can't be educated they can't really have jobs if they do the jobs pay pittance you have to marry a man is an economic necessity women will often framed as being gold diggers or or desperate for men's money or and you still get that narrative a little bit today well of course they were they can't earn their own so of course that's that's what they want to do and I think the the scene there is really really good to get into the heart of this tension between romantic love and economic necessity oh Joe such an amazing character such a feisty independent important character who wants to pursue her writing and her passions your friend Fredick wasn't that his name no ruined our friendship with my temper just as I ruin everything apparently cersa Ronan was so desperate to play the part she just pretty much wrote to the director Greta Gerwig and just said by I'm Joe and even though there was some reservations about it apparently Greta decided that actually just announcing yourself as Joe was a very Joe thing to do so that's why she's Joe and she she smashes out the park don't she she's great at it just give up the world happily Lori's returning you know oh he is his character was so caught up in this conflict between wanting to have a career and pursure writing and also wanting to find love what is it I don't know I've always been quite content with my family don't understand it he says at several points in the film that if you get married that's kind of it if you're a woman she's worried about her sister Meg that she is going to be bored and you know what she spot on as well she she is right she H she understands that marriage although an economic necessity is also very limiting for women perhaps um perhaps I was too quick in turning him down Lori do you love it such a difficult position apart from her aunt her aunt had the right idea she say that it's best just to be rich and not get married bang ask me again but do you love him I care more to be loved I want to be loved that is not the same as loving that's interesting isn't it cares more to be loved women they they have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts and they've got ambition and they've got talent as well as just Beauty and I'm so sick of people saying that that love is just all a woman is fit for I'm so sick of it but I'm I'm so lonely me too Joe that's kind of sad in it the career woman in infancy here when one of the many interesting things about this story is that all these characters are on different trajectories pretty much I mean it's all resolved by marriage apart from Beth who dies but the the characters and the conflict that they're all facing is very unique to each one and you know we are living through such a radical interesting point when it comes to women's rights because all of the things that have been fought for for women in the workpl and to earn their own money we're now seeing the effects of it there is still a gender pay grap things need to be addressed women are still not occupying the highest paid positions but Leaps and Bounds from this particular time right so women can now earn their own money and it's interesting the effect that we're seeing because now one in four people are single more and more women are not getting married they're not interested in relationships and more and more people are going I don't think I'm going to have children actually the birth rate is declining as people are taking more and more control over their economic autonomy Memoirs of Aga mother always said my sister satu was like wood as rooted to the Earth as a sakura tree but she told me I was like water this is the father selling the two sisters to the pleasure houses look at that the bars that foreshadowing the imprisonment here in Japan the areas that you would go to buy and sell sex were very strictly walled off they were known as floating worlds because they were s of worlds in themselves it must have been overwhelming for children for anyone arriving who'd never seen this before and they do a really good job of capturing that don't they like it's so busy and there's so and you never quite get a full look at anything if's moving so quick the the GES they're quite a mysterious group they have a very fine line with uh the women actually selling sex it is a line but they both come from the same place so women were once allowed on the stage in Japan um the origin of what Kabuki theater and they were really really good at it and but it they were so good and it created so much chaos and disorder and people would pay to have sex with these women that were on the stage that eventually the Japanese government they they outlawed it they said it's too rowdy it's too much and then young boys went on stage and then they became very sexually attractive as well but what happened is that you had a whole class of women who were once on the stage who were once in the theater suddenly needed to redirect and find something else and this is largely where the gers come from because they are artists so here they're being Apprentice to the to the gisha house to our Modern Eyes looks absolutely horrific who would who would do that to a child and it's certainly framed as that here very brutal these are the girls from Tanaka sisters yes from your ID this one maybe the other one no one of the sisters is taken to the gisha house and the other one is taken to a brel and there's a real division between gisha and sex work all the way through this of one looking down on the other I'm not sure it was that clearcut it is true that children were sold to these establishments which is very difficult for us to get our head around but again perhaps these people really thought that they were giving their kids a better life and a lot of cases they might have been doing that it's very difficult for us to try and understand but the gaies tended to operate like the pleasure houses did the child would be paid for and then the child would have accured a debt a debt they would then have to attempt to pay off and then all of their clothes this is certainly to in the pleasure houses I'm not as sure if it happened with the gishes but it certainly happened in the pleasure houses every uh thing that they ate everything they wore everything all that education it would be chalked up and a debt would be acred please get out why they do CH so this is one of the established GES hats M who really doesn't like Chio the the the young girl there she's been vile to her like competition the sacrifice every gisha must be that handkerchief belongs to the man that that uh Chia loves and and has harb a deep passion for ever since she was a child bit creepy but that's the that's the story this scene follows on from where Chia has just become the greatest gisha and now hatsumomo is very jealous isn't this where you keep it next to your heart I don't know if it was actually like this if this was what gisha culture was like if it was thisy I like to think it was all sisters in it together give it back give me see all this cinematography is so beautiful here all like the the Fabrics flowing and they look like Flames anyway don't [Music] they all of it it's gone up and smoke and I think that's actually quite symbolic about the gishes themselves it's a culture that kind of did Gone doesn't I mean it exists today but it's very different it's difficult to say if there was jealousy within gisha communities because they were by Nature very private it's a very private World from just a human point of view I imagine there must have been because there's rivalries and jealousy within any community and the stakes are incredibly High here and the gishes are all geared towards Beauty art and appealing to men basically so that that UPS the anti even more isn't it that you're all competing over this very tiny client base so that I would imagine that there would have been competition and people singling themselves out about being the greatest gisha of all time the aspirations to be better and better and better it must have been in order to be trained as a gisha that would take years we're not talking about like a quick course on dinner eth like the whole thing you would be trained You' need to be educated you'd need to be an artist you need to be a dancer you would need to be good at conversations and and and table manners and doing you everything right to be like the perfect accompaniment this is a world where men are in the outside men make the business deals men Run the World wives stay at home wives were said to have three loyalties in their life one was to their father one was to their husband and then it was to the sons that they would bear that was your deal if you were a wife gaiers and sex workers operated outside the home and they had this very kind of complex relationship because they were women they were beautiful but they had a lot more agency than wives but it was also deeply restricted it was because they have to look a certain way act a certain way walk a certain way have the kimono done up in a certain way have the makeup talk in a certain way it's very restrictive we come to these things with a lot of stigma and a lot of judgment and I'm not saying that these things weren't subject to stigma and judgment but it's a different world to anything that we can possibly imagine and if as a woman your lot in life is to obey your father obey your husband then have children and stay at home maybe the life of Aisha does seem quite liberating remains of the day I happened to be uh walking past the kitchen yesterday morning and I heard you calling to someone named William may I ask who it was you were addressing by that name why Mr Stevens I should think I was addressing your father oh there are no other Williams in this house I take it true may I ask you in future Miss Kenton to address my father as Mr Stevens in other houses I was accustomed to address the unders servants by their Christian names H Miss ganton if you you would stop to think for a moment you would realize that how inappropriate it is for one such as yourself to address as William stopped to think for a moment look at that this there's a lot of Willy waving going on in this scene this is about him exerting power over this woman and you know why cuz he fancies her this is like like when the equivalent of boy pulling your hair in the playground people going oh they did it CU he like it Miss Kon oh well Anthony Hopkins character Mr Stevens The Butler he is the head Butler so he was the head of that household and Miss Kenton Emma Thompson's character is she's the head housekeeper these two are like the heads of the servant household the head housekeeper is in charge of all the women and the head Butler is in charge of all the men and on by virtue of the fact that he's a man the butler outranks the head housekeeper it's all very delicate and what makes it even more confusing is that he is at the head of a class of people that is actually underneath another class of people that they are serving it's really complicated I thought you'd like to know because I remember you were as distressed as I was about it as you were as I recall you thought it was only right and proper that they should be sent packing it's a beautiful shot isn't it all that Lush Greenery and him just a black column in the middle of it and that is most unfair of course I was upset very much so I don't like to see that sort of thing happening in the pass well I wish you told me so at the time it would have helped me a great deal if I'd known you felt the same way as I did why why Mr Stevens why do you always have to hide what you feel Lizzie the maid Cersei from Game of Thrones before she was the queen you finished the laender bags yes M good it's like a butler should be completely devoid of any human emotion it all needs to be repressed in the service of your master but this scene is really important because this is a little a little crack in that facade and she clocks it yes I take my hat off you miss get that girl has come along very well she right about it it's wrong there's a scene earlier where he doesn't want to hire Lizzy the maid and and he doesn't really explain why I just don't want to that tells an interesting story in itself wouldn't you say so Mrs stens she's worked out that he doesn't want to hire pretty girls because he thinks there might be a distraction but he hired her which is not sure what that says you don't like to have pretty girls on the staff I've noticed might it be that our Mr Stevens fears distraction she's having fun with him and she's sort of teasing him because there's something very human about that and he never Reveals His emotion but there's also something quite troubling about it that what he can't control himself around around young women you know what I'm doing Miss Kenton I'm placing my thoughts elsewhere while you chatter away then why is that guilty smile still on your face but it's still it's a very I think it's a very sweet scene actually because she's she's teasing him and she's making him smile she's making him blush a man that never conveys anything he refers to himself as a gentleman's gentleman at several points that was quite a common phrase for a butler is you're not a gentleman but you are a gentleman's gentleman you're almost a gentleman and that the whole thing is about identity and about what is your identity if you're if you're a servant if you are so subsumed consumed in this world of serving someone else all of his needs get repressed the only thing that he can express himself within is just the enforcement of pedantic rules such as uh I think that you should call my father Mr Steven senior because that's and it's just just tell her your fancier for God's sake ask her out for a beer but they can't the thing that it gets right when you're looking at the running of a household in particular domestic stuff is the level of of rules and etiquette and what you were allowed to call people and what you weren't allowed to call people it was very very rigid and we are dealing with I think the scene there was 1930s in the lead up to the second world war so there's been there have been rights women we've got the vote by by this time but we still have quite a long way to go but the character of Miss kenton's really interesting anyway because she is a career woman she's out earning her own money but then you also see other characters later in the film when they fall in love they want to get married they do quit their job the women do quit their job and it's quite a sad thing because they then have to give up their career so it's not there's definitely a long way to go you can have a job until you get married and then no more job for you that that was just what it was like at the time but you can also see this quite patronizing infantilizing attitude from Anthony Hopkins character there he talks down to her he talks to her very much like she's a child when he's like I think that you could just stop and think for a minute and then he says you know that she was she always getting things wrong and then he kind of laughs as if oh she's so silly like a child's had a tantrum when she leaves so he's really conceited Marie antoanet Dearest antoinet I'm pleased to tell you how wonderful your brothers and sisters are doing in their marriages history has not been kind to this woman but I've got such a soft spot for her yes she bathed in strawberries and diamonds while people were starving but the girl new husband and Ferdinand is Enchanted with beatric having made her his wife at once all she's not happy cuz this is her mother Marie Teresa writing to her to let her know that her sister is going to have a baby which should normally be quite happy news shouldn't it but it's not good news for Maran twet why because she has been married to Louie for years and they've not had any babies worse than that they've not actually had sex yet the marriage wasn't consummated for seven years remember nothing is certain about your place there until an air is produced this is taken from a letter that Maran tet's mother really did write to her this is pretty much word for [Music] word it's it's worse she not just that she's not getting laid for seven years which is bad anyway but she is the queen and she's married to the king of France if that marriage isn't consummated it's not [Music] legal like this this is like fertility issues suck for everyone but there is a a dynasty and National interest on this so the entire court the entire country is is Whispering about this why are there no babies why are there no babies what's happening contest [Music] Prov so then when a sister who was married after you gives birth it's a healthy baby boy my God that's just this huge reminder you haven't had any babies you haven't had any babies you haven't had any babies what you us an she's God God knows what she must have been thinking like if you're the queen how' you get the king to have sex with you how do you do that but then also it's the queen who's going to tell the queen that she's crap at getting the king to have sex with her it's like is this eut nightmare that these people are dealing with there is so much speculation about these two Maria twinette and poor old Louie why couldn't they get it together and we do actually have quite a lot of literature around them um documents because because it's the king and queen people are very interested in that they don't have a private life they don't have a private life their private life is public life everyone's interested in their sex life so we do have documents from the time but it's all quite veiled in the way it's describing things we know that there was something quote unquote wrong with Louie we don't know what that is it was he at one point they wanted him to have a small operation to correct it and then of course you got it could be something as ridiculously simple as they didn't actually know how to do it my ma goes the cook you know everyone cont and I looks very out of sorts I think her husband has been caught this is clever the way that they do this they have all the way through the film they have these Whispers in the background you just catch bits of things people are saying like like she's oh she should go back to her home country oh I've heard she hasn't had a baby just like in the background all the time and it's so clever because that's what court life in particular in Versa was famous for I think and here it is Madame de Barry the Mistress of Louis the 15th who's there top by the way he didn't have any of the troubles his grandson would have oh really this is sh they they're saying she came from the gutter she didn't quite come from the gutter but she certainly didn't come from royalty and they didn't like it Mar Anto famously hated her is she that lady is here to give pleasure to the king oh Royal mistress was an official court position but it's a precarious one it's dangerous because it is it's a dependent only on as much as the King still fancies you I guess it's really easy to fall out of favor she staring at awful she should not be sitting at this table par look at them all all staring you'd have to you have like like cast iron skin to get by in this I think like you couldn't let these people get to you all Royal courts ran on gossip that's if you especially if you're a woman because you have very limited power with what you can actually do you can't you can't really affect laws you can't very limited effect on money but the one thing you can do is you can get influenced and you get influenced by chatting and by by talking and gossip is such an important currency we all love a good gossip it's all very easy to look at the people now and go oh my God they're so we are still we are still we still love a good oh my God I can't believe this person did that we love that but back then they had very beautiful lives very beautiful gilded frocks and things like that but quite boring but we can't let England win we must show our strength the this is the war of independence when everyone started scrapping Over America and they were not the court of aai was not frugal people starving and they didn't cut down on their spending see let them eat cake that's such nonsense I would never say that so she never actually said let the meat cake I mean as far as we know we might find a de a letter by Mar antoinet that no one's known about before that says let the meat cake but as far as we know she has never actually said that that is a phase pH that was traced to the writings of Jean jaac Russo I think even before the Revolution had happened I think but she certainly never said it but it is I can understand why people thought that she would say that because it is it encapsulates perfectly the attitude of the time which was that the story goes that she was told that people were starving they didn't have enough bread and that what she said was well can't they have cake don't they ever get tired of these ridiculous stories oh and they say you gave Thomas Jefferson a special t of your Gardens they did say all kinds of things the Revolutionary press some of them still survive you can see them in museums today pornographic prints of Maria antoinet having sex with everybody even from the GetGo she was an Austrian coming into the the French Court the French World and that immediately made her a bit suspicious and it immediately made her the subject of just comments and you have some of them in the film one of the ladies in Waiting says oh I hope you like strudel that just kind of just nasty stuff so she was suspicious because of that then when she's not having babies that isn't good people are talking about that all the time and it's often been framed that Mar antoinet channeled sexual frustration and general disappointment and depression in a marriage into a love of gambling and fashion and art and she's not here to say whether that's the case but it does look like that's what happened because she my god did that woman spend money I mean that was her downfall in the end really wasn't it it was just this so lavish this this lifestyle while people were literally starving on the street so that made her a target for the Common Man and it invites anger today and it invited anger and a guillotine in the 18th century hope you enjoyed me reviewing those movies please don't forget to like And subscribe and if you want to see any more just click one of the videos around me

Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, expert review, movie review, women in film, women history films, period history films, little women review, little women movie, little women movie reaction, little women movie scenes, little women movie review, marie antoinette, marie antoinette scene, marie antoinette kirsten dunst, let them eat cake scene, memoirs of a geisha, historian reviews, historic women film, remains of the day, marie antoinette movie review, movie reaction

Id: pOBuoxsRSDo

Length: 29min 53sec (1793 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2023