"Instead of a brain a cash register, instead of a heart a bottom line": Gender, Progress, and Capitalism in "Desk Set" and "You've Got Mail"

"The American Will inhabits the sky-scraper; the American Intellect inhabits the colonial mansion. The one is the sphere of the American man; the other, at least predominantly, of the American woman. The one is all aggressive enterprise; the other is all genteel tradition." 

- George Santayana, The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911)

After watching the film Desk Set (1957), starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, I expected to emerge a little more clever, a little classier, and even a little nostalgic. The film is "a bright and witty vehicle for its stars," as described by Dave Kehr - lighthearted entertainment, with the eloquent twist that Hepburn and Tracy so skillfully contribute. 

But instead I found myself distressed by the gender stereotypes reinforced within the film  - clearly, as it is a product of the 50s, this is not altogether a surprise. But if any actress from that era might stand as a feminist icon, it seems that Ms. Hepburn would be a choice candidate. The characters she portrays are typically career women - not just secretaries, but women whose intellect and work ethic has brought them to positions of some authority (Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib) or more frequently, women whose "headstrong" natures bring them into conflict with the contemporary status quo (Jo March; Mary Queen of Scots; a bevy of rebellious heiresses...). Although her intellect and independence is generally presented as atypical, she still acts as a more generous gauge of female potential - one that allows (and advocates) for women to be audacious, well-read, and self-reliant.


Few would fault Desk Set for the gender norms it perpetuates - it is very much a film of its era, the 1950s being a time when gender roles were more divided and codified than ever before. Yet, forty years after its debut, the same tropes were being marketed to women the world over through the seemingly infallible Nora Ephron (apparently romanticizing intelligence is a family affair - Nora's father Henry wrote the screenplay for Desk Set). Her films, which I will presume to crudely lump together, are thematically based on the idea that even in the world of neurotic, over-educated, liberal elites, there is still a place for romance. In other words, smart women, sassy women, which we all would like to believe we are, can and will find love - not even in spite of, but because of those traits. Of course, there's a catch.

So cute, so sassy, so... utterly powerless.

You've Got Mail is the Ephron movie that seems to most closely align with the problems that exist within Desk Set. Both films star a woman who is seemingly autonomous at the start - an expert in her chosen area (which of course involves books... already archaic in the 1950s), dissatisfied in romance but fulfilled by her job. These women, while seemingly ahead of their time in terms of both their workplace authority and independence, actually represent some very archaic values. Kathleen (of You've Got Mail) owns a children's bookstore, which she inherited from her mother - the gendered nature of these facts is difficult to ignore. She literally stands for family values - for nurturing and for carrying on a legacy. It is even suggested throughout the film that it is more important that she save the store because of its connection to her mother than because it is her livelihood.


Bunny (a name seemingly discordant with Hepburn's character) presides over a library (a typically female role) staffed entirely by women. The central conflict of the movie is when this idyllic area of isolation from the big bad business world (populated entirely by men) is suddenly upended by questions of efficiency and profitability (what would women possibly know about that?). This library stands as a bastion of good old fashioned American values - they answer questions about baseball and Santa's reindeer, recite The Song of Hiawatha and A Visit From Saint Nicholas and generally promote "the maintenance of the values implicit" in the American tradition through their preservation of the "American collective memory" (Gaul 1). 


The common thread is one of tradition, of feminine values, of sentimentality that overrides rationality. What these women value is the qualitative over the quantitative - that side of the American dream that is seemingly contradictory to the material success that is its most emblematic trait. And yet, these are our feminine role models. They are adorable, smart and yet hopelessly archaic. Their attractiveness is partially a result of the fact that they are separate from the ruthlessness of capitalism. In the face of its influence, their witty retorts seem feeble - but in a way that is attractive. "Meg Ryan is never so cute as when she's sassing the capitalist who loves her," just as Hepburn's intellect makes her attractive to Tracy - yet he ends up being right (Alleva). The realm for these women to be intelligent and autonomous is limited to that which makes them more attractive to men, or serves to protect American tradition.


The women who try to succeed in the male, progressive, capitalist realm are presented as devoid of all attractive feminine qualities. Rather, they are just presented as hysterical - essentially irrational in an unattractive, rather than attractive light. Parker Posey in Mail and Neva Patterson in Desk are both portrayed as utterly unappealing and completely desexualized. In these films, "'token women' in male dominated professions are viewed with suspicion not only by other women but also by the men with whom they compete for jobs" (Wyer). Their ambition is portrayed as craziness, which is how women who exist outside of what is socially accepted are generally depicted. Stupidity and superficiality are much less criminal in these films (see the other staff of the reference library) than desire to succeed in masculine and thus capitalist terms.


Capitalism is male, and thus success is male. That is the moral of these films, so perfectly described in the above quote from always prescient George Santayana. Kathleen loses her small business to the corporate machinations of the man she loves, and eventually realizes that "she is stronger bonded to him than she ever was as an independent proprietor" (Christensen 200).  Bunny is forced to coexist with the machine that will eventually replace her - and what is worse is both characters acquiesce to the desires of the men in their lives. Their sense of tradition and sentimentality (inherently female qualities, as they preserve the home, the family - all arational concepts) must be contained in little boxes, and assimilated into the larger plan for progress, created by men. Men are executives, scientists, and most of all, bastions of progress - a result of a Hegelian rationality that women can never understand.


In both films, the fast-paced dialogue and intellectual references between the leading couples disguise the inevitable reinforcement of gender hierarchy at the conclusion - the man was right all along, the woman loves him for it, and as a result will be assimilated into his progressive and efficiency-minded worldview.