One can learn much about late twentieth century misogyny
in Potter’s screenplay. Throughout the text, this view is reinforced. How women
are depicted can explain much of the violence meted out to them. This is
related to how boys and girls are socialized within our culture, especially
when men are brought up to be ‘tough’. This leads to a certain kind of
discourse - the ‘tough guy’ novvel - a discourse which is
denied to women. Another factor to be considered is the use of the hospital
location, and to what extent Potter’s depiction of nurses is based on television
stereotypes. Finally, the misogynism of the main character, Philip Marlow is
examined.
One of the most disturbing incidents in the series occurs in episode
three. George Adams is describing how he was able to have sex with young women
in Hamburg for just a few cigarettes. Marlow at this point, appears not to be a
misogynist as he taunts George whilst he has a cardiac arrest: ’All those
helpless little blonde girls with frightened eyes. Are they coming up out of
the rubble? Are they pointing at you, George?’ (1). So great is Marlow’s anger
at this old man that he allows him to die, something which is terrible to
watch. Obviously, this anger must be understood if one is to understand Marlow.
Susan Brownmiller throws some light on the reason in her discussion of rape in
the Second World War. She relates how one woman was harassed by a Japanese
soldier who threw her a pack of cigarettes before molesting her (2). It’s
possible that George did exactly the same. However, as Brownmiller writes, it
may not
2
have come down to an attack on enemy women, for the women
may have given themselves up in exchange for food: after the Italian defeat,
’Italian women would perform any service for a can of food’ (3). Still, this
can be said to be hardly an improvement. The Allied forces could have given
these women aid without exploiting them.
Marlow’s diatribe leads us on to our next topic: ’And what would you do
with a pretty young nurse, Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie? Would you call her
an angel, my old mate? Think of her as a saint, eh?’ (4). It has to be said
that Potter presents us with the very much the television ideal of the hospital
ward, especially in regard to nurses. As Jane Salvage writes, ’Angels,
battle-axes and sex symbols are the three groups into which most of the images
fall’ (5). Nurse Mills does not easily fall into either the angel or sex-symbol
stereotype. She, unlike an angel, does tend to get annoyed with the patients,
especially Mr. Hall, or when Marlow talks about how attractive she is (6). Even
though she is ‘watched by all the eyes that are open’ (7), she does not behave
as a ‘feather brained’ (8) sex symbol would by flirting with the houseman.
Potter conveys her as being far more than an object. Nurse White is not treated
as favourably. She’s portrayed as one of those ‘“old maids”’ who, failing to
marry, and have children as women “should”, turn sour and vent their
frustrations in petty tyranny’ (9). Perhaps Potter here is portraying the
hospital as he would expect his viewers to see it. Throughout the screenplay,
he makes extensive use of genre, and the television hospital drama is one of
these. The way he depicts the hospital, and those within it, are rather typical
of the concerns of male television writers. No doubt Preethi Manuel would find
much to criticize about his portrayal of the black night nurse
(10).
The most extensive use of genre in The Singing Detective is the film
noir or the Chandleresque ‘tough guy’ novel.
3
According to Ken Worpole, Potter has created the right
setting for his pastiche: ’It was immediately after the Second World War that
American writing became firmly established in Britain’ (11). Not just any
American writing, but the novels of Hammett, Hemingway, and Chandler. In terms
of misogyny, ‘From the beginning this new development in narrative style was
always described in terms associated with masculinity’ (12). As Worpole goes on
to write, this genre was very popular with working class men, for it gave them
a vocabulary with which they could describe and refer to their own experience.
However, these novels dealt with misogyny and could encourage the hatred of
women, for they were totally exclusive of women. As Worpole asks, ‘Can a
masculine style of writing be developed which is not gender-specific and
oppressive?’ (13). Especially when one considers the point that ‘masculinity’
(14), not misogyny, is the ‘common denominator’ of sexual killing. These
tensions are clearly revealed in The Singing Detective. When a woman tries to
use the vernacular, she sounds stupid: ’Amanda’s speech is full of wrong notes,
pseudo-American with an undertow of cockney and occasional diversions into
Mayfairidiot-upper-class’ (15). Yet when the Singing Detective speaks, he has
the ability to make the upper class Binney look ignorant: ’Jesus. The standard
of education today. You’ll be telling me next you don’t know Hoagy’s surname’
(16).
‘They say this sort of stuff doesn’t corrupt,’ says a policeman
discussing the literary merits of Marlow’s novel (17). He links it with
Reginald’s criminal desire to steal video recorders. However, there is a much
more tenable link with such books and misogyny ‘The popularity of quite
ordinary books... that depict violence to women and glorifies the man who
perpetrates the violence is so entrenched in our culture’ (18). There are
certainly many images of male violence in The Singing Detective. Several
4
women’s bodies are shown as they are pulled out of the
Thames. The cover of Marlow’s novel reveals a semi-naked woman (clad only in lingerie
and high heels), underneath a lamp post. There could be no more graphic
depiction of violence against women. As the Women’s Monitoring Network reports,
‘The male-controlled media industry uses women’s bodies or parts of them for
titillation and to sell products and publications’ (19). Women, are portrayed
as sex objects throughout the screenplay, especially the nude portrait of
Nicola. Philip's mother strives to become a female subject, to control
her own sex life, but society refuses to allow her to get away with it (or so
she thinks). No harm comes to Raymond Binney as a result of his infidelity, as
Smart writes: ’in order to prove oneself a “man” at all it is seen as necessary
to engage in pre- and extra- marital infidelity’ (20).
Philip Marlow at the age of ten does not
understand this though. All he sees is that ‘the love-making seems akin to
violence, or physical attack’ (21). It is this sexual trauma that later leads
to his misogyny. However, he already comes from a family background that would
suggest this path. Susan Forward and Torres come up with several models
for the creation of a misogynist. One is having a passive father combined with
a dominating mother. Smart writes that upon marriage, a woman must give up her
sexual autonomy and be faithful to one man, her husband: ’in return the husband
is bound to support his wife financially’ (22). It is Mrs. Marlow herself who
reveals that her husband has not kept his side of the bargain (23). Female
sexuality is based on bargains throughout, only it is more explicit with the
prostitutes.
When Marlow is with a prostitute, he clearly feels inadequate. Smart
provides an answer to Marlow’s query about
5
why prostitutes do what they do. However, she also
provides a reason for why Marlow goes with a prostitute: ’the male client has a
need to debase the woman or mother-figure also and therefore the prostitute
serves this purpose’ (24). Like many misogynists, Marlow unconsciously hates
his mother and projects that hatred onto Nicola. Yet he also hates himself,
signalled by his desire to spit at the reflection of his own face while making
love with Nicola. He did love his mother. Her death made him promise that he
would never trust anyone again, or else they would hurt him (25). The adult
Marlow only belatedly realizes that by keeping this childhood promise, he is
only hurting himself and others around him. Thus he symbolically destroys the
weapons which he using to attack women with. The first is his voice - the
fictional Mark Finney personifies the nasty misogynist in Marlow - so he
appropriately gets a knife in his throat. The Detective shoots the treacherous
disease, which Nicola has already called a ‘weapon’ (26). So Marlow does not
take on a masculinity like the misogynistic Detective, just as he does not
become the other agents of his imagination, Mark and Nicola. No, Marlow
discards his misogyny by recognising that he has needs, and so has Nicola
- that it is all right to be dependentt. And they defamiliarise the
conventional ending of the Chandler novel by walking off into the sunset
together.
6
Footnotes
(1) Dennis Potter, The Singing Detective, (London,
1986), p.109.
(2) Susan Brownmiller, Against our Will, (Reading, 1986),p.62.
(3) Brownmiller, Against our Will, p.75.
(4) Potter, Singing Detective, p.109.
(5) Jane Salvage, ‘We’re no angels - images of nurses’ in Kath Davies
(ed.), Writings on Women and the Media, (London, 1987), p.198.
(6) Potter, Singing Detective, p.219.
(7) Potter, Singing Detective, p.16.
(8) Salvage, ‘We’re no angels’, p.199.
(9) Salvage, ‘We’re no angels’, p.199.
(10) Preethi Manuel, ‘Black Women in British Television Drama’ in Kath
Davies (ed.), Writings on Women and the Media (London, 1987), pp.42—44.
(11) Ken Worpole, Dockers and Detectives, (Norfolk, 1983), p.35.
(12) Worpole, Dockers and Detectives, p.39.
(13) Worpole, Dockers and Detectives, p.47.
(14) Dr. Susan Forward and Joan Torres, Men who Hate Women and the Women
who love them (New York, 1987), p.107.
(15) Potter, Singing Detective, p.19.
(16) Potter, Singing Detective, p.101.
(17) Potter, Singing Detective, p.239.
(18) Brownmiller, Against our Will, p. 293.
(19) Women’s Monitoring Network Report no. 1, ‘Women as sex objects’ in
Kath Davies (ed.), Writings on Women and the Media (London, 1987), p.72.
(20) Carol Smart, Women, Crime and Criminology (London, 1976), p.77.
(21) Potter, Singing Detective, p.113.
(22) Smart, Crime and Criminology, p.88.
(23) Potter, Singing Detective, p.69.
(24) Smart, Crime and Criminology, p. 82
(25) Potter, Singing Detective, p.232.
(26) Potter, Singing Detective, p.218.
7
Bibliography
Articles
Coward, Rosalind, ‘Dennis Potter and the question of the
television author’, Critical Quarterly, 29, no.4.
Books
Potter, Dennis, The Singing Detective, London, 1986.
Brownmiller, Susan, Against our Will, Reading, 1986.
Cameron, Deborah and Frazer, Elizabeth, The Lust to Kill,
Oxford, 1987.
Davies, Kath (ed.), Writings on Women and the Media,
London, 1987.
Forward, Dr. Susan and Torres, Joan, Men who Hate Women,
New York, 1987.
Russell, Diana E.H., Sexual Exploitation, California,
1984.
Smart, Carol, Women, Crime and Criminology, London, 1976.
Worpole, Ken, Dockers and Detectives, Norfolk, 1983.
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