Gender Issues In Bill Wilder's Film Some Like It Hot

When musicians Joe and Jerry find themselves wanted by the Chicago mob, they need to get out of town quick. Luckily for them a band needs two more members for their gig down in Florida, the only problem is it’s an all women band. Disguised as Josephine and Daphne, they join the band for their trip. But plans change when Joe starts to fall for Sugar and an older gentlemen try to woo Daphne, and ‘the girls’ find themselves in hot water when the mob convention comes to the hotel. Bill Wilder’s 1959 comedy “Some Like it Hot” is regarded by many as one of his best films. The film is made in away for Wilder to relive some of the sub-genres of the past. One of these was “the ‘all-girl’ as they were called, … popular in vaudeville, theater, dance …show more content…
One of these gender issues touched on in the film is how each gender should behave. While in a screwball comedy the roles of gender do swap places for most of the film this film takes this to a whole new level. Over the course of the film nearly very man is controlled by a woman or lets the woman take the lead. Meanwhile the woman have much more power, Nellie and Sugar both have power over Joe. One can get him a job while the other uses her body and charm to get him. There is also Sweet Sue who seems to have control over Beinstock, and Osgood who is controlled by his mother. Most of these relationships as seem as the woman having more control than the men. Melissa Meade in her essay on the film talks about these relationships and describes Sweet Sue as “…forceful and commanding. insisting on hotter jazz from Joe and Jerry…and bossing the male manager around” (D’amoe 33). But these female character’s are far from prefect. Sugar for example is in fact very child like and at times can be seem as a victim because of this, as for Sweet Sue she suffers from ulcers and has no real control it seems over the girls. Meade also brings up the point that all of the female characters seem to be doing fine for themselves while the men struggle. Going farther into it even though these girls are doing find they still have the end game of getting marry. While gender play is clearly a big part of …show more content…
But Wilder did not let that stop him in fact sexuality is highly played with throughout the film. While the audience may believe that Joe, Jerry and Sugar are heterosexual Wilder is believed to be showing that there is more than one kind of love. María Jesús Martínez brings this up in her essay on the film and gender limits. While disclaiming that the film does in fact highlight a heterosexual relationship as normal it is not the only relationship in the film. There is arguable two homosexual relationships going on in the film, one between Daphne aka Jerry and Osgood and another between Josephine aka Joe and Sugar. Starting with the first, Jerry takes being a woman to the extreme internally. Which in today’s world may lead one to question his gender identity. Jerry seems to lose himself in Daphne “…there [are] moments in the which the dividing line between him as a man and his role as a woman will almost totally disappear” (Martínez 148). Jerry clearly starts to believe he is really Daphne and is set on marrying Osgood. Joe shuts him down of course and re-forces the hetero-normality by talking about laws and conventions. When it comes to Sugar throughout the film it could be argued that Sugar maybe questioning her sexuality, she has trouble with men and so her decides to join an all girl group. While even fully being realized like Daphne, it does set up the