Guys and Dolls was on TCM last night. I’m a freak for musicals, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s also one of the most sexist things ever written, and it’s all about the war between the sexes (hence the title). I’ve been thinking about this musical and its implications, on and off since I was twelve years old.
One of the themes of the musical is that women tame men. Men are wild and adventurous, and women are domestic. Women will steal men’s wildness, and this threatens men. The “wild men” in this story are outlaws; gamblers one step ahead of the cops. Women seek marriage; and marriage, being of society, will reinforce social bonds. Women want “wallpaper and bookends;” if their man strays:
Slowly introduce him to domestic life
And if he ever tries to stray from you
Have a headache
Have a pot roast
Have a baby
Have two!
This story is seven thousand years old.
It starts in Mesopatamia, with Enkidu. In one of the oldest pieces of writing yet discovered, we are told of Enkidu, the wild man of the forest. He is destructive to grazing and hunting grounds, so a hunter seeks out Gilgamesh for advise:
Gilgamesh spoke to him, to the hunter,
“Go, hunter, lead forth the harlot Shamhat,
And when he approaches the cattle at the watering place,
She must take off her clothes and reveal her attractions.
He will see her and go close to her.
Then his cattle, who have grown up in open country with him, will become
alien to him.”
This is exactly what men fear; in the myth, in the musical, and right now, today. Women will use “feminine wiles” to seduce men away from their manly ways. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable. Succumbing to the carnality of women will domestic, and thus emasculate men.
But civilization isn’t all bad:
When he was sated with her charms,
He set his face towards the open country of his cattle.
The gazelles saw Enkidu and scattered,
The cattle of open country kept away from his body.
For Enkidu had stripped; his body was too clean.
His legs, which used to keep pace with his cattle, were at a standstill.
Enkidu had been diminished, he could not run as before.
Yet he had acquired judgment, had become wiser.
He turned back, he sat at the harlot’s feet.
The harlot was looking at his expression,
And he listened attentively to what the harlot said.
The harlot spoke to him, to Enkidu,“You have become wise Enkidu, you have become like a god.
Why should you roam open country with wild beasts?”
Wise and like a god? Not bad recompense for giving up your roving ways, all in all.
Women are not, I think, inherently oppressed by this formulation. It’s far more complex than a blog entry can contain, of course. It shades off into gradations of sexuality, relationship, urbanity versus wilderness, and more. Amongst all this nuance, the broad strokes are that women represent civilization, which seduces, while men represent wildness, which both liberates and destroys.
In Guys and Dolls, we see how this looked in the 20th Century. In many ways, not a pretty picture. Women can’t use sex anymore, which has been imprisoned by the Puritanical culture represented by Sister Sarah Brown. They’re having headaches instead of ‘opening their legs and spreading wide their garments,’ as Shamhat did with Enkidu. Less fun.
Also, in the modern version, women don’t get to be wild. Of Enkidu we are told: “His whole body was shaggy with hair, he was furnished with tresses like a woman.” This suggest androgyny; both men and women can be wild. Which, y’know, cool.
In Guys and Dolls, there are no wild women, and no temple harlots of Shamhat’s power. There are sluts in the background; who have sexuality but no domesticating power. There are prudes who want to marry but don’t seduce. And there’s poor Adelaide, who thinks she can have it both ways (it’s pretty obvious she’s sleeping with Nathan) and ends up with neither (until the Happy Ending).
I have an on-going disagreement with that portion of feminists who think we can’t be harlots in a positive way, and an on-going admiration for Shamhat and her sisters.
