The Talkies/Hoffman Bouffant
Bayles, Martha
HOFFMAN BOUFFANT by Martha Bayles It's hard to identify the author of Tootsie, since the script was rewritten twenty times by nine screenwriters and passed through the hands of three...
...I would agree, and flag them again as possible humor...
...It's amusing, although we are accustomed to seeing ambitious men brought down by passion...
...And the filmmakers seem to agree, including Hoffman, who said recently that being a woman made the world "a different experience in ways you would never imagine...
...The point is that feminism as opportunism sits perfectly consistently with Michael Dorset's character, and as long as his newfound convictions aren't tested, we are free to laugh when his creation Dorothy spouts a lot of rhetoric in order to drive up the ratings and disport herself on the cover of News week...
...Dorothy is Southern, middle-aged, cheerful, efficient, and virginal in a way that suggests innocence, not frustration...
...I don't mind it when people stick up for themselves, but this is such a bogus issue...
...More amusing, and interesting, is what occurs when Julie's widowed father falls for Dorothy and proposes marriage...
...She is a recognizable female type, but definitely not the one men usually imitate when they imitate women...
...Sexual disguise has always been a staple of the theatre, although in its lower forms it tends to become highly conventionalized^ even ritualized...
...It has shown itself quite incapable of supplying these things when they're missing to start with...
...We laugh at that, but also at seeing careerism on the list of excuses women may now use to deceive themselves and others...
...Seeing him play Michael Dorset, the unemployed New York actor whose own agent turns against him because he's too fussy about things like TV commercials, I wondered what all the hype was about...
...According to the critics, the point of Tootsie is that Michael the actor experiences an abrupt rise in consciousness after suffering the indignities of being a woman in the workplace...
...Those who tried to turn this movie into a feminist parable had their work cut out for them, because, after all, it's the story of a talented man who can only get ahead by pretending to be a woman...
...The trouble is, no sooner has Hoffman created Dorothy than the film sets about reducing her to another kind of ritualized cliche...
...Of course she's a feminist...
...Fortunately, they did not completely succeed...
...In her hemming and hawing, Dorothy hints that marriage would interfere with her independent life-style and successful career...
...Off camera she goes into her assertiveness-training routine—and the female producer pulls strings on her behalf...
...It's a loose, mercurial process which cannot be capped or channeled—although that is what some of the feminist true believers who worked on Tootsie have clearly attempted to do...
...Hoffman's words suggest an unexpectedness to the process which is hardly consistent with such a deliberate, cut-and-dried message...
...Julie is appealing but weak: she doesn't like the man, yet enjoys being taken out for fancy dinners...
...The plot thickens when Michael becomes smitten with Dorothy's pretty co-star (played by Jessica Lange...
...To those who see this as a valuable lesson, I suggest that they take another look...
...Yet I wonder...
...Most important of all is the fact that whenever Dorothy behaves like a feminist, she advances her own fortunes...
...Hoffman's achievement is, quite simply, to come up with something new: a female impersonation which contains neither buffoonery—hairy legs in petticoats—nor the bitchily~ coy, seductively maternal aggressiveness of the typical drag queen...
...Then he becomes literally trapped in his own priorities, gazing longingly at Julie through his mascara and designer eyeglasses...
...It's really a pretty good joke.ly a pretty good joke...
...By casting doubt on some basic fact of social life, such as who is who, the comic situation renders fluid many things which are usually fixed, such as-rules, conventions, and social pieties...
...In the soap opera she is cast as an uptight, shrewish hospital administrator—a stereotype she dislikes—so she improvises a role closer to her own personality: the sort of woman we call a "maiden lady" because "old maid" is too harsh...
...Yet Hollywood persists in making movies in which such qualities are equated with the ability to mouth trite, predictable speeches—a rule to which poor Dorothy is no exception...
...When are men going to denounce all those truck-stop waitresses who call them "Sugarpie...
...HOFFMAN BOUFFANT by Martha Bayles It's hard to identify the author of Tootsie, since the script was rewritten twenty times by nine screenwriters and passed through the hands of three directors—thelast of whom, Sydney Pollack, spent months haggling over details with the star, Dustin Hoffman...
...In this role, Hoffman seems to do little more than play himself...
...Yet I changed my mind when, in order to get a part in a soap opera, Michael transforms himself into Dorothy Michaels, a prim but self-possessed actress who subsequently ad-libs her way to the top of the daytime-drama charts...
...There is also the added twist that an egotistical fellow like Michael would enjoy showing the ladies how it's done...
...Needless to say, the device is not original...
...As Dorothy, Michael gets close enough to Julie to witness her vacillation toward the director, who trifles with her but does not treat her well...
...These tendencies in Tootsie have been flagged by vigilant critics as possible antifeminism...
...For as the true believers keep telling us, there is no salvation outside the church...
...First, there is Julie...
...Similarly refreshing is the way Tootsie undermines the figure of the self-sufficient career woman...
...It's a cover, of course—for another entanglement which she's hardly in a position to explain...
...and as a woman, he can only get ahead by pretending to be a feminist...
...On camera in the soap opera, she defies the male doctors— and the fan mail pours in...
...The film makes her into a feminist political fantasy: a straitlaced, conservative-looking person with a bouffant hairdo who opens her mouth and, instead of opposing the ERA, denounces the director of the soap opera for calling her "Tootsie...
...Well, a woman like Dorothy may or may not agree with feminism, but in.any event, feminism is not the source of her strength, pride, or intelligence...
...How could she not be a feminist...
...Before meeting Julie, Michael is himself a careerist, placing acting before friendship and love...
...Therefore, say the believers, she must be a feminist...
...Once it starts flowing, a good comedy tends to touch upon everything, working us into a state where we're willing to laugh at even our most cherished beliefs...
...At any rate, I saw the film having heard all about Hoffman's perfectionism and hard work (which is almost as tedious as hearing about Meryl'Streep's...
...It's refreshing to see that Hollywood can still make some small acknowledgement of the existence of female foibles...
...Martha Bayles is film critic for The American Spectator...
...The fact is, Tootsie sets up a classic comic situation of disguise and deception, in which everybody is either fooling or being fooled...
...Eventually she tells Dorothy that she wishes men would just say what they want, and quit all the dilly-dallying about romance...
...Dorothy is a lady who makes up her own mind, takes no guff, and displays talent in her chosen endeavor...
...Naturally, Julie is so insulted she tosses her drink in his face...
...And Hoffman himself was involved from the early stages...
...A few days later, Michael (as himself) is introduced to Julie at a party, and tries to live up to that wish...
Vol. 16 • March 1983 • No. 3
