The purpose of this research is to provide a rhetorical critique of the motion picture The Women, based on the play of the same name by Clare Booth Luce, with reference to Burkean and feminist criticism. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical and cultural context for the film and the basis on which recourse to Burkean theory and, to a limited extent, feminist theory, seems most appropriate for explicating and evaluating it as a rhetorical artifact, indicate how these theories can be applied, identify appropriate units of analysis, and supply an analysis of the film with reference to the theories.
To declare that an old-fashioned Hollywood movie has historical or cultural importance or resonance worthy of serious rhetorical critique seems a hazardous exercise because of the increasingly blurred distinction between high art and pop culture, between bad art and art, between engaging entertainment worthy the name and what has been called "a tyranny of the least common denominator" (Lewis, 2004). On the other hand, in popular imagination Hollywood has always been associated with American popular culture, a programmatic supplier of mass-appeal product to masses around the world, and popular culture itself has long been subject to sociological and rhetorical examination. Further, the axiological components of a well-produced motion picture, whether a product of the Hollywood vulgarity machine or New Wave intellectual poseurism, become subject to scrutiny by the very fact of their projection onto the cultural stage, even if the scrutiny is grounded less in aesthetics than sociology or economics. There is also something to be said for durability, or the resonance, of a pop-culture artifact in the collective conscious or unconscious, and motion pictures as a tangible medium easily shared and distributed are uniquely able to claim durability.
In 1939, American popular culture received a bounty of motion pictures, both ...