Pillow Talk and Far from Heaven
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The 1950's were a very complex period in American history. On the surface, those who lived through this decade recall that it was a great and wholesome period in American history, with a return to family values, economic prosperity, and high morale and patriotic sentiment among the people. Popular culture of the time represented these ideologies in different outlets, such as television, music, and especially through motion pictures. As we have come to learn, there was more to the decade of the 1950's than what appeared on the surface. There was intense racism, extreme homophobia, a strong fear of communism and any ideological belief that contradicted with the dominant ideology, and oppression of women. Pillow Talk (1959) and Far From Heaven (2002) are two movies that best exemplify the many discourses surrounding this time. Pillow Talk is a prime example of the fantasy world that existed during the time, and Far From Heaven depicts the real kinds of issues that Americans faced in the decade.
Pillow Talk, starring Doris Day (Jan) and Rock Hudson (Bret/Rex), is a lighthearted comedy about two people that share a party line, and eventually fall in love. On the surface, the movie appears to be a sweet love story with an ending where everyone wins in the end and lives happily every after. But below this sweet faade, this movie works to reinforce many of the dominant ideologies of the time, especially related to appropriate gender roles...