You have but to look at "Pillow Talk" to see why youth rebelled against the plastic world the 1950s offered us. The origins of feminism's fight for freedom can clearly be seen in the almost-armored burden of Doris Day's seeming thousands of ensembles, accessories included, to the hilt. Even when she's alone, her slip and her dressing-gown match, and she wears jewelry with her housecoat. And her hair seems a blond helmet; it and her apparently tattooed-on make-up are as firm and fresh when she leaves her virginal bed each morning as they are when she crawls into it at night. How could a woman have an instant left to think after going through the process of getting rigged up like that (she seems to change outfits ten times a day, as if she were her own Barbie doll). Just inhaling all of that hairspray alone must have addled her reason. However, all this adornment is oddly unrelated to the mating process. Male advances on the presumably attractive object Doris has made of herself are greeted as insulting offenses. Only bad or stupid women fall for Rock Hudson's million-megawatt charm. Doris may be a bit flustered when first hit by Rock's Cinemascope shoulders and boomerang-shaped grin, but her armor protects her. Despite split-screen shots which make them appear to be in bed or bath together, the zippers on Doris' outfits remain firmly locked. I watched several intelligent women go mad from trying to live up to Doris' example, their husbands descend into sullen recluses, and their offspring wind up on prescription drugs from childhood. Something had to give.
Coy jokes about castration ("We may be forced to disconnect him."), sight gags about alcoholism, and the treatment of male gayness as a slightly shocking misfortune (a misfortune for the women attracted to them, of course; gay men were considered far too silly and funny to be the objects of any human concern) give a pretty clear image of the rewards and releases that the Eisenhower era offered us. The roots of Woodstock, the Pentagon march, "Hair," and "The Rocky Horror Show" are all there in the incredibly shallow widescreen world of "Pillow Talk."
Coy jokes about castration ("We may be forced to disconnect him."), sight gags about alcoholism, and the treatment of male gayness as a slightly shocking misfortune (a misfortune for the women attracted to them, of course; gay men were considered far too silly and funny to be the objects of any human concern) give a pretty clear image of the rewards and releases that the Eisenhower era offered us. The roots of Woodstock, the Pentagon march, "Hair," and "The Rocky Horror Show" are all there in the incredibly shallow widescreen world of "Pillow Talk."