An irregular fellow: the misogynist in silent comedy

ABSTRACT

This article traces the emergence of the misogynist as a character type in American feature comedies of the 1910s. Though scholars note how comedy shorts in this period often derived humor at the expense of women’s fight for social change, some feature comedies appealed to female audiences by mocking the comical misogynist. Correlating with public debates around the New Woman, the misogynist appeared in stories and plays by the turn of the twentieth century and carried over into silent film. Typically, the comic narratives followed the conversion of the misogynist by an attractive female protagonist. While the light nature of the films rarely delved into the misogynist’s views in much depth, the films highlighted evolving gender roles during the Progressive era, including fears about the misogynist’s potential queerness as well as social anxieties about the New Woman. By openly discussing the male lead’s irrational hatred of ‘all women,’ the films addressed the social problem of misogyny more tacitly than romantic comedies in later decades.

KEYWORDS:

• Silent cinema
• comedy
• female audiences
• gender
• misogynist

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. One example would be grizzled, old woman hater Uncle Isaiah in Olive Thomas’ Broadway Arizona (Triangle, 1917). Apart from the first ten minutes missing, the rest survives at George Eastman House.

2. These numbers stem from the comedy and comedy drama listings in AFI’s feature catalog cross-checked with analysis of the trade press between 1913–1920. See American Film Institute. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/Showcase.

3. All six reels of Phil-for-Short (World, 1919) survive at Library of Congress.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan Boyd

Megan Boyd is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Lawrence University. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current book project, “Legitimizing Laughter: Class, Gender and the Rise of Feature Comedy,” argues that female audiences profoundly shaped the development of feature-length comedy in the American Film Industry. An article previewing the strong influence that female audiences had upon silent comedy is forthcoming in “Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.”