Morals, Marriage, and Mrs. Robinson: Women’s Sexuality in 1960s and 1970s Popular Film Before and After Roe v. Wade
Open AccessThe 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade marked the growing changes in American attitudes towards women’s sexuality. The impact of Roe has been well-documented, but these analyses have historically been missing how cultural production was impacted by this major decision. In order to bridge this gap, I conduct a feminist media analysis of four Hollywood feature films between the years 1967 and 1978, with two produced before and two produced after the Roe decision. Through analyzing the depiction of women’s sexuality across The Graduate (1967), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Annie Hall (1977), and An Unmarried Woman (1978), I find that women’s sexual desires in 1960s films prior to Roe v. Wade are depicted as more confined within heteronormative, patriarchal institutions (i.e marriage), and there are moralistic undertones which focus on women’s sexual actions as either sexually pure or sexually deviant, unlike post-Roe films. Further, unique to 1970s, post-Roe films is the ability for women to separate the physicality of sex from emotional aspects. However, the stigmatization and shaming for the expression of women’s sexual desires, coupled with their low sex drive comparatively to men, remained the same before and after Roe. Overall, the results prove a mostly progressive shift in the display of women’s sexuality in cultural mediums over the course of Roe's impact, and underscore a necessity for a larger discussion on the tie between public policy and cultural production.
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Wasserman_gwu_0075M_16415.pdf | 2023-11-14 | Open Access |
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