Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies. London: Routledge, 1997.
ISBN 0-415-13957
226 pages. A $29.95.
Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1996.
ISBN 0-85170-574-X.
138 pages. US $49.95 (hb) US $19.95 (pb)
Uploaded 16 April 1999
Given the important role that costume plays in film, it is surprising that there has been little serious investigation into its contributions to cinema – for example, how exactly costume works, or what part it plays in audience pleasure and identification. Coffee-table books laden with photographs of the elaborate, glamorous outfits from Hollywood’s golden years – but with minimal text – seemed only to confirm the superficiality of costume. But in 1990, a ground-breaking collection, Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body, reflected new theorising of fashion and style in general. The contributors to Fabrications wrote on, for example, how costume defines femininity and glamour; costume and commodification; and the complicated “language” of costume.
The two books being reviewed here continue the work collected by Gaines and Herzog. Pam Cook and Stella Bruzzi both take costume seriously, and both attempt to unravel its meanings. Each takes a different approach, the contrast between their theoretical frameworks clearly indicating how rich and revealing this field is.
In her compact exploration, Cook looks outside the Hollywood mainstream, at costume dramas made by the Gainsborough studio during the 1940s. Included are such films as Madonna of the Seven Moons (Britain; 1944), The Wicked Lady (Britain; 1945), and Caravan (Britain; 1946).
Cook’s book is a marvel of economy. She moves quickly to her important points, which although compressed are neither oversimplified nor impenetrably written. Acknowledging the instability of national and other identities – “identity formation is a fluctuating, fractured affair which militates against any final settlement” (2) – Cook argues that the immensely popular, escapist dramas were “playing on the fluidity of identity,” setting the stage for “an adventure in which identities are tried and tested rather than simply bolstered” (4). These films are notable for their “decorative and baroque” visual style (17), as well as their flamboyant female sexuality. Cook states that “the reassessment of femininity is central to any discussion about national identity in and of ‘British’ cinema” (7), pointing out that “femininity” itself is not stable:
At any particular time, there are multiple social definitions, sanctioned and unsanctioned, offering a variety of possible identifications and groups to try out. . . . despite official attempts to control such fluidity, [the unsanctioned definitions] may by virtue of being transgressive, exert a more powerful appeal than those that are sanctioned. (7-8)
The films, however, have been dismissed by critics since their release; Cook identifies several reasons. One is that their lush characteristics contravene an anti-Hollywood bias that valorises “typically British” restraint and “truth” in cinema. Then there is a gender bias against such overt female sexuality, as well as the critics’ middle-class bias against anything so popularly successful (30, 17). Cook also looks at Gainsborough’s deliberate attempts at positioning itself internationally, and founder Michael Balcon’s hiring of European staff (6).
Bruzzi, on the other hand, looks at mainstream and independent films of the 1980s and 1990s, mostly from the United States but with excursions into Australian and French cinema. She ranges from Pretty Woman (USA, 1990) to Picnic at Hanging Rock (Australia, 1975), Single White Female (USA, 1992), Goodfellas (USA, 1990), and Mrs Doubtfire (USA, 1993).
Her arguments draw on psychoanalytic theory, especially concepts such as fetishism and masquerade. While Cook also uses these concepts, Bruzzi makes them much more central. Starting from the statement that “clothes seemed able to impose rather than absorb meaning” (xiv), she comes to a conclusion similar to Cook’s, “that clothing exists as a discourse not wholly dependent on the structures of narrative and character for signification” (xvi).
For both writers, gender is important. Cook is almost entirely concerned with female costume, and – since the films were eagerly consumed by women – with the responses of female audiences. Bruzzi explores both male and female costume, with the central issue of gender signalled by the titles of her book’s three sections: “Dressing up,” “Gender,” and “Beyond gender.” She also proposes “that fashion is not inevitably produced to render the wearer attractive to the opposite sex” (xvii), and examines men as spectacular clothes horses, for example in gangster and Blaxploitation films. She points out that in Goodfellas, for instance, Robert de Niro’s character has fifty-two costume changes (86), and repeats Quentin Tarantino’s statement that “the mark of any good action movie is that when you get through seeing it, you want to dress like the character” (87).
The major difference between the two books is the authors’ attitudes to audience. Cook examines costume as a go-between mechanism of identification between audience and film, as an important entry-way for the (mostly female) spectators. She underscores this by pointing out that the film’s extravagant costumes were seen against a background of clothes rationing and utility clothing (30; this important point is also noted by Harper [132]).
For Bruzzi, however, audience reaction is not foregrounded; although she follows Tarantino’s quote above by noting “the dual mechanisms of desire and identification that function in the successful gangster film” (87), she misses an opportunity to explore this in any depth. This issue seems to me to be strongly linked to cinema’s role in not just promoting but also regulating consumer culture. Since this is usually examined with regard to women, this seems a provokation begging to be taken up.
Instead, Bruzzi tends to give the costumes a textual reading – how they construct the character and/or the star persona; how they quote or appropriate from earlier films; how they relate to haute couture, say, or drag shows. This is important, but loses depth by not being better connected to what audience members were wearing–or wanted to wear. Writing of Cleopatra Jones (USA, 1973), for instance, she describes Tamara Dobson’s “look” as “made up of a shambolically eclectic variety of turbans, floaty skirts, fur coats, platform footwear and jewellery” (99). The point is later expanded:
Cleopatra is introduced wearing a multi-headed fur coat, and an assortment of bright turbans, a feathered hat, long tunics, chains and high heels; her extreme appearance is incoherent and excessive, and hardly suited to her role as a government agent. Yet the disparity adds to the exoticism. Cleopatra’s obsessive costume changes can … be viewed as fissures which … undermine the narrative by preventing identificaton with and absorption into the action. (103)
Yet even if exaggerated, when Dobson’s gear is compared to fashion spreads from the same period, her wardrobe will not look particularly “shambolic” or exotic. Rather than preventing identification, I suggest that Dobson’s clothes could aid the audience’s identification with the character, by presenting themselves as desirable commodities, familiar from fashion magazines – costumes that can be pleasurably “tried on” by the spectators in the manner referred to by Cook (6).
When Bruzzi does consider the audience, it’s not clear exactly about whom she is writing – male, female, general audiences. Psychoanalytic theory argues that men and women will react differently, so the issue is important, but I found it difficult to discern whether her conclusions were gender-specific, or whether she intended to extrapolate to all audience members.
Other aspects of Bruzzi’s book are similarly imprecise. For example, she begins by defining fetishism in a classically Freudian way, as exclusively male. But without seeming to change gears, she is soon using “fetishism” in a broader manner: in Do the Right Thing (USA, 1989), Buggin’ Out’s expensive Nike sneakers become “loaded with a signification [they] initially did not possess” in a non-sexual, non-gender-specific process described as “fetishisation” (108).
The slippage seems sloppy, an impression that is exacerbated by misused words. Bruzzi writes of “anachronistic” clothes (126), but clearly means clothes that are in some way inappropriate or out of context, not clothes belonging to a different era. A character is “brandished a deviant,” rather than “branded a deviant” (155). Small mistakes like this can happen to even the most precise writer, but should be caught by an editor.
Neither book builds on original research, instead bringing together wide-ranging published sources. At one point, Cook describes her work as a “route [that] will lead me through some of the key writings on the subject over the last twenty years or so in search of signs of stress” (13). Indeed, some sections seem like a summary of prior sources. One to which Cook is particularly indebted is Sue Harper’s Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Drama, which although covering similar territory, has a broader focus and more traditionally historical approach. The two books complement each other; Cook’s perspective is more closely linked to cultural studies and delves, in detail, into some issues raised by Harper. However, I suspect that both Cook’s and Bruzzi’s arguments could be strengthened and extended by dealing with primary sources beyond the films themselves.
This perhaps only emphasises the amount of work to be done in this fascinating new area. Both books, nevertheless, bring valuable insights to the new theorising of costume in cinema. In addition, both offer convincing evidence that, far from being superficial, clothes contribute substantially to the complicated signifying practices of film.
Jeannette Delamoir