Lecture Notes for The Incredible Shrinking Man
11/01/04Gender Roles in Post World War II America The Visible Scott Size Does Matter Scott in the Basement
Jack Arnold's 1957 film is based in Richard Matheson's 1956 novella of the same name.
Gender Roles in Post World War II America: In the post-World War II United States, Scott Carey might indeed feel that he is shrinking. As a white male, he's no longer as "relevant,' doesn't have the same sense of purpose he might have had during the War. The world has changed, ans his sex and skin color is no longer a guarantee of privilege. And while he was gone, women's roles were changing. During the War, women worked in factories doing "men's work" while caring for their families. So great was the government's need for these workers that they were even given state funded childcare to encourage their workforce participation. After the war, these women were fired, their jobs given to returning men.
But the men still felt as if there was no place for them. Housing shortages meant there was literally no place for them. And you can fire the women, but you can't really put the genie back in the bottle. While wives, mothers, and daughters were happy to see their men return home safely, they also felt resentment for these people who were now almost strangers, returning home and assuming authority over them. These men had to renegotiate their position in the family. The changing nature of work also made men feel as if there was no place for them. Now, middle class white collar jobs require people to do things that don't produce tangible products. Instead of building a house or healing the sick or telling someone the law, a middle class professional might advertise a product or write memos all day.
At the beginning of the film, we see Scott Carey ordering his wife around. He clearly believes that it is his right and privilege to assume his spouse will interrupt her own pleasure to cater to his desires. Ironically, this sexist division of labor is what causes Scott to shrink. Louise is below deck getting his beer while her husband is getting sprayed with radioactive mist. But the world is being reorganized in much the same way the molecules in his body are being reorganized, and roles are changing.
The Visible Scott: While Louise can still see Scott, he doesn't have to challenge his ideas about masculinity and hence, continues to shrink. The smaller he gets, the more childlike and dependent he appears. Louise dresses him like a little boy, and must go out and work because he can't provide for his family any longer. The smaller he gets, the more he yells at Louise to vent his frustration. At one point, he shares some happiness with a female midget (in the novel, he goes off and lives with her for a while), but this happiness is fleeting. Her diminutive stature gives Scott the illusion that he's still what he believes to be a man, and when he begins to shrink again, this illusion is shattered.
Size Does Matter: Scott notices that as he shrinks in size, he becomes less of a man. He loses his job and can no longer support his family because of his size. And he feels like less of a man with Lou. The smaller he gets, the more childlike and dependent he appears. Louise dresses him like a little boy, presumably because he can't fit into a man's clothes. The smaller he gets, the more he yells at Louise to vent his frustration. At one point, he shares some happiness with a female midget, but this happiness is fleeting. Her diminutive stature gives Scott the illusion that he's still what he believes to be a man, but when he eventually becomes shorter than this woman, the s illusion is shattered.
Scott in the Basement: While Louise can still see Scott, he doesn't have to challenge his ideas about masculinity and hence, continues to shrink. Only when Scott is no longer visible to Louise can he begin to challenge his ideas about gender. The cat chases him from the doll house upstairs, his last contact with domesticity, with Louise's world, and into the basement, which for him is a sort of domestic jungle. And it's worth noting that although this cat is decidedly male (you may notice that he's un-neutered), cats are generally viewed as female and associated with women. Here he must find food, learn to make tools, and fight creatures bigger than himself. It is also here that he must manipulate Louise's tools, her sewing pins, emblems of her feminity, to ensure his own survival. He is no longer at the top of the food chain.
Scott is truly reborn after the basement flood, where he decides to embrace his new role as a sort of new man, an invisible man, but a type of man nevertheless. In some ways, Scott is now the epitome of masculinity. He lives by his wits and his hands. He's a sort of rugged individualist. And Scott's nemesis is a spider, a sort of emblem of woman. Her mouth in close up resembles a vagina dentata.
But in other ways, he's going into uncharted territory. After the death of the spider, Scott is reborn once again. He's covered in gore, as if he has emerged from the womb. The film ends with Scott leaving the basement and going out into a far more vast world. As he looks up at the stars, he contemplates his own insignificance in the cosmos while also feeling more connected to the world. His illness has dissolved the illusion that he's a completely separate being. His identity is circular in that he connects the infinite to the infinitesimal.
Other websites of interest:
Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were, discusses the reality behind the
myth that 1950s family life was much the way it was represented in popular
situation comedies.The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, describes the "problem with no
name" experienced by women in post World War II, pre-second wave
feminist movement.Visit this site for a biography of Richard Matheson.