What caught my attention was Burke's discussion of movies, specifically his addressing of the claim that movies tend toward the "matriarchal" rather than the "patriarchal" as evidenced by the bedraggled husbands. Here Burke goes into what is essentially a roundabout discussion of audience awareness, saying that the housewife who's watching this needs to find comfort in the portrayal of an ideal that diverges from the reality she finds in her own home.

The movie that came to my own mind is the black-and-white movie _My Man Godfrey_. In it, the three ladies of the house spend without restraint and the father accuses them of spending the excess and then some of the amount that the government leaves after taxes. Yet he never sets his foot down to kick out his wife's parasitic "protegee" or reins in his daughters' excesses. We end up feeling sorry for the husband, who makes bad financial choices and is on the verge of bankruptcy when Godfrey intervenes. None of the women are sympathetic--they are comic caricatures. In this case, I don't think that the target audience would be housewives seeking solace in an idealized version of their own mysterious, yet industrious, husbands. It seems more to open women up to ridicule.

But I am also coming at it from a perspective that is tinted somewhat by Laura Mulvey's work, in which she states that women in cinema are objects rather than subjects. I think that the type of cathartic moment that Burke is talking about here can only truly exist if the woman in the movie is a subject--or at least a realistic, strong object who does not stoop to the level of the absurd.

At the same time, I look at Godfrey Park and find a man of admirable qualities. He's reliable and somewhat mysterious in that he comes from a wealthy background but is serving as the butler who used to live on a trash heap. Like the husband that Burke describes, he is an unobtrusive guy who gets things done. But he has more depth than the bedraggled husband--and he has more agency because he has the option of returning to his rich family. Watching that movie, I come to admire Godfrey, and I can see in Godfrey a chance for what Burke is describing. Godfrey, the generous butler, takes the role, therefore, that the bedraggled, patient husband was supposed to. He just seems stronger and more interesting than the husband in Burke's description.

But then, Burke's comments about boredom--as opposed to entertainment--in relation to movies don't really suggest that he holds them up as an ideal.