Core Response: The Spy in The Grey Flannel Suit

The Spy in The Grey Flannel Suit discusses identity as a performance. This becomes particularly interesting in terms of cinema because obviously the actor is performing, creating a layered performance that both reflects and reinforces dominant ideologies about how to properly be a certain identity, such as how to be a man, a woman, gay, straight etc. What the grey suit, and Carey Grant, symbolize is how hegemonic masculinity can shift and fluctuate while still maintaining its hold. While typically women were seen as consumers and men as producers, the need to create a larger market combined with shifting gender roles during the war led to an advertising industry that not only targeted women but also men. Here lies the grey suit, where men can somewhat express their individuality by changing the color of the suit. While there were cultural anxieties about men becoming less masculine and weak, Grant was able to justify this through presenting the stereotype of what America feared (a wealthy mama’s boy who can’t defend himself and is tricked by a women) to a smart man who is able to defeat evil. This not only promotes a political narrative, but also in the end reinforces his original identity. He will go back to advertising and his comfy lifestyle, and this time with Eve who we may assume he marries, but we have grown to defend and support this character. This shows how media is able to both perpetuate but also create the changing nature of dominant ideologies. Of course, Grant still played masculine, heterosexual characters so he still was within the dominant paradigm and did not radically challenge the status quo.

I think this is all very interesting in relation to Butler’s theorization on gender as a performance. The fact that he was confused for Kaplan, and nobody was surprised when they finally met the mysterious “Kaplan” reveals that Roger fits in with the typical image of a man during this time. Roger and Kaplan are interchangeable in a sense because men during this time would perform gender along the same confines: they would wear suits, talk in a certain way and walk in a certain way to reinforce their proximity to the acceptable form of masculinity. I think the idea of masculinity as a performance in addition with changing notions of masculinity makes cinema during the post-War period particularly fascinating. Films had to both portray and challenge dominant ideologies. North by Northwest both raises up the strong heroic male but also showcases Roger as sentimental, shown through the final line. Therefore, the film does not necessarily define what a man should look like, but perhaps just reflects that the definition of a man was drastically changing during this time. This ambivalent portrayal of masculinity made the film particularly fascinating to me.  The film helps mediate these conflicting portrayals of man by adopting elements from both, and presenting Roger as a mix between the old and the new. I slightly disagree with the author in the sense that I think Roger never seems totally in control, and rather seems quite helpless most of the time and is mainly helped by outside forces (such as Eve). However, he is courageous and the film portrays that as respectable.