The film's introductory elements are its: fast pace portrayed through its frantic typists and roller skating mail clerks; its corporate uniformity as evidenced through its employees dress code, hair style and identical typewriters. Various technically correct, photographic shots taken of A.B's company states that the company is a conservative, fast paced handler of information. The film's potentially lesbian character is A.B the company's competent secretary who is a predecessor of Miss Jane from the Beverley Hillbillies. From waist to collar, A.B is an unquestioned representation of: male intellect, efficiency and level-headedness; from waist to shoe lace, A.B is all woman or is she? A.B's gender is immediately put up for audience debate by Clinging Vine's writers and creators. The question of A.B's gender is further highlighted by how her subordinates interact with A.B within their hierarchical corporate relationships where she is referred to as "that person" or "the person" . When A.B fires Jimmie Bancroft, her employer's grandson, Jimmie's grandmother questions and attempts to undermine A.B's authority.
The role of Jimmie's grandmother is to espouse the era's thought concerning women "A.B's analytical mind, decisiveness, and self-confidence is alien to female identity". Thus Jimmie's grandmother proceeds in transforming A.B into her era's idea of what is truly feminine. This is evident through Grandma Bancroft's statement "crosses a lemon with a dressmaker's bill and produces a peach"); savvy LGBTQ allies and individuals could easily perceive this statement as referring to transgender identity. As A.B undergoes this transformation she is told by Jimmie's grandmother that she must fore shake: intelligence, decisiveness, and self-confidence in exchange for: romantic love, social acceptance and her era's idea of healthy male/female relationships. In other words A.B must allow herself to be reduced to a caricature of femininity in order to obtain true happiness and become well adjusted. There are times when her true self emerges from beneath the false persona Antoinette who has been reduced to an obedient caricature of femininity created by Jimmie's grandmother. This re-emergence of A.B's true self happens upon the front steps of her employer's mansion before she is introduced to young man wearing a black double breasted suit who turns out to be Jimmie.
What is disturbing about this scene is that the eligible white men who flock to her side upon the mansion's stairs are sending a disturbing message to the audience as a whole; "only white men possess: intelligence, integrity, and decisiveness" qualities that A.B must surrender in order to become a well adjusted woman worthy of romantic love, family and social acceptance. As her potential love interest describes an alien, and disturbing picture of A B's true self, she is placed in a position of having to deny her identity in order to maintain her false relationship with her new love interest. This situation occurs when Tuff one of A.B's business associates arrive on the scene and questions her about her identity by asking her isn't she A.B.
Being that we viewed A.B/Antoinette's behavior as a formation of a 'Personality Disorder', we would see that A.B's character development would lead her to develop what is known as Codependent Personality Disorder . In essence, the outline of a CPD diagnosis is consistently displayed throughout the film. Grandma Bancroft is literally telling A.B that in order to be well, she must become psycho-emotionally unwell. If I were to compare this movie to another silent black and white film, it would be Metropolis by Fritz Lang and his wife Thea Von Habrou. One of the first key statements made within the film is that it is an honor to entertain the "master's son". It's within the films' first scenes that we witness the devaluation of women and the legitimization of the rape culture that "no means yes". this sentence is legitimatized how the women are dressed, paraded about as their switched in and out of costumes that are chosen for them based upon the master's son's taste and how he's allowed to treat them particularly the woman in black, a stark contrast to A.B's Antoinette the woman in white. Although, we do not see type writers or roller skating office clerks, both films stress the value of things/technology and clearly defined social identities; blacks, and grays for workers and white or light grays for ruling classes.
Within both films; "The Clinging Vine", and "Metropolis" it is neither: women, the underclass, nor minorities, a conveniently missing element from both films that control "the means of production" Marxist terminology referring to industry and production of goods needed for social survival, or reproduction needed for the perpetuation of humanity; but the "masters": white, male, heterosexual and born into ruling class society. The Heroine of both films share a similar fate; however, Metropolis's Grandma Bancroft is the character Rotwang. Rotwang's primary purpose within Lang's and Habrou's film is to: build a machine man, get rid of the heroine, replace the heroine with the man machine. The heroine, Maria, whose authenticity of thought, feeling and actions do not mesh with the Master's idea of his perfect society is considered a threat to its predetermined order of existence must be disposed so that society must survive. Thus; she is replaced with a man machine that bears her image, but lacks her devotion to the workers, and moral character - Maria is replaced by a harlot.
The machine harlot, a representation of the "Whore of Babylon" is utilized by film's Intelligentsia/Rotwang to disrupt the Master's "good and natural order", an order based upon oppression, inequality and falsehood. Despite the Master/Joh Federson rescuing Maria from Rotwang his intentions towards Maria hasn't changed. In the eyes of Joh Federson, Maria is nothing but an object to be utilized in whatever manner he sees fit. Though the film possesses various themes ranging from religion to "Post-Modernization", it's the film's treatment of women by a privileged, white male society that is our focus within this article. It is obvious within both films that women are directly and indirectly a means of production for white, ruling class male society either through labor producing goods or labor resulting in giving birth to future laborers. When women are not acting as a means of production, they are objects used to reflect man's image of himself; while satisfying his sexual desires. In other words, woman is only a means to an end; an object whose existence is determined by man's desire.
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