New York in the Spring
Gender Roles/ ExpectationsThis entire movie is one based on the concept of hetero vs homosexuality during the 1960's. To start the movie out we get a small aspect of gender roles when Joe arrives during his conversation with Martha. The story continues with the development of our main protagonist Mary Tilford a little girl who has a big problem with lying, which the author considered the main conflict of the movie. Mary continuously lies about different things however she ends up being punished quite often by Martha and Karen which leads to a negative relationship between Mary and caretakers. This relationship leads Mary to not want to go back however Mrs. Tilford wants her to go back therefore Mary starts a lie in order to not go back. This lie is then spread by Mrs. T. because she believes Martha and Karen would influence or even "infect" the kids with homosexuality. Homophobia and mob mentality are the aspects that lead to the school being torn down. This fear of lesbians or gays and how they might even cause others to turn gay was what caused Mrs. T to spread the rumor to the parents of all the other kids, she felt it was her job to spread the word so that everyone else knew. Now mob mentality comes in. When some of the kids start getting pulled out of the school all the others start to as well eventually leaving the school empty. Eventually Martha and Karen go to court which they end up losing, now everyone believes they are lesbians, well except Joe who stood by them the entire time. This leads to Martha being conflicted about her sexuality and ends up admitting that she is indeed a lesbian which she can't stand anymore so she ends up hanging herself.
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CensorshipCensorship is something that made a major impact on how this movie was made. In 1961 when Children's Hour was released there were some expectations and guidelines set by the Production Code of 1930. There are two main aspects of this code that were noticeable in Children's Hour: how you can't swear or even directly mention the words homosexuality or lesbian, and how if you break the law you must get punished. The scene that best shows the inability to mention homosexuality is the car scene where Mary says: "I can't say it out loud... I have to whisper..." At this moment there is literally no reason that Mary should have to whisper but since the actors can't actually say it they have to beat around the bush and subtly let the audience know what is being said. During this scene the camera angle actually switches to the front seat where the driver is. At this point there is a piece of glass between the front and back seat which blocks out the sound, we can't hear what they are saying but we get to see how Mrs. T. responds to Mary's accusations. The second aspect of censorship which is punishment for breaking a law. Near the end of the movie Martha ends up confessing that she is a lesbian and that she may actually have loved Karen. Now Martha didn't break any written laws but at the time homosexuality was a "social law" that was broken. In the end, Martha like many lesbian characters in films during this time ends up dying because of it. Just like the "Enforcing Heterosexuality" article states lesbianism was not allowed to be directly discussed. Like many other films during this time movies were supposed to "promotes as a norm the single option of heterosexuality". So Martha, the one that "came out of the closet" was punished more harshly. Martha's suicide represents not just the oppression of society but also because she could not stand herself anymore. How her fully accepting her feelings towards Karen caused her so much pain that she couldn't take it anymore.
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