The film His Girl Friday is all fun and games -- but there is some sharp social satire at the same time. Major social institutions such as journalism, politics and marriage are skewered with clever lines and absurd situations. What is the film telling us about at least one of these institutions (if you want to write about marriage and divorce see the the companion post)? Is it corrupt or crooked? Under siege? What, exactly, is the problem or critique?
The newspaper industry is the most prominent institution in His Girl Friday. Depicted as a bustling mess from the very first scene, the film does not hold back. Corruption is shown throughout the film, with no signs of honesty or regard for public safety, reporters skew truth to make their stories more exciting. The film highlights papers lust for profit as the source of the issue. Newspaper sales matter more than the truth and the need for the next best headline drives the business and controls everyone working in it. Reporters run about cramming reality into their headline. His Girl Friday tells us that until the papers take the emphasis off profit and sales there is no hope for any honesty in the news they produce.
ReplyDeleteWhile not the obvious focus of the plot, His Girl Friday provides a healthy critic on political corruption. As the majority of the film revolves around how a single case can be manipulated by and change the lives of many, every public institution featured in the plot is held accountable to the mismanagement of the case. Behind the many twisted retellings offered by the ‘journalists’ of the city’s newspapers lies a more influential and dangerous corruption, the mayor. The mayor holds the final decision of whether the death penalty is enacted on the criminal in question, and as referenced in the title of the blog, he would rather hang his own mother than not be reelected. His drive for power leads him to go through with such an inhumane process as the death penalty, just to create a public spectacle and frame the narrative as a new wave of established law and order. In the time when His Girl Friday was released (1940), the rise of imperialistic fascist regimes formed out of broken nations ripe for corruption was a major antagonizing force in the world. Even in Hollywood, these discussions permeated into big budget releases. This urgency to call out the dangers of such systems can be seen as somewhat ironic due to the control lobbying and therefore major corporations tend to have over the politics of the United States, but the messaging folded into such public mediums stands to challenge the narrative of corruption from both foreign and domestic powers.
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