A REVIEW FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GENDER AND SPACE: CHINA TOWN BY ROMAN POLANSKI

As being one of the examples of neo-film noir, Chinatown contains lots of implications about gender and how gender is manifested in complex relations of urban life. Although it seems like a detective story at first glance, it investigates deep issues related to economy, city, gender etc.

Rather than naming all characters down, I prefer to explain them in an order that is related with the gender roles they display. After watching the movie for the first time there were actors and actresses for me, they were men and women as they appear. However when I read the articles written on Chinatown and watched once more; they weren’t simply men and women for me anymore. So I divided the characters according to their ‘implicated’ genders. At first Jake Gittes, Noah Cross, Lou Escobar and Hollis Mulwray are men figures, and Evelyn Mulwray, Katherine Cross and Ida Sessions are women of the movie. Even this is valid when we consider sex; it is not the case for ‘gender’. Women may go on being women, so being female but not all the men are literally male. Some of them are part of the male-dominant economic system that governs the city, whereas some of them are passive in view of the facts of that dark system, just as the women are.

IMPLIED GENDER ROLES OF THE CHARACTERS:

From that initial point for my analysis of Chinatown, I will introduce the hidden ‘females’ of the movie, who are actually man but ‘other’ to the ongoing male system. First one is Hollis Mulwray (Darrel Zwerling) starring as Evelyn Mulwray (Fane Dunaway)’s husband. The reason that I assigned him as ‘female’ or ‘the other’ is that he defies against the dark money making processes of capitalist system. He doesn’t prefer to be on the same side with the males dominating the city through sacrificing the water and land of the peasants. In the meeting for the construction of the dam he clearly states his side with a modest but decisive expression; “I won't build it. It's that simple. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.” He is an idealist man; he refuses to provide his colleagues making money that they don’t deserve. More that being deserved, money that will hurt many people that can’t stand against those authorities. However he is very decisive as speaking, he is ‘oppressed’ by those ‘powerful men’ and found himself dead in the canal he was trying to protect.

His death was related with the protagonist character of the movie through mysterious ways, before his death. Jake Gittes (Jake Nicholson) was a detective that usually deals with revealing people’s misdeeds, especially for the case of marriages and cheatings. So he wasn’t an assertive detective dealing with dark and dangerous stories like murders. However after Evelyn Mulwray enters his life with her though and mysterious posture he was suddenly very curious about the murderer of that beautiful woman’s husband. At first it is not confusing but when we compare his attitude towards the ‘fake’ Evelyn Mulwray and the real one, we suspect that there is something more than a curiosity of a detective.

Jake Gittes, for my opinion, is a character that we can observe both male and female attitudes. So the reason behind his curiosity, which I mentioned above, is that he is interested with the mystery of Evelyn, the female, the femme fatale; not with the murder story. So this is the male side of our detective that costs him a cut in his nose. Desire to reveal the secret of such a beautiful, attractive and mysterious woman is a very instinctive and uncontrolled behavior for men. But different than the other men in the movie, he tries to be on the side of Evelyn and tries to understand the murder from the perspective of the ‘others’. Whereas for Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) and his assistant it is almost clear that Evelyn murdered his husband because of a simple cheating event. They don’t have the courage to stand against the power behind this murder.

So Jake goes back and forth between his masculine and feminine sides. Neither he can approach Evelyn without the desire to undress her mystery, nor can he be on the side of the males on power; just like Hollis Mulwray.

Noah Cross is the most male figure for me in terms of gender roles. He is the one behind all plans; he is the oppressing father, he is the money maker even if he has to cheat whole country and he is the one even sacrifices his daughter or son-in-law. When Gittes called him to Evelyn’s house to show that he revealed his secrets, he is very overconfident. He is not like a man who cheated the peasants, who stealth the water of the public for his own sake, who murdered his son-in-law. More over he is so relaxed even his rape to his daughter, he says;

-I want the only daughter I've got left.

As you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.

Jake asks the question that Noah Cross will answer in a more irritating manner;

-Who do you blame for that? Her?

-I don't blame myself.

See, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.

So he is the oppressor and he justifies a horrible fact like raping own daughter in such a cold manner that there is no words left to speak for Gittes. He is the owner of the money, the land, the money and the most strikingly; ‘the daughter’. They say money makes the world go round. But sex was invented before money¹. So he demonstrates his masculine power before his economic power.

City as the Space and Its Production Through Gender Perspective:

After analyzing gender roles, mystification of women and oppression generally through the neo-noir movie Chinatown, I will move on to another issue that may be related with my former analysis that I mentioned; the city as the space and its production.

As I stated above, Noah Cross represents the male –dominancy in capitalist economic structure. So it can be resulted that city is shaped by males owning the money, the land, the power and the ‘future’;

-What can you buy that you can't already afford?

Jake Gittes asks. And he answers;

-The future, Mr. Gittes! The future!

The future Cross mentions here is the future of the city, everything is about land, owning land and shaping the city. Neither Evelyn nor Katherine has a meaning in that spatial story about the development of Los Angeles. Evelyn is his lost daughter that he can’t own anymore and Katherine is his daughter that he still has the chance to own. To get Katherine back is also a piece of the plan towards Hollis Mulwray, but it is not the main goal. It is not as important as getting rid of a man that slows down the money-making, land-owning, city- shaping process.

Katherine spending her life without knowing her dirty secret is the reason of Evelyn’s mysterious manners, that’s why she is the liar, enigmatic woman. She hides her daughter and sister in a house under protection as something to defend to the outside world. Her husband, Hollis is not her lover but her protector. Their marriage is the mask behind Evelyn’s secret. Jake is the detective that reveals that dark secret without knowing the possible consequences. His curiosity costs him a cut in the nose, whereas for Evelyn, a life. And Noah Cross is the owner of the city again and he owns his only daughter at last.

I tried to analyze the movie ‘Chinatown’ from the perspective of gender and space. Although its implications on space aren’t still very clear for me; It was thought-provoking in terms of gender. Very superficially, there are some points about space that attracted my attention. The position of Jake’s secretary and her being sent out as Jake tells a ‘dirty’ anecdote demonstrates the status of women having no space of her own. And also Jake’s forced entrance to Evelyn’s house with the masculine self-esteem of being uncovered her secret and his authoritarian manner towards Evelyn, is another example for how easily the private space of female can be violated even by a man that I assumed to have female sides. That is the time that Jake is a male again, he governs the house of Evelyn just like Escobar governs the streets of Chinatown and Cross governs the city.

CONCLUSION:

Chinatown, neo-noir movie by Polanski, displays very complex nature of the gender and power relations. As it is impossible to detach any relation from its space it also demonstrates production and occupation of space. There is no specific place that we can assign to the detective whereas; poor Katherine is seen only in the boundaries of a house etc. It is hard to state a linear power relation or gender relation about the movie and also it is hard to state the direct relations with space. But it is clear that the space, let it be the city for Chinatown, is dominated mostly by patriarchal capitalist power and women has no words to say in this process of space-city production.