Liquid Laughter. A Gendered History of Milk & Alcohol Drinking in West-German and US Film Comedies of the 1950s — Page 5:
21 While the joke renders the "wrong" gender setting as disdainful and sets free necessary energy, the metaphors of milk and alcohol open the field of counter-inversion. Although both fluids liquidize the protagonists of the films at first glance, milk ultimately serves as a solidifying device. Alcohol liquidates order, while milk re-installs the man as hegemonic in the capitalistic and patriarchal order. That is what it is all about - to be fluid in the discourse of patriarchy or to liquidize it - milk versus alcohol.
Milk and alcohol within selected movies
22 For exemplification, we will analyze several movie sequences. It would be easy, though, to bring up many more examples in which gender is symbolically negotiated through these two drinks and their related foods. Moreover, it would be far more difficult to find comedies (as well as films of other genres) of the 1950s not marked by this subject matter.
23 In The Girl Can't Help It things come into flow.[5]Directed 1956 by Frank Tashlin. The plot shows a down-and-out gangster (Edmond O'Brien) who hires an alcoholic press agent (Tom Ewell) to make his blonde bombshell girlfriend (Jayne Mansfield) a recording star in six weeks. But what is he going to do when he finds out that she has no talent? And what is going to happen when the two fall in love? On her way to her new agent Tom (Tom Ewell), Jerri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield) passes a number of men, who become The Girl Can't Help It (1956), Dir. Frank Tashlinliterally fluid in her presence. While the paperboy exhales air and whistles after her, the massive block of ice in the hands of a worker vaporizes in only a few seconds as she walks by in her short dress. In Jerri's presence the elements change their physical condition from firm to fluid. The image of orgasm becomes evident: everything expands, volatilizes, flows. When the milkman in front of Tom's house faces Jerri, it becomes unambiguous that milk not only connotes femininity but stands for male body secretions as well. In the immediate presence of Jerri, the milk bottle in the milkman's hand bursts its cap like a bottle of champagne its cork and spews the milk; the bottle ejaculates.
24 Jayne Mansfield's body stands for the success and the wealth she aspires.[6]Moreover, she does not only go for a career, but represents it. In her first conversation with Tom she states "I am a career" whereupon Tom replies "You are a career? I thought most girls want a career." The equalization of Jayne Mansfield and economic prosperity in The Girl Can't Help It also takes place in the movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? In the opening credits a voice-over introduces the appearing image of Tony Randall "this is Rock Hunter" followed by the image of Jayne Mansfield "and this is success." Her body turns into a signifier of a higher class and so becomes an economic sign. In her tight skirt she resembles the phallic form of the milk bottle in the hand of the milk man. In this scene Jayne Mansfield is so over-fetishized that the male gaze cannot control her anymore. On the contrary, she anticipates the male gaze and exaggerates it in such a way that the fragmenting gaze returns. The men become magnetized and fixed as if Medusa had glanced at them. In this phallic congealment, evoked by the fetishization of Jayne Mansfield, masculine engendering can succeed (as a joke).
25 Hence the metaphor of milk is not only phallic. When the eyeglasses of a neighbor in the stairway break into pieces at her sight and leave him blind, we can sense a second meaning of the figure Jerri: blind as Oedipus Rex after the sexual act with his mother, the motherly figure is heralded. In fact, Jerri holds two milk bottles upon her already demonstrative chest and with that refers to its nurturing and maternal function. Moreover, the picture emphasizes the relational proximity of the categories gender and race: the milk bottles in front of her breasts indicate the platinum blonde Mansfield as a desirable white woman and a mother, being at the same time fetishized, lactified, and maternized. The racially motivated lactification heightens her value as signifier, which she embodies, which she is. The categories race, class, and gender directly interfere in this scene and display themselves on each other.