Liquid Laughter. A Gendered History of Milk & Alcohol Drinking in West-German and US Film Comedies of the 1950s — Page 8:
36 But as long as the path to a "natural" gender system is still barred, milk is inedible in all these movies. That is also the case with Violet (Joan Blondell), the lady's companion of the film diva Rita Marlow (Jayne Mansfield) in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?[9]Directed 1957 by Frank Tashlin. In this spoof of the TV advertising industry, Rockwell Hunter (Tony Randall) is the low man on the totem pole at the advertising company where he works. That is, until he finds the perfect spokes model for Stay-Put lipstick, the famous actress with the oh-so-kissable lips, Rita Marlow (Jayne Mansfield). Unfortunately, in exchange, Rock has to act publicly as Rita's "Loverboy," about which Rock's fiancée Jenny (Betsy Drake) is not very happy. She likewise is a heavy drinker who can stand neither the taste nor the look of milk. Her bemoaned love was a milkman, whom she recalls by his big and little bottles of milk. Here it is not only the milk, but explicitly the form of the bottles itself that reminds her of him. Especially the linking of her love with the little phallic bottles emphasizes once again the symbolic content of this picture. Milk is configured as maternal/female as well as phallic/male; is at the same time breast milk and semen. When she finally does find a new love — Henry Rufus (Henry Jones) — the former, heavily drinking colleague of Rock Hunter, their happy end is pictured by the drinking of a shared glass of milk. The footage is organized similarly to the kitchen scene in Father of the Bride. Recently promoted senior boss Rufus sits in his brand new office together with Violet. Between them on the desk stands a glass of milk and the two drink from it with straws, while the voice over tells us that "we see Rufus, put on a milk diet by his new fiancée Violet." Again, they symbolically exchange bodily fluids and thereby perform a gender inversion that re-installs them in a classical way. Here, too, milk stands for the overcoming of alcoholism and moreover for a completed Oedipal phase, i.e. for the man the participation in economic success and for the woman the fulfilment of love and participation in male subjectivity. To achieve this, Violet abandons her own societal productive position, which was her employment with Rita Marlow.
37 We can see the very same process with the film diva herself. When Rock Hunter visits her in her hotel suite, Rita plays with him. She practices kissing and wriggles in her tight dress next to him on the sofa. As he spills a drink on his clothes, she hands him a far too big shirt and trouser of her ex-lover, the simple-minded bodybuilder Bobo Branigansky. Rock literally disappears in the giant garments while Rita is trying to catch him like a child. As Rock starts panicking, she enjoys the game. Symptomatically she calls him her baby and says that "mommy" is going to get him and bring him into bed. This extreme regression appears as the necessary interlude for his development towards "real" manhood that marks the happy end constellation of the movie. Thanks to Rita Marlow, at the end of the film Rock Hunter is a self-contained man, economically promoted and therefore enabled to marry his fiancée Jenny. And again, like Kay, Violet, or Frl. Biermann, Rita Marlow gets her "real" love, who is neither a "loverboy" like Rock nor a male celebrity like Bobo, but an older or respectable man.
38 Milk as well as alcohol indicate in all these movies an escape and an exit from a specific regulation that is not endurable anymore. Milk stands for regression, for determining the Oedipal scheme and resetting the patriarchal order. In the films, the female protagonists organize the initiation into the symbolic through the Oedipal handing over of the symbolic phallus to the deviant men. Moreover, with Oedipalization comes an upward social mobility, something the male protagonists were incapable of before. The female body in the comedies of the 1950s signifies all this. It carries out a double function by installing men as well as women (back) in a binary gender system. Hence the function of women in romantic comedies of that period is exceptional: they own the phallus at the same time as they represent it as a fetishized body; they embody the social status of the men as well as their very own.
39 In contrast to milk, drinking alcohol beyond normal bounds acts against a heteronormative gender order and indicates its dissolving. However, it is not that easy: not only the excessive consumption of alcohol but also the lack of alcohol tolerance is ridiculed in the movies. In Kindermädchen für Papa gesucht,[10]Directed 1957 by Hans Quest. The cousins Peter (Claus Biederstaedt) and Kurt (Gunther Philipp) own a chocolate factory. While Peter is a true playboy, Kurt is a shy character who can neither confess his feelings for the adored Sabine (Susanne Cramer) nor at least start a little conversation with her. To help his cousin, Peter engages Sabine as a nanny in Kurt's house. The only problem is, that neither of the two men has a child. With a lot of chocolate they bribe the eight year old naughty Heinerle (Peter Fischer) to play Kurt's son. After moving in, Sabine of course falls in love with Peter. But Kurt now becomes increasingly interested in his secretary, Inge (Carla Hagen), and finally marries her. for example, the female employees joke about their timid boss Kurt Jäger: "This Jäger isn't a real man, he doesn't smoke and he doesn't drink, he just doesn't know what to do with a woman." Instead of alcohol, he constantly drinks valerian and eats chocolate in order to calm down. When he falls in love with a customer, he hires her as a nanny for his non-existent son. The hint is clear and even without the comment of the old house maid we know that it is him who is in need of a nanny, because he never really grew up. On the other side there is Jäger's young secretary, Inge, who is helplessly in love with her boss. But Jäger cannot understand her many and evident signals. In his childish way he cannot sense her sexuality. At the end, Inge makes him very drunk and Jäger finally discovers not only the enjoyable euphoria of his first drink but also discovers women. After asking Inge, if she, too, were not "something like a woman"[11]"Sie sind doch auch so eine Art Frau?!" she answers "it really took you a long time to find out." But — thanks to alcohol — Kurt knows that "today is the day of discoveries." Spirited, he kisses Inge and immediately asks her to become his wife. Through the mastering of alcohol he now is a real man. Like in Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne..., here it is again the woman who is trying to release the man's desire by means of alcohol. It seems to be the female part in the movies to express an active sexuality whereas the men are short of desire and have a fear of it.
40 This is as well the case in the German film Mein Mann das Wirtschaftswunder.[12]Directed 1960 by Ulrich Erfurth. Fritz Tillmann and Heinz Erhardt play two fellow soldiers, Alexander Engelmann and Paul Korn, who built up a highly successful company with the money of their former military unit, stolen in the last days of the war. But in the family, things are doing less well: Alexander's teenaged daughter Julia (Conny Froboess) is only interested in film stars and gets dismissed from one school after the other. To bring back some steadiness in his family, the widower decides to marry the famous actress Ilona Farkas (Marika Rökk), whom his daughter adores. Unexpectedly, the business relation becomes a real love.The director of a heavy industry company, Alexander Engelmann (Fritz Tillmann), wants to remarry for the sake of his daughter. In his opinion Julia (Cornelia Froboess) needs a mother that can handle the tomboy and unruly teenager. Therefore he proposes to the famous actress Ilona Farkas (Marika Rökk), of which his daughter is a big fan. He suggests to the Hungarian film diva to hire her. Despite the warning words of his best friend, accomplice and chauffer Paul (Heinz Erhardt), that no-one can "buy a woman like one buys a milkshop," he signs a marriage contract, whose first paragraph prohibits "corporal contact." When they propose a toast on the agreement, his daughter Julia remarks amused: "When men come with champagne, they always demand something." This ambiguous statement becomes funny in the next picture, where the cork shoots out of the bottle and Paul — totally startled — apologizes with the spraying champagne in his hand: "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean it." Funnily, this Missgeschick becomes a metaphor of his orgasm.
