Working-Class Women, Protofeminist Performance, and Resistant Ruptures in the Movie Musical The Pajama Game

Abstract

This essay analyzes The Pajama Game, a 1957 musical about striking pajama factory workers. This study demonstrates how performances in the movie musical, in which the female lead is simultaneously identified as both a visual spectacle and active agent, represented both old conventions and new alternatives for working-class women. More specifically, this paper argues that certain socio-historical aspects of the movie musical genre combine with the rhetorical impact of Doris Day's star persona to both confirm and resist the cultural ideal of 1950s femininity, thus fostering an early awareness of feminist empowerment.

Department

Communication

Publication Date

7-2010

Journal Title

Text and Performance Quarterly

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1080/10462937.2010.483287

Document Type

Article

Rights

Copyright 2010 National Communication Association

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