“More Than Just Another Dumb Blonde Joke”: Humor and Gender in Anita Loos’s Novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Howard Hawks’s Film Adaptation

Abstract

Humor is a central element, if not the cornerstone, of both Anita Loos' highly humorous, satirical novel Gentlemen prefer Blondes and Howard Hawkes' 1953 film adaptation of the same name which stars Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Yet Loos' novel and the film use very different forms and registers of humor in order to achieve very different aims. The 1925 novel reads like a guidebook to the liberated and emancipated lifestyle of the 1920s flapper and provides the reader with an unadorned, strongly satirical view of Western culture. The humor of the film adaptation is of a more situational kind and relies heavily on slapstick. This essay aims to compare and contrast the kinds of humor employed by both novel and film version with a special focus on the relationship of the two main characters, Lorelei and Dorothy. It examines the way in which male and female characters are portrayed in general and investigates how humor and satire is used in order to challenge the firm order of class and society. It is the aim of this essay to draw a clear, differentiated image of these two very distinct works. Furthermore, this analysis tries to find possible reasons for the loss in translation from book to film as well as to find examples where critical themes and satire can still be found but in another form.