Sample Response for "The Production Code"

The following is an example of an exceptional response to the assignment on how the Production Code led to new codes for representing sexual content.  The writer discusses how sexual desire in Bringing up Baby finds expression through conflict, destruction, and falling.  At the beginning of the response, the writer effectively draws on class reading to shape her analysis.

John Belton writes that "Sexual desire in the screwball comedy follows a similarly Freudian path, revealing itself in terms not only of conflict but of combat" (11).  This transference of sexual tension to physical aggression plays out to various degrees the films we have seen.

In Bringing up Baby, almost all the sexual desire in the film,
except for a brief kiss in the final shot, is demonstrated through conflict.  When Susan tears David's coat and he tears her dress, it is a signal that they are in fact, longing to tear the clothes off each other.  The destruction that takes place throughout the film acts as a sort of outlet for the sexual tension; for example, at the end of the film when the dinosaur collapses, it signals the relief that comes when Susan finally embraces David.  A sex scene which we are never shown is coded by the felling of some structure:  In Bringing up Baby, it is the collapse of the dinosaur, and in It Happened One Night, it is the falling of the Wall of Jericho.  The aggression in the film acts like the Wall of Jericho in
that it is created to ward off sexual situations.  The typical happy ending created by a marriage between the two lovers eliminates the need for conflict, since the sexual situation it was set up to prevent and conceal is now blessed by the convention of marriage.

In Bringing up Baby, Susan and David repeatedly trip over each other, or take some kind of fall.  It could be that this literally means that they are "falling" in love with each other, or it shows how hard they have been hit by their fatal attraction for each other.  The second time David meets Susan he loses his balance by stepping on an olive she has dropped.  His inability to keep his balance when she is around is indicative of the power she has over him. However, David isn't the only one to lose his balance:  In the woods at night, they both slip down hillsides and step into deep water where they expect shallow water.  I think the woods scene when they are chasing Baby and the dog has the most sexual tension of all the scenes in the film. Because Susan and David are giving in to their instinctual wild side, it is an effective coded sex scene.