Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I’ve seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof before, but I’ve never looked at specifically for its “Southern-ness.”  The basis of the story revolves around the Pollitt family, and their internal drama. The patriarch of the family, Big Daddy, is dying of cancer but this fact is hidden, at least at first, by the family doctor.  The whole family has come down to the house, the oldest brother Gooper and his wife Mae, and the younger son Brick and his wife Maggie.  While Gooper and Mae have several children Maggie is childless, the audience learns that Brick ignores his wife’s plea for children because he believes she had an affair with his best friend.  Gooper and his wife are trying to gain control of the family money while Maggie is trying to resist their taking over.  To gain the upper hand Maggie lies and says she is pregnant, a lie Brick supports her in, and the audience understands that while it’s a lie now it won’t be for long.

This movie would fall under the category of the “Southern decay” film.  The film is extremely sexual.  The opening sequence consists of a red back ground with a drawing of a woman alone in bed, while sultry jazz plays in the background.  The audience knows before the beginning of the film that there is serious sexual tension and repression present.  Maggie and Brick are both highly sexual beings, and the sexual tension between them is thick.  She won’t be silent about what really happened with Brick’s friend until the whole truth is out; while Brick runs away.  Another trademark of the “Southern decay” film is the disrepair of the house; while the house is pristine the family dynamic is not.  Big Mama admits that the family never had a “happy home” that their home had very little joy.   The family obviously has money and status, things that would link them to the antebellum south.  However, their “empire” as Big Daddy puts it is a new one built during his lifetime.  While the Pollitt family has this beautiful and gracious lifestyle they cannot escape their stigmas.  Throughout the semester in our readings of Graham, one thing has remained constant: that white southern men are incompetent and impotent.  Brick and Gooper both display this, their wives are stronger characters.  Brick has given up after the death of his friend and become a drunk and Gooper is dominated by his wife.  The quality that might question the status of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as a “Southern decay” film is the redemption of Brick at the end of the film.  He expresses to Big Daddy that he doesn’t want the money and the land but his father’s love and takes back Maggie into his trust.  Brick comes to this redemption mostly on his own, but the revelation of the truth by Maggie and Big Daddy’s impending death do spur on his actions.  Brick seems, unlike many of his counterparts in other “Southern” films, to find his rebirth mostly within himself.  - Lauren Daley