Review of Baby Doll (1982) by Gregory W — 29 Jun 2010

Baby Doll Depicts Bleak Days for the Aristocratic South.

Elia Kazan's film, Baby Doll definitely portrays the decline of the aristocratic Southern United States. Kazan creates this vivid portrayal by gradually weaving a heated conflict between the characters of Archie Lee Meighan and Silva Vicarro. Due to Silva Vicarro intruding upon Meighan's business with the Syndicate Plantation, Archie Lee's dream of a rich, prosperous life ginning cotton crumbles. In "Baby Doll" the game is Meighan's desire to hold onto his traditional way of life versus Vicarro's fight for justice and fair business.

Silva Vicarro sees a wonderful opportunity to achieve justice through manipulating Archie Lee's innocent young wife, Baby Doll. After Vicarro repeated plays around with Baby Doll, scaring her, chasing her, and tickling her, he says, "You're a child that's why we played hide and seek" (Baby Doll). He realizes Baby Doll's development as a young adult has been tampered with by her relationship with her much older husband. She has no one to play or joke around with. Archie Lee merely just attends to her material needs by buying a new large house and buying her ice cream, but he also only seems to care about her only as a sexual being (Baby Doll). Because Baby Doll likes Silva's playfulness and his lack of desire for sex, she sells out, laughs at, and ignores Archie Lee by the end of the film (Baby Doll).

Archie Lee first sets fire to Vicarro's gin because he wants to hold onto his furniture. Furniture in the house would guarantee the sexual agreement Archie Lee has made with Baby Doll. Kazan and Williams put out Archie Lee as a character representing the traditional Southern male. With Archie Lee, they assert that the Southern working class man before and during the 1950's would typically only attend to his wife's sexual desires, beat his wife, and would bribe his wife to stay with him. With Baby Doll, Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams pointed out that if Southern men continued to treat their women in this way, the society would continue to be subjected to foreign influence and would be shunned by Americans as a whole.