The Shawashank Redaction

English teacher Sally Porter takes an alternative look at the much loved classic...

The Shawshank Redemption is up there in most people's favourite film list; voted Best Film of the Nineties and fourth in Empire Magazine's 'Best Film of all Times' list, it is loved by cinema goers (and cinema avoiders) of all ages. From the sweeping crane shots of the opening scenes to the goosebumping reunion of the two Best Friends Forever in the final sequence, it draws us all in with its message of hope and salvation. Read any review and somewhere along the line you'll see the phrase 'universal themes', because this film appeals to everyone, to all people.

However, if we work on the premise that 50% of 'all people' are women, we start to see a glitch in this film's universality. There are no female characters in the film. Correction, there are actually 3 fleeting appearances by females, but blink/cough/check Facebook for a minute and you'll miss them. Now this is not to say that every film has to have an equal number of male and female characters. I'm not suggesting that the British Board of Film Classification should be reaching for its spirit level to measure the even line of gender characterisation before allowing each film to go on general release. The film is set in a men's prison, after all, and a token female character is arguably more of an insult than a fully-plot-integrated one. What is more troubling, however, is that the representation of women in the film is actually extremely negative.

Andy Dufresne's wife is probably the most significant female character, and how is she presented? She's unfaithful, cheating on poor Tim Robbins while he's out at work, and ultimately the cause of his downfall. Dufresne is in prison because he has been found guilty of murdering both his wife and her lover. However, there is little sympathy evoked for her death, it is only a presented as significant in relation to our protagonist's tragedy (in other words, she deserved it for being unfaithful). Dufresne protests his innocence from the start, and although he is ultimately vindicated when rookie jailbird Tommy Williams (played by Billy out of Ally McBeal- he obviously loves a bit of criminal melodrama) reveals that a fellow prisoner confessed to the crime, we have warmed to Andy's character long before we know for sure that he isn't really a brutal wife-murderer. After all, despite initially seeming somewhat aloof, he turns out to be a good egg- he reads books, makes pretty chess pieces and secures bottles of beer for his friends after a hard day's prison-roof graft.

The other two women in the film appear momentarily in the section in which Brooks leaves Shawshank and is overwhelmed by the speed and loneliness of life beyond the prison walls. The first, his landlady in the bleak halfway house to which he is sent, doesn't even speak, simply exchanges a brief glance (although I'd like to think it's a kindly glance)) as she shows him into the miserable room which will shortly become the location of his suicide. In other words, she is intrinsically linked with his death. The other is a heartless, impatient customer in the supermarket where Brooks works as a bag-packer. We learn via the poignant voiceover that Brooks struggles with the work because his

"hands hurt most of the time", but the customer shows no compassion; indeed she doesn't even speak directly to him, just tells the supervisor to "Make sure your man double bags, last time he didn't double bag". Whilst there is no suggestion that this comment (which arguably symbolises the dehumanisation of the whole prison and parole system more than any other moment in the film) is the catalyst for his decision to take his own life, it doesn't help. And it's spoken by a woman.

But, I hear you say, the most shocking violence and degradation in the film has nothing to do with women; it is meted out by the villainous Bogs, who subjects Dufresne to regular and vicious sexual assaults. Despite Dufresne's valiant efforts at resistance, he is frequently overcome by Bogs and his gang of thugs. And the gang's name? The Sisters. In other words, the most abhorrent characters in the whole film are named after women.

And then there's Red. Good Old Cuddly-but-World-Weary Red, played by Good Old Cuddly-but-World-Weary Morgan Freeman (rather like Good Old Cuddly-but-World-Weary Eddie Dupris in Million Dollar Baby and Good Old Cuddly-but-World-Weary Detective Somerset in Seven). He's the character whose viewpoint we share throughout the film, he helps Dufresne to adjust to the brutality of the prison (not unlike Ronnie Barker with Richard Beckinsale in Porridge, but without the jokes), and we cannot fail to be moved by his sense of pride tinged with loss after Dufresne escapes: "I have

to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright", proving from his use of metaphor that all those hours spent with Andy in the library did not go to waste. So why is he in the prison in the first place? In his final meeting before the Parole Board he expresses sorrow for "that terrible crime" he committed when he was "a young stupid kid", but that's all we are told. However, in the Stephen King novella on which the film is based, it's revealed that he killed his wife for the insurance money by tampering with the brakes of her car. (He also inadvertently killed a neighbour and her daughter, but that wasn't intentional- he only intended to kill his wife, so he's not that bad really.) Now I realise I am probably pushing this one too far, as the details of the crime are not developed in the film, but you can see where I'm going.

So, to re-cap, in a film with a predominance of male characters, we have two dead wives whose alleged murderers we like anyway, a gang of rapists called The Sisters, and a handful of women who appear only to make the protagonists' lives worse. And yet 50% of the film's audience are potentially female. The rueful truth is that this is not unusual- whilst I struggle to think of any film with a predominantly female cast that would rank highly in a "Top Ten Films of all Times" list, women have become accustomed and worryingly de-sensitised to being under/negatively represented in critically acclaimed films.

However, there is one woman in the film who I have forgotten to mention. Well two really. I've not mentioned Rita Hayworth, the actress on the poster behind which Andy scrapes away at the wall for all of those years, later to be replaced by a picture of Raquel Welch in a shot from the film One Million Years BC. These two arguably serve a positive function in the film as they save Dufresne from discovery and punishment, but before we get too carried away, we have to remember that they are both posing provocatively, neither of them speak, and one of them gets a rock thrown at her by the warden...

Still, perhaps I'm being harsh. After all, one reviewer on an American website described watching this film as a 'religious experience', and who can argue with that? But then again, talking of religion, if you read the Bible, wasn't it all Eve's fault anyway?