MP "Little Jo / High Noon"

In the movie, The Ballad of Little Jo, the gender lines that exist in every day society were tossed out the window. In the beginning of the movie, Little Jo, or Josephine, was told that wearing men's clothing was illegal because she was a woman. When Josephine did so anyways in order to survive, she was taking a huge risk. The idea of a woman trying to enter the mans world, especially in the Western culture that was intensely male dominated. In West of Everything, Jane Tompkins discusses the role between men and women and the silence a man has to maintain. Josephine becoming Little Jo meant she had to bite her tounge when she may not want to. Little Jo made her opinion clear when the men in her town were going to kill a Chinese man which is generally not heard of in Western culture. Her gender was forgotten in most of the movie until she reveals her true identity to the Chinese man. When this occured, she became the usual saloon girl that usually appears in Western films for her body and sex. This film is not necessarily about Josephine as a woman acting like a man but rather the ways men are different from women. In the scene where she is first eating around men, she learns quickly to fit in around men by imitating their actions and tough act personalities. Tompkins addresses this when she states, "When your back is to the wall you find out that what you want most is not to save your eternal soul - if it exists - but to live, in the body" (47). Josephine survives in the body by becoming someone she is not. She proves that women, when tested, can do anything a man can.
High Noon portrays two women who stand up for themselves and what they believe. Amy threatens her husband that she will leave if he is not with her when the train arrives. Having the power to stand up to a man like that proves she is not just considered a good house wife. Helen Ramirez turns out to be a friend of both the Marshal and the longer villain who was released from jail. Mrs. Ramirez stands up for herself when she probably shouldn't and tells a man to get out of her life. When he stops to look at her before leaving completely, he tells her he will not be returning ever and her only word of response was, "Good." It is usually the men in these films that have control over the situation. Tompkins says, "Control is the key word here. Not speaking demonstrates control not only over feelings but over one's physical boundaries as well" (56). Control is something that women generally lack in Westerns however, Amy and Helen prove that women can have control over men if they speak their minds enough and put their foot down.