Day of the Outlaw - CJ N

Day of the Outlaw was released in 1959, which coincided with the second wave feminist movement. Women were beginning to speak out against legal inequalities and sexuality; a sudden change compared to society's history of patriarchy. Day of the Outlaw represents the male's voice and opposition to this drastic change. In this film women are only a means of keeping the men in line or a tool of sorts. They are ripped from their husbands, danced with unwillingly, and their only option of safety is to leave the very town they live in. Women are truly portrayed as inferior and reduced to the very image they were attempting to change through the sixties. Any attempt to question the male's authority in the film is in vain as they are simply rejected as shown when Helen questions the social Bruhn's men want to have. Day of the Outlaw is representative of a male America resisting the social changes being fought for by women everywhere.