Sex and Gender Analysis on the movie Casablanca

The movie “Casablanca” is a romantic drama that was released in 1942. It is set during World War II in the French controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The main focus is on a cabaret owner named Rick, who is torn between love and virtue. Rick must choose between keeping the love of his life, Ilsa, for himself, or to help her and her husband, Victor Laszlo, the Resistance leader, to escape from Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.

“Casablanca” conveys typical ideas about sex and gender during the forties. It also displays the relationship between master and slave, both of which can be examined by looking at Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”. I will attempt to explain the relationship between Ilsa and Rick and the relationship between Ilsa and her husband Lazlo. I will also explain how according to Derrida and Saussure the meaning of words are not fixed and may change over time due to social constructs. An example of how words such as gender, masculinity, and femininity change over time is given through contrasting Shakespeare’s “Taming of a Shrew” to “Casablanca” to the modern day movie “Knocked Up”.

In “Casablanca”, Ugarte, a petty criminal, arrives in Rick's club one night with "letters of transit" obtained through the murder of two German couriers. Ugarte asks Rick to hold them for him for a little while, yet is later arrested and Rick then must decide what to do with the letters. These papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German-controlled Europe to neutral Portugal and from there to America. They were priceless to the refugees stranded in Casablanca.

Previously, Ilsa and Rick had met in Paris and fallen in love because Ilsa was told that her husband, Laszlo, had been killed while trying to escape from a concentration camp. She never shared this knowledge with Rick because her marriage to Victor had been kept quiet for her own safety. She knew too much about her husband’s work. She finally told Rick when she came to him seeking the letters of transit. She pulls a gun on him to force him to give her the letters, but cannot go through with shooting him. She confesses that she still loves him and wants to be with him. She says that she cannot leave him again. He accuses her of manipulation and of saying anything to get what she wants because she knows how he feels about her.

However I believe that Ilsa does in fact love Rick and it shows through in the way she looks at him. She acts as the stereotypical submissive girl by telling Rick that he needs to “think for the both of them now” because her emotions cloud her judgment in the previous scene. I think she left him at the train station only because it was what was expected of her as a good woman and wife to Laszlo.

Laszlo’s love of Ilsa is apparent because he actually tries to have Rick safely escort her out of Casablanca while he opts to stay behind and accept his fate. However, instead of using the letters of transit for Ilsa and himself, Rick does what he feels is right by sending Ilsa “where she belongs”, with her husband Laszlo. Rick’s love for Ilsa is made evident by the extreme risks he takes in order for her and her husband to escape. He double crosses local Police Captain, Renault, holding him at gun point, and actually kills the German Major Strasser.

This is why I feel that in a way Rick is a slave to Ilsa because of his love for her that causes him to go these extremes. But Ilsa seems to be a slave to Laszlo because of the expectations of society which force her to stay with him. It would not have been morally appropriate for her to have run off with Rick. I think that ultimately everyone is a slave to society because it is society that guides life through concepts such as gender norms and definitions of masculinity and femininity. Even though Rick shows emotion, it is regarded by all that he is a masculine character as is Laszlo. Ilsa of course is feminine.

Despite my opinion that a man can be a slave to a woman, according to Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” women were the slaves and men were the masters. “Man can think of himself without woman. She cannot think of herself without man…She cannot even dream of exterminating the males. The bond that unites her to her oppressor is not comparable to any other.” Beauvoir, however, also claims that man’s sexual desire and the desire for offspring make the male dependent on the female for satisfaction. She explains how master and slave have a reciprocal relationship yet the master does not acknowledge his need of the other, while the slave, in his/her dependent condition, is quite conscious of the need he/she has for the master.

“The Second Sex” which was written in 1949 conveyed a view of women that was similar to that of the time this movie was filmed. It espoused the theory that women were dependent on men, especially economically, and that therefore they were obedient and subservient to them. In this movie and in this time men were depicted as respectful of women’s dignity and ‘frailty’, which was then thought to be based on their biology. But men were also expected to be brave, bold and moral. Beauvoir states that women are inferior to men because their situation affords them fewer possibilities. She also warns of “social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature.” I think that this means that these discriminations produce unnatural social constructions of women.

As I said earlier I believe that we are all slaves to society. An example of this is what we come to know as social constructs which help in the governance of the meaning of language. Both Saussure and Derrida agree that meaning can never be fixed. Saussure explains that language is a system of signs that express ideas. These signs are composed of signifiers and signified. “A signifier is taken to be the form or medium of signs, for example a sound, an image, or the marks that form a word on the page. The signified is to be understood in terms of concepts and meanings.” (Barker 76). However he argues that the relationship between the signifiers and the signified is arbitrary which “suggests that meaning is fluid because it is culturally and historically specific.” (Barker 77).

Derrida believes that “since meaning is generated through the play of signifiers not by reference to an independent object world,” and because language is ‘non-representational’, that meaning is “inherently unstable.” Derrida argues that supplements add to and substitute meanings. An example Barker gave on this matter was to look up the words “Dog” in the dictionary. He said you would find the long chain of signifiers: “dog, canine, hound, hybrid, crossbreed, composite…If a dog is now a composite, is it still a dog?” (86). Since meaning is subjective it furthers the point that words, such as sexuality, are a social construct and thus people are slaves to conforming with culture adapting as connotations change.

Examples of how concepts have changed can be seen in the meanings of words such as gender in regards to masculinity and femininity. In 1594 Shakespeare completed “The Taming of the Shrew” which clearly placed women beneath men seen through lines such as, “Thy husband is thy lord, they life, they keeper, thy head, thy sovereign…place your hands below your husband’s foot” He claims that women’s bodies are “unapt to toil and trouble in the world.” Casablanca demonstrated how women are still subordinate under men, however not to the extreme that they used to be, yet women were expected to be submissive and obedient. This was demonstrated because a man’s voice held authority and women followed his orders without talking back. A modern day example of how gender roles have changed can be seen in the 2007 movie “Knocked Up”. In this movie it is interesting to note that women’s sexuality is more permissible in society perhaps because women have become more independent from men, which is evident in the main female character having a job while her male mate does not work. These examples show that meaning is subjective and is tied to social constructs of different cultures and it changes throughout time.

Casablanca wasn’t originally expected to be such an influential movie but it has enduring legacies with memorable lines such as “We’ll always have Paris,” and “Here’s to looking at you kid.” This movie dealt with issues of sex and gender and also with the master slave relationship which was further explained by Beauvoir. Saussure and Derrida, as well as other class sources, describe how the meanings of words such as masculinity and femininity, that accompany gender, change over time and between cultures.



Work Cited:


Barker, Chris. "Cultural Studies Theory & Practice". 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. 2008.
Beauvoir, Simone. "The Second Sex". France. 1949.
"Casablanca". Dir. Michael Curtis. Prod. Hal B. Wallis. Dist. Warner Bros. 1942