Editing Bringing Up Baby (section)

==Themes and interpretations==
Several commentators have written that ''Bringing Up Baby'' blurs or reverses stereotypical [[gender role]]s assigned to men and women,<ref name="Shumway 2003, p. 103">{{cite book|last=Shumway|first=David|year=2003|chapter=Marriage as Adultery: Hollywood Romance and the Screwball Comedy|title=Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OXkTCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA103|publisher=[[New York University Press]]|page=103|isbn=978-0814798300|quote=In fact, these directors incorporate some significant reversals of gender roles into their screwball comedies ''Bringing Up Baby'' (Howard Hawks, 1938) and ''The Lady Eve'', where we find examples of weak, bumbling men being pursued by strong, compentent women.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Oliver|first=Kelly|year=2012|title=Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Films|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4luSS3uFKyQC&pg=PA59|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|page=59|isbn=978-0231161084|quote=Even ''Bringing Up Baby'' (1938) has a scene with David (Cary Grant) wearing a woman's negligee that is played for laughs but also reverses traditional gender roles and leaves him at the mercy of Susan (Katherine Hepburn).}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Murray|Heumann|2022|p=19}}: "As what [[Stanley Cavell]] calls a comedy of equality, 'evoking laughter equally at the idea that men and women are different ''and'' at the idea that they are not,' ('Leopards in Connecticut' 251, emphasis Cavell's), ''Bringing Up Baby'' first showcases green worlds in which gender roles are blurred or even reversed."</ref> as the bumbling, "sexless" workaholic David is pursued and eventually won over by the anarchic, confident Susan;<ref name="Shumway 2003, p. 103" /><ref>{{cite book|last=Greven|first=David|year=2011|title=Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman's Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1bnGAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA156|publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]]|page=156|isbn=978-0230112513|quote=In ''Bringing Up Baby'' (1938), for instance, Cary Grant's paleontologist is a sexless sobersides awakened into heterosexual desire as well as his own active masculinity by Katharine Hepburn's anarchic, frenetic Susan Vance, who restores sexual order—the production of proper heterosexual passion—as she chaotically disrupts narrative.}}</ref><ref name="O'Malley 2021" /> this is contrasted by David's fiancé Alice, who "dismisses sexuality and reproduction in favor of work."<ref name="Murray & Heumann 2022">{{harvnb|Murray|Heumann|2022}}</ref> Academics Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann write, "The bone and leopard are not only real, but they also represent elements missing from David's urban life as resident museum paleontologist and Alice's fiancé: sex and children."<ref name="Murray & Heumann 2022" /> By the end of the film, they note, "Instead of returning to his original role intact, David declares his love for Susan, even as his brontosaurus tumbles to the ground, signifying the success of Susan's reeducation of him. Not only has she crushed his glasses to enhance his beauty, but she has also demolished his work."<ref name="Murray & Heumann 2022" />

Murray and Heumann argue that the film's narrative "promotes a cynical view of marriage and a rational urban society",<ref name="Murray & Heumann 2022, p.19">{{harvnb|Murray|Heumann|2022|p=19}}</ref> an element that writer and film critic Sheila O'Malley characterizes as common in Hawks's filmography: "Marriage barely exists in Hawks's films, and when it does show up, it's not exactly a blessing. [...] ''Bringing Up Baby'' may end in an embrace, but it is impossible to imagine David and Susan in a conventional domestic relationship."<ref name="O'Malley 2021">{{cite web|url=https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7454-bringing-up-baby-bones-balls-and-butterflies|title=''Bringing Up Baby'': Bones, Balls, and Butterflies|last=O'Malley|first=Sheila|date=July 6, 2021|website=Criterion.com|publisher=[[The Criterion Collection]]|access-date=July 4, 2024}}</ref> Over the course of the film, O'Malley adds, "David becomes a real person. Alice dumps him, saying, 'You showed yourself up in your true colors. You're just a butterfly.' Alice, of course, misses the point, as the Alices of the world always do. A butterfly doesn't symbolize irresponsibility. A butterfly symbolizes transformation. Susan forces David out of his chrysalis, and he emerges into the limitless night air, where a man can breathe, where a woman not only loves him but returns his bone to him, at last."<ref name="O'Malley 2021" />

In addition to its playing with gender roles, Murray and Heumann write that ''Bringing Up Baby'' contains themes of exploitation, and the impact of [[colonialism]] and the removing of animals from their natural habitats:
<blockquote>Focusing on the unlikely pairing of zany heiress Susan and befuddled paleontologist David, ''Bringing Up Baby'' broaches multiple [[ecocritical]] questions: Does a natural history museum and its paleontologist David deserve a $1 million donation from Susan's Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson)? Is a rational woman like David's fiancé Alice (Virginia Walker) more or less appealing than an irrational but sexualized Susan? Should wild creatures be extracted and domesticated from colonized jungles? And does reconstructed nature trump the natural landscape of the gendered body?<ref name="Murray & Heumann 2022, p.19" /></blockquote>