That’s a very interesting comparison and thanks for the Hellzapoppin clip.
Although both videos were extremely hetero-normative, men literally throwing women around, the 1941 clip seems subversive in that a big part of the dance is the women’s reaction to masculine energy and they are very much part of the dance in dialogue.
At 1:11 in Hellzapoppin a woman picks a man up and throws him around and from there on in the tables are turned… a wonderful confusing choreographed play on patriarchal norms where the women were always up front and literally were up front at the end on the stage.
