Get Carter

Get Carter – the pill benefits men

In Get Carter, set in 1970s England, the female characters should be liberated due to the arrival of the pill. This means they no longer have to be dictated by men and instead they can control their own sexual activity and thus freedom. However, we see through the character of Margaret that this is not the case.

Margaret works as a prostitute for Kinnear, under his whim she has to perform sexual acts with men and because of the pill she is able to be repeatedly used again and again without worry that she will get pregnant. Therefore, we can see that men used the pill to their advantage, as a way of creating a more economical sex trade without the hassle of pregnancy to stunt their profits.

Besides Kinnear, Jack also uses her and her lifestyle to his advantage. Jack uses her to get information about Kinnear and in the end he kills her in a brutal and sexualised way. He forces her to strip and overdose on drugs and then drags her body into Kinnear’s lake. He does this to give the impression that Margaret had been ‘partying’ too much and due to her reputation as a prostitute and with her being on the pill, society finds this unsurprising and as such doesn’t question the manner of her death. This is a clear example of how Margaret using the pill has managed to benefit a male character (Jack) and at the same time brought her only trouble, not liberation.