The New York Times' Gail Collins has a great piece out today which puts Betty Friedan's landmark 1963 book The Feminine Mystique into not only the context of the era, but in ours as well.
"When The Feminine Mystique emerged in 1963, it created a reaction so intense that Friedan could later write another book about the things women said to her about the first one (It Changed My Life)," Collins wrote. "If there's a list of the most important books of the 20th century, The Feminine Mystique is on it. It also made one conservative magazine's exclusive roundup of the '10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries,' which if not flattering is at least a testimony to the wallop it packed ... [I]f you want to understand what has happened to American women over the last half-century, their extraordinary journey from Doris Day to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and beyond, you have to start with this book."
I'm embarrassed to say that, while I've read excerpts of the book and have read a great deal about its impact, I've never read the book itself. I think, in honor of this momentous anniversary, it's time I remedy that.
Cheerio and good day! I trust you all had a Happy Christmas and a bloody good time of it on New Year's . . . aw, forget it . . . there's no way I can maintain a cartoonishly dodgy British accent for the length of this sentence, never mind this entire post. Why the feeble attempt? I've come down with a terrible case of Brit fever over the past few weeks.
From a comedic literary romp through modern femininity, to a 1920s English manor, a 1950s British TV newsroom and the outstanding work of U.K. native Damian Lewis playing a U.S. war hero-turned terrorist-turned double agent in Homelandand another Londoner portraying one of the most storied U.S. presidents, I've been positively awash in English pop culture, when I'm not listening to Adele tunes that is.
Here's a little taste of the U.K. pop culture nuggets that have been whetting my whistle as of late:
After watching and reviewing the first season of the BBC's The Hour last year, I'm now engrossed by season two which is about to wrap up its second season on BBC America. (You could watch season one and season two DVDs -- the second one is available for sale on Jan. 8 -- or catch both seasons via Amazon Instant Video.)
Set in the 1950s in a BBC television newsroom, The Hour's like a more down-to-earth, hybrid of Mad Men and a humble cousin of HBO's The Newsroom (meaning no one's a walking, talking, eloquently elitist, pompous, inhuman speech-making machine). The Hour's chief protagonists include the program's doggedly tenacious producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai), the brilliant yet brittle reporter/on air talent Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw) and the ruins of the internally smoldering anchorman Hector Madden (Dominic West) who's haunted by his war time experiences.
During its sophomore season, the gang has been bustling around trying to expose an organized crime ring which blackmails famous and influential Brits who can't keep it in their pants. Color me besotted with this cool period period sans an anti-hero like Don Draper (though I'd wager that Don would take quite the shining to Ms Rowley before dumping her as he did with other smart, professionally driven women like Rachel Menken and Faye Miller).
First, a beef, which shall be written in all caps so feel free to interpret it as me yelling in a coarse manner as I knit my brow and attempt to fashion a menacing look:
WHILE TRYING TO LOCATE THE EXACT DETAILS OF THE SEASON THREE PREMIERE OF THIS SHOW, I WAS PERUSING AN AMERICAN-BASED ENTERTAINMENT WEB SITE, WHICH SHALL REMAIN UNNAMED TO PROTECT THE MORONIC, I SAW A GINORMOUS SPOILER ABOUT SEASON THREE OF DOWNTON ABBEY WHICH HAS ALREADY AIRED IN ENGLAND. THE SPOILER WAS IN THE HEADLINE. YOU NINCOMPOOPS! IN THE HEADLINE!
. . . there, now I feel a tad better as I float along on the bubbles of anticipation having just re-watched the season two finale of the Masterpiece Theater melodrama Downton Abbey and anxiously await the start of the new season this weekend. When last the American viewers left off, it was 1920 and Downton's star-crossed lovers were in a warm embrace amid the snowflakes as poor Mr. Bates sat in a jail cell having been found guilty of murder. (In fact, I think his name should officially be changed to "poor Mr. Bates." Indeed.)
As we approach the season premiere on PBS this Sunday, we Downton fans are girding ourselves to watch as a brash American blasts through the Downton doors in the person of Shirley MacLaine, playing Cora's (Elizabeth McGovern) rich, uncouth mother. I cannot wait to not only watch the proper Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) run up against American sensibilities in the guise of his mum-in-law and witness the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) bristle at American audacity.
While I'm hoping we see more of the rebellious, pregnant Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) and her socialist Irish hubby, the love story between Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) is the beating heart of the series and I am interested in how their relationship will progress after such a protracted, tremulous separation.
Then there's poor Mr. Bates. *sigh*
Homeland *Warning, spoilers from season two finale of Homeland ahead.*
Brit Damien Lewis absolutely wowed me with his thoroughly American depiction of the troubled former POW-terrorist-Congressman-CIA asset-Carrie Mathison's lover-dude on the run. I'm still not sure where his character, Nick Brody's loyalties lie even after watching the season two finale twice after it grabbed me by the collar and made me say, "What?! . . . No way!"
Is Brody essentially a good guy who was truly broken by his brutal torture and emotional abuse while in captivity? Does he really want a fresh start now that his captor/collaborator is dead? Or is his just playing Carrie (Claire Danes) in order to save his hide or to perhaps attack on another day?
It was genius for the writers to allow Carrie and Brody to not only hook up again, but to afford her the chance to doubt his sincerity again (when she drew the gun on him) as well as to prove to her superiors that her instincts were spot-on when it came to her declaration that he'd been turned while in captivity. The show's premise was, by the end of the season two finale, wiped clean, like Brody had told Carrie he wanted his life to be . . . until his suicide video was released and his name was publicly tarnished.
Cannot even imagine what is ahead for season three. It's been a wild ride thus far. You can watch episodes on iTunes or on Amazon Instant Video.
In addition to seeing The Hobbit with our kids during the Christmas vacation (as I kept texting my husband, "How LONG is this movie?!" and was thankful I'd caffeinated up beforehand), I was fortunate enough to have recently been able to see Lincoln in the theaters as well.
Watching the excellent work of London-born Daniel Day-Lewis as he brought an American president to life, the film made politics appear to be a flesh-and-blood human endeavor, full of flawed acts and flawed people, sprinkled with compassion, righteousness and, at times, morality
Set during the small window of time when President Lincoln was attempting all manner of strong-arming congressmen -- lame duck and otherwise -- to pass a Constitutional amendment to end slavery, Day-Lewis' Lincoln was a bit full of himself, a blowhard if you will who liked to spin a yarn regardless of whether you wanted to hear it. He was also depicted as someone who was willing to use federal appointments and governmental favors as tools to achieve the larger good of liberating people from enslavement even if it meant that the Civil War went on longer.
For all the dirty underbelly of the horse-trading that goes on behind the scenes, Lincoln was humane and focused. As movie-goers observed the lengths the president had to go to force the 13th Amendment to passage so it could ultimately be ratified by the states, one could only hope that our current leaders have such noble aspirations in mind when they are forced to squabble in the mud over things like fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings.
The New York Times' David Brooks wrote an excellent column about the film, in which he said:
"The movie portrays the nobility of politics in exactly the right way. It shows that you can do more good in politics than in any other sphere. You can end slavery, open opportunity and fight poverty. But you can achieve these things only if you are willing to stain your own character in order to serve others -- if you are willing to bamboozle, trim, compromise and be slippery and hypocritical.
. . . The challenge of politics lies precisely in the marriage of high vision and low cunning. [Steven] Spielberg's Lincoln gets this point. The hero has a high moral vision, but he also has the courage to take morally hazardous action in order to make that vision a reality."
It's a must-see for anyone who longs to look at an American politician, albeit one played by a man born across the pond in a film, and feel proud. How To Be A Woman
I devoured British newspaper columnist Caitlin Moran's best-selling, profane, butt-kicking feminist tome How To Be A Woman in a handful of days over the Christmas break. It was thought provoking, funny and fearless. Mostly, it was fearless and in-your-face. That's what I liked the most about Moran's musings as she heaped self-deprecating humor into the mix while saucily taking on issues like the asinine grooming habits of modern women, sex, sexism, porn, women in pop culture, cosmetic surgery and motherhood.
It is a breezy read that is not for the faint of heart, or those who take umbrage at profanity, say, like the Dowager Countess for example. Lady Sybil, however, would likely have gotten a big kick out of reading it.
And while the kiddos, The Spouse and I enjoyed ourselves in spite of frequent rain – and despite the fact that an employee at the Three Broomsticks restaurant in the Wizarding World told me that it was “against the law” to serve me (a person with a dairy allergy) the non-dairy Butterbeer drink sans the dairy topping (??!!) . . . I partook of a delightful Pumpkin Fizz instead – I, a political junkie, was sad to have missed a boatload of news:
As my family was making its way to the airport last week, one of the top 10 Most Wanted criminals in the nation, Whitey Bulger who hails from Boston, was arrested after 16 years on the lam, in California and, from what I could gather via Twitter, it was a veritable media circus as he was taken into custody and transported to Massachusetts, topped off with a $14,000 helicopter ride yesterday taking him from Plymouth to his court date in Boston via the air. I guess my family members weren't the only ones going on pricey rides this past week.
As I was busy riding on Universal Studios’ Men in Black ride multiple times (always accruing the least amount of points compared to everyone else), news came down about the Blagojevich conviction which the Chicago Tribune described thusly: “A federal jury Monday convicted Rod Blagojevich of sweeping corruption, putting an end to a tragicomic legal and political drama that brought down Illinois’ showy and would-be populist former governor. In its 10th day of deliberations, the 11-woman, one-man jury convicted Blagojevich of several shakedown attempts, including allegations that he brazenly tried to sell President Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat in 2008.” I kept thinking about the kooky Rod “The Hair” Blago going to prison as we headed over to the Simpsons’ ride, featuring one of America’s most dysfunctional families.
I was packing my suitcase to leave for Orlando when the president made his snoozy address about our troops in Afghanistan but I didn’t get a chance to indulge myself and imbibe copious amounts of follow-up news analysis. I did, however, later take my 9-year-old through the Marvel comics sections of Universal Studios park where the good guys always win and always seem confident. Hmmm . . .
As the political hubbub about U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential run escalated (from her being called a “flake” by a TV newsman and people mocking her for messing up Revolution era history, to the media’s discomfort as they once again grapple with locating the correct language to use when talking about a female presidential candidate, as one political pundit likened the media attacks on “conservative women” to “near-gynecological exams”), I was introducing my kiddos to the works of an award-winning actress named Lucille Ball. (FYI -- While I agree that all women, especially conservative ones, are savaged by the media, invoking gynecology is just . . . well . . . the male pundit shouldn’t have gone there. Seriously.)
But despite the fact that my news came mainly from my Twitter feed during the past week, I made up for the fact that I was in a family vacation bubble and wanted more news by reveling in spending way too many hours in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (buying "magical" wands for the kids, among other souvenirs), riding only the tamest of rides (I’m not an amusement ride kinda gal) and being accosted all over the place for wearing my Boston Red Sox baseball cap, mostly positively accosted . . . even when confronted (playfully) by Yankees fans.
If only the three Chocolate Frogs we bought (they're Potter-themed candy) hadn't gotten somewhat mangled by the time we got home. See how nice they looked BEFORE we attempted to keep them cool in ice as we traveled to the airport, then packed them up in a suitcase?
The Jezebel headline was a hand-wringer: "Women Have Fewer Speaking Roles But Show More Skin In Movies."
Oy.
The Jezebel post went on to quote a recent University of Southern California study of the top 100 movies of 2008. So I zipped on over to the study’s web site to see what they had to say about the state of women in film.
What the researchers had done was to analyze the 4,370 speaking characters in those 100 movies and the 1,227 “above-the-line personnel.”
And what they found was damned depressing:
-- Nearly 33 percent of the speaking parts in movies were female. “Put differently, a ratio of roughly two males to every one female was observed across the 100 top-grossing films.”
-- Only 8 percent of the directors were female. “Films with female directors, writers and producers were associated with a higher number of girls and women on screen than were films with only males in these gate-keeping positions.”
-- Almost 14 percent of the writers were female. “. . . [T]he percentage of female characters jumps to 14.3 percent when one or more female screenwriters were involved in penning the script.”
-- Nineteen percent were female producers. “Behind-the-scenes, the ratio of male to female employment is 4.9 to one,” the authors said. “. . . These findings are surprising given that females comprise over half the U.S. population.”
But wait . . . it gets worse.
“Females continue to be hypersexualized in film, particularly 13- to 20-year-old girls,” the report found.
More females were in various states of undress than males:
-- Nearly 40 percent of young females versus 6.7 percent of males were “wearing sexually revealing attire.”
-- Some 30 percent of females versus some 10 percent of males were partially naked.
-- About 30 percent of the females versus 11 percent of males were “physically attractive.”
“Our findings reveal that motion picture content is sending two consistent and troubling messages to viewers,” the researchers concluded. “The first is that females are of lesser value than are males . . . The second is that females are more likely than males to be valued for their appearance.”
Keep this in mind the next time you’re making the decision about what movie for which you’re going to buy tickets in the theaters. The more films starring women, written and directed by women that succeed, the better.
Women & Hollywood -- the cool web site focused on, cleverly enough, women in Hollywood – has a good list of films that are currently playing and coming to theaters soon, which are female-centric and which had women as writers, producers or directors.
This documentary, Miss Representation, about the impact of the media's depiction of women in sexual terms, was featured at the 2011 Sundance film festival and is now being featured in select screenings around the country.
While it's slated to air on the OWN network -- Oprah's station -- in the fall, the filmmakers are making the DVD available to civic groups for educational purposes. From the documentary's web site:
"As one of the most persuasive and pervasive forces in our culture, media is educating yet another generation that a woman’s primary value lay in her youth, beauty and sexuality — not in her capacity as a leader, making it difficult for women to obtain leadership positions and for the average girl to feel confident herself. Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, academics, and activists like Condoleezza Rice, Lisa Ling, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Rosario Dawson, Jackson Katz, Jean Kilbourne and Gloria Steinem build momentum as Miss Representation accumulates startling facts and statistics that will leave audiences shaken and armed with a new perspective."
I'm hoping to get a screener because, as a mother of a young girl, this trailer completely to got me.
After watching the third episode of Showtime’s The Big C, I’m having a tough time figuring out Laura Linney’s character Cathy Jamison. She won’t tell her husband or her teenage son that she has stage four melanoma. She kicked her husband out of the house without explaining to him, or their son, why, other than the fact that she seems to have grown tired of being the responsible, do-gooder, vanilla wife and mother who martyrs herself, taking care of their every need while they take her for granted.
As Cathy continues to act in ways that are uncharacteristic for her, I wonder if she’s secretly waiting for her husband and son to figure out what’s wrong or whether she just wants to act in whatever manner suits her and not be questioned about it. My episode review is over on CliqueClack TV.
Desperate Season 7
ABC has released a promo video for the seventh season of Desperate Housewives and my question is this: Do people care anymore? Adding Vanessa Williams is certainly a good move, but is there any magic left in this once sharp show that deftly satirized the faux perfect life in the ‘burbs? I'm not so sure.
Status of Women Now Vs Then
My Pop Culture and Politics column this week took the occasion of the 90th anniversary of U.S. women’s suffrage to compare what my newly-minted 12-year-old daughter sees when she looks at the world – four female U.S. Supreme Court justices, women as a vast minority of elected office holders and CEOs, women’s sports still treated like the forgotten step-sister to men’s sports, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” rocking the iTunes singles list – with what I saw when I was 12, way back in the Stone Ages of 1981, when the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice was nominated to the court, when everyone was obsessed with Diana marrying Charles, Olivia Newton-John topped the pop charts with “Physical” and there had been no female candidates on a major national ticket.
Despite some dismal numbers with regard to the number of women in politics, running major businesses and the paucity of media coverage of women's sports, things, as a whole, have markedly improved.
