Feud: Bette And Joan
Just finished watching Feud: Bette and Joan, and really enjoyed it. It had all the fun campy moments and one liners that you’d expect (‘Fuck off, Sylvia!’), but it was also a really poignant and timely look at how Hollywood treats women, and what it’s like to grow old in that business. It seems like most people are Team Bette, but tbh I emphasised
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And I think that’s likely part of it yes, I noticed that they nodded to that with the mention of Joan wanting Faye Dunaway to play her in a movie about her life...I think that Bette is generally liked more as well because she’s seen as forthright and bitchy in a fun way when she comes out with her particular one-liners, whereas Joan is viewed as more scheming and desperate. For me though the miniseries really got across how tragic it was that she ultimately lost sign of herself in her desperation to build up the whole star persona of Joan Crawford, and how her terrible childhood didn’t give her much to fall back on. Bette seemed so much tougher in comparison
The whole Oscar night seems to be remembered the most because it was such a despicable attempt to upstage her co-star, but honestly Bette didn’t come across as that much better to me when she kept turning down Joan’s attempts to reach out to her from the beginning, or when she got the cast and crew to ostracise Joan on ‘Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte’. Well you can excuse the latter example more I suppose as she understandably wasn’t going to let the Oscar humiliation go, I just got the impression all along that she despised Joan for getting by on her looks and had NO interest in being friendly, and that’s what really rankled Joan when she so desperately wanted Bette’s respect and friendship. Towards the end the narrative kind of pushed that Bette did regret not being more of a friend to Joan, and that it was pretty tragic that they weren’t closer when they were so similar in a lot of ways, but I don’t know if I did buy that Bette would have ever wanted to be friends with Joan? It always came across to me as more of a very one-sided interest from Joan that they might someday be friends, but idk Bette didn’t seem to have a lot of time for her
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