Opening that can of worms again...
It's time for another post about everyone's favourite can of worms...Misogyny.
As you all know, I LOVED 7x08. But, there was that one little aspect (of perhaps many) that threw some people off ...mainly, the fact that Sam was "roofied" and tied to a bed. I thought it was a great send up of the film Misery, and since Becky didn't actually do ( Read more... )
As you all know, I LOVED 7x08. But, there was that one little aspect (of perhaps many) that threw some people off ...mainly, the fact that Sam was "roofied" and tied to a bed. I thought it was a great send up of the film Misery, and since Becky didn't actually do ( Read more... )
Ira Levin is the original author of the Stepford Wives (book, 1971; movie, 1975). He wrote his books during a time of backlash against feminism. The novel and resulting first movie were not what I would call empty misogyny, but rather, loaded cultural response to feminism.
As a result a whole generation of women learned to recognize when cultural expectations wanted to push them into that cookie cutter role of Stepford Wives. The first movie was indeed very much a horror film. I remember it very well, the terror when the woman realizes her best friend has been replaced, the horror of the smirking husband as the friend's tennis court is bulldozed.
It's weird to me to think that the current generation have now received a mixed signal about the meaning of this crystallizing term of resistance to patriarchal pressure.
Of course it's still a problematic term -- like when people attack Martha Stewart for celebrating home crafts because she was so good at it that people began to hate her. Calling another woman a "Stepford Wife" still entails an element of misogyny and self-hatred.
Another of Levin's stories is Rosemary's Baby (1968, movie dir. Polanski) -- about a woman who knows something is wrong with her baby but everyone around her treats her like she's crazy because they secretly have plotted for her to give birth to the antichrist. Also very horrific as you can see.
A third is Sliver (1991) -- it's about paranoia in yuppie days. I don't remember it very well! But his novels always play on the fears women have about the culture around them. I think it's too simple to just say "this work is misogynist" -- rather it's more fruitful to say, "this work really points out what is so misogynist in our culture."
Another similar artist of around the same time period would be Kubrick, with his portrayals of Lolita (1962, so, a little early) or of the ultraviolence in Clockwork Orange (1971). The violence against women is so shocking in Clockwork Orange that it changed the way we read that type of violence in film -- alerting us to the pornographic element of watching violence against women -- including educating us to a more feminist way to watch any horror shows where women are viewed iconically in certain ways (like on Show).
There's always a conversation going on between an artistic output and the culture.
In this particular ep I'm betting the writers were in fact thinking of Misery, esp. since they overtly referred to it in the first ep when we meet Chuck.... but I don't think they really thought through how stupid it was to have a character that some fans have identified with to be reduced to a pathetic loser and a morally corrupt one at that.
Sorry, sadface again.
Juliet is no man's Stepford Wife.
Reply
well said.
Reply
Reply
I don't remember much of the movie, but I know that the whole thing I took away from it was that being forced to be "perfect" to fit into some male ideal would only lead to unhappiness and death. That being true to yourself and living to fill your own expectations (rather than a spouse's/parent's) is the only way to truly live.
Of course, some of that might also explain why I'm not married...
Reply
I'm surprised that the new one was meant to be comedy??
Reply
Leave a comment