The Women We Watch
We have been watching men since time immemorial. Since before Jesus Christ graced humanity with his most holy presence, men of all origins and ages have held center stage. Socrates, Plato, and Sophocles were perhaps the most well-published early performers. David and Goliath weren’t overly spectator shy either. And Odysseus and Anaeus sure knew how to throw down with the gods. Chaucer, then Shakespeare, were authors of contemporary wit, and their heroes have survived them even to the present day. Can you name a woman, other than Mary Magdalene, who was reputed for her autonomous and courageous acts in the public eye, before say, 1880? And please don’t say Joan of Arc, because her courage and conviction got her killed. So, not much of a role model there.
The advent of the Bechdel test has given us a new lens on ladies, at least those on the silver screen. It’s a simple algorithm, and luckily so. You know within about five minutes what type of film you’re watching. Are women objects? Or authors? You quickly find out.
This week Quinn and Rachel ran out their rein of terror on this summer’s lush-fest, UnReal. Last summer’s surprise hit surprised Lifetime viewers as much as it surprised the network itself. Lifetime can make good television? Viewers will watch scripted drama about distopian reality TV? The play within a play has been a popular conceit since well before Sophocles, but in this case, the protagonists and antagonists and love interests are so muddled up, so gender indistinguishable, it forces the viewer back from herself. What am I watching? she wonders. What is happening here, anyway?
Women still haven’t broken the code on cinema, but on television at least, the last five years have offered some stellar breakout lady moments. Juliana Margulies lived so fully into her role as Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife, somewhere around season 4, I lost track of the fact that the actor and the character were actually distinct, until I watched Juliana accept an Emmy for her all-star performance. The last episode of The Good Wife left me tearing my hair out and clutching my loins, simultaneously relieved that the pain, agony, and heartbreak was over and also devastated that I had forever lost a best friend. Could my life continue without the analogue of Alicia Florrick’s life story arc to which to anchor it?
You cannot appreciate the power a woman on screen has over you until you have watched her dismember a human body and ably contort its pieces into a duffel bag. Keri Russell is Elizabeth Jennings so fully and deeply, part of me never wants her to play anyone else. In a world where media analysis is often simplified to the roles of women and men, Elizabeth pushes us beyond our understanding of the incarnation of gender norms. Before too long, we realize that underneath her lithe, supple, female body lies a cold-blooded killer who defies the constraints of the feminine. And yet, her fierceness is so raw and real, you cannot help but love her for it.
This month has offered an unexpected breath of both fresh air and heartache when it comes to women on screen. NBC has bid for and won the exclusive rights to the Olympics broadcast for as long as I can remember. Their commentary has never been particularly insightful, always acceptable, like a small glass of warm milk. I don’t know if it’s that the commentators this year are simply more innately sexist, or if the national feminist dialogue has simply advanced to a point where even the men among us can hear the blatant sexism. In the Olympics, the feats women accomplish often defy the constraints of the feminine. It is not mysterious that male commentators in particular would subconsciously diminish these feats, ascribing them to male coaches or spouses. The farcical commentary about the future Mrs. Phelps has brilliantly highlighted this asymmetry. Yet even these revelations, this palpable national outcry, doesn’t diminish the fact that social bias continues to push us in this sexist direction. Deeply ingrained social attitudes, as much as we try, can be hard to shake.
Of course, the woman on the other side of all these talented athletes, who I’m sure is watching this sexist outcry with more than one ironic chuckle, is Hillary Clinton. As Littlehands continues to pound away at the national psyche with his obscene and outrageous impromptu commentary about all manner of things, Hillary stands by, dutifully waving, shaking hands, holding microphones. I cannot even fathom the emotional and physical endurance required to stage a two-year campaign. Her commitment is made even more incredible by the paltry press coverage she receives in comparison to her assorted competitors for the limelight.
In some ways, we might imagine that Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Jennings are not so unlike one another, both willing to do whatever it takes, to come scrappingly close to death, for love of country and perhaps power. But whereas Elizabeth, Alicia, and even Littlehands show the viewer all of themselves, Hillary hides the parts of herself and her life she thinks undeserving of scrutiny. I don’t blame her — I would too. As a woman, our society makes it unbelievably hard to stand in the spotlight as anything but a supermodel. Surely Juliana, Keri, and the raft of Olympians overrun by the oversight of their accomplishments would agree. But as a woman attempting to stand in shoes that have to date only been worn by men (nevermind that they are unisex) Hillary’s unwillingness to tolerate this limelight feeds the distrust of those whose social views are shaped by misogyny. What is she hiding? They wonder. Why won’t she show us the bodies in the duffel bag we know are there?
Back to the realish world of reality TV on UnReal. Smart women do horrendously heinous things to one another quite often, but rarely on TV. Last season, the team played a real-life reality TV show gone wrong, which had its viewers hooked from day one, because it was something we thought we had never seen before. This season was like a Metallica cameo in a Beatles Ed Sullivan Show performance. Everything is sideways and the set and players really don’t matter. You’re here to see how loud they can make people scream.
Where Alicia and Elizabeth use the deft arts of gender jujitsu to affect their viewers sensibilities, Rachel and Quinn ruthlessly leverage a blunt knife and a Malatov cocktail — and every other weapon in their arsenal, really, even poison — to pulse-check their viewers, each move slowly upping the wattage on the difibrulator to try to get a heartbeat. Are you seeing this? The narrative screams. How’s your feminist sensibility now? And again. How about NOW?
Many lady-vision critics are up in arms about the poor execution of the second season of UnReal, and I agree with most of them as topical critiques. But none of them could diminish my awe and delight at the thing these geniuses created. Where else on TV can you watch two women burn down their lives because they can’t stand a moment alone in the light? If that’s not real life, I don’t know what is. As I watched the proverbial flames lapping at the edge of what I knew tomorrow would be an irreparably radioactive wasteland, I thought of all the bullshit female directors, producers, actors, dancers and yes, athletes, have put up with for so long. Their lower pay, their limited roles, their physical objectification, their endless diets and starvation to achieve the perfect physique. I was awed to realize that someone had finally done what I thought was impossible. Motherhood, mental illness, body image, co-dependency, sexual currency — these women, both the show’s creators and its stars, stripped the soul out of the feminine beast, the gleaming, deranged psychic landscape we have been living in since well before Socrates to be sure, and laid it bare in all its horror, for all the world to see. It’s a thing of beauty, that engorged Loch Ness monster that may or may not exist. I wondered what might happen if Hillary decided to take a page out of the UnReal playbook. Because all I could do was just keep watching.
