The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and the Celebration of White Feminism

Spoiler Alert!

Without a doubt, the protagonist of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Miriam “Midge” Maisel was set as an example of feminist. Midge was a young, educated, happy upper middle class Jewish housewife, who had everything figured out by the age of 25. She had a loving husband, two beautiful kids, a luxury apartment located in the same building as her parents. Everything was going perfectly for her until her husband left her for a secretary. After a few emotional and very funny total meltdown, Midge decided to become a stand-up comedian.

That’s the setting of the story. You would think the story is about a woman fighting to find her voice and get ahead in a male dominated world. And the poster of the show, as I listed above, also implies such theme. A woman, looking at the audience with confidence in an ocean of men.

It started out like that. I enjoyed the first few episodes tremendously. The characters are interesting, the dialogues are very well written, the costume and set is meticulously designed, even random people walking on the streets are often choreographed, everything looks like a stage show.

And it’s funny. There’s not a single episode where I wasn’t laughing out loud, several times. Midge is funny, Susie is funny, Midge’s parents are funny, her in-laws are funny, the judge is funny, the lawyer is funny, her department store friends are funny. Everything is funny, everything is exaggerated. Every scene is a comedy sketch, and everyone is a caricature.

Perhaps that’s how Midge sees this world, everything in it can be used for her stand up act.

But she’s a feminist in the 50s! This show is supposed to be about a woman, waking up from her confining upper middle class life and trying to be different!

Well, it is about feminism. Most Midge’s stand up act is some kind of feminist critique about Midge’s own life, her marriage, her husband, her mother, her life… You’d think, she’s very self-aware of her situation. She was very aware on the surface, but once you go down to the foundation of her life, the cruel and boring part of her life, she’s completely ignorant.

In other words, like all white feminists, Midge was intensely aware of her position as woman compared to a man of her same social status and found it lacking; while completely oblivious about her own privilege.

She was born into an upper middle class family. She was highly educated. She never worried about money. Her husband, her luxury apartment, her Diors and Chanels, her freedom to go party while leaving her children with sitter or her parents… All of these she took for granted. She never even thought about how she could go to the comedy club every night being the mother of two small children.

Yes, she had suffered some pretty bad blows: her husband left her, she lost her apartment, she was blacklisted as a comedian after attacking a more revered colleague… And yet, none of it had any real consequences.

Her husband left her: her life went on as usual. She never needed to worry about money, she never needed to worry about kids. The most she worried about was how other people might see her. The worst? take the spot in the back of the fitness class with the divorcees.

She lost her apartment, she moved in with her parents. She still had her own room, her parents was going to buy her a new TV, her parents (and occasionally sitter) would look after her children. The worst part? her overbearing parents gave her a curfew.

She never worried about money but she did feel that she needed a job for some spare change. So she went to apply for one, and got it at the first company she applied.

Despite never working a day in her entire life, she knew exactly how to handle clients, she fit right in with her colleagues. And all her colleagues like her from the get go.

And the only thing she was actually shown to make an effort is comedy. And she was going places, because she was talented and worked hard.

Nothing bad ever happened. Not really. Even when Midge was charged and went to jail, there were people to bail her out. And none of the criminal charges ever seemed to impact her life in any negative way.

I mean, you almost believe 50s US is a great place, where all women are rich and beautiful, all men are rich and polite, women can easily get an elegant job, there’s no racism since black girls are working with white girls, black musicians are playing in a white people’s bar…and if you work hard and have talent, you can achieve anything, male or female!

And now I want to talk about that one moment I assume many people consider to be the pinnacle of all feminist critiques in this show: Midge’s rant against Sophie Lennon.

Before this moment, I found Midge smart, kind and maybe a bit privileged but generally a good person. After this part, I despise her. She attacked a female colleague, a woman with a much less privileged origin, a woman who fought tooth and nail to be successful in a male dominated world despite her humble beginnings; a woman who had shown Midge nothing but support and kindness; a woman who had given Midge heartfelt honest advices on her career based on years of experience… And yet Midge went on stage, attacked this woman with venomous personal attacks on her craft, her dedication and her person.

All because the privileged Mrs. Maisel felt slighted by another woman.

Make no mistake, Midge loathes Sophie Lennon and her act. Sophie Lennon’s act represented the woman Midge looked down upon. On stage, Sophie plays a working class ugly fat woman who complains about her life and her husband. And because Midge plays herself on stage, she naturally assumes the real Sophie was this crass working class woman below her status. So when Midge was invited to Sophie’s house, and realizes the real world Sophie was sophisticated and elegant, and belongs to a much higher social status, Midge instantly resented her.

Throughout her visit, Midge has this disbelief on her face, as if she’s saying for the entire time “you don’t get to be like this! You should be fat and crass and ugly, living in Queens… You don’t get to be more elegant and more sophisticated than me!” And when Sophie told Midge about “playing a character”, Midge almost couldn’t hold her anger. She didn’t want to believe the Stage Sophie was a character, because then how would Midge ever enjoy her privilege by comparing herself patronizingly with other women around her?

And that is why Midge was so angry at Sophie to the point she must rant about her on stage. Not because some misguided feminism idealism. Not because how Sophie told her she must play a character because she didn’t have a dick. Throughout her life, the privileged Mrs. Maisel never met a woman who’re more privileged than her. Everyone woman around her are either about equal social status or lower. And now she finally met one, and she deemed her undeserving of that status. So Midge did the most logical thing: she put Sophie at her place, she told the world Sophie was a phony wearing fat suit, that deep down Sophie is the crass rude housewife from Queens who pretends to be an elegant socialite.

This is the most crucial moment of the show, even when watching it, I knew episode 8 would decide what kind of show this is: it could be a smart, cold criticism of white feminism, of Midge’s privilege; or it could be a celebration of white feminism about how feminism is about levitating yourself by stepping on other women when you found them undeserving.

Unfortunately, the show is the latter. Midge’s manager Susie, who was shown in more than one occasions was not afraid to point out Midge’s problems, didn’t say a thing this time. The next thing you know, both women were drinking as if they just lost a battle with heroic effort. Instead of calling out Midge’s venomous resentment and horrible personal attack an other person simply because “artistic differences”, Susie (and the writers) gave Midge a pass, and the show then went on setting up Midge to be the martyrs of unfair persecution.

Without rebuking Midge’s rant against Sophie, we’re supposed to accept Midge’s criticism that Sophie is indeed a phony in fat suit, her act is lowbrow fake act, and her person is a lowlife pretend to be something she’s not. And Midge, who would get out of bed to do make up and go back to bed pretending to wake up looking perfect, is actually authentic.

And it’s not just Sophie, all the other female characters in the show are somehow lacking compared to our perfect Mrs. Maisel: Susie was short and ugly and didn’t know how to dress herself; Midge’s mother was superstitious and nagging; Midge’s friend was shallow and gossipy; Midge’s colleagues are shallow and gullible, fall for one guy and another; Penny is stupid; her mother-in-law was crass and fat… Every woman other than Midge was put there to show how perfect Midge is, by contrast.

I felt that it is a long tradition of generations of white feminists, starting with pioneers like Jane Austen. Nobody else can compete with our protagonist Elizabeth Bennet. And even when our Midges or Elizabeths do have shortcomings, it’d be prideful or stubbornness, something that adds to their character, not take it away, something that makes them more endearing, something that does not make them annoying.

In other words, this show should have been called the Marvelous Mrs. Mary Sue. Very well written, very funny, for sure, but nonetheless still a Sue. I mean, think about it, she can do everything, she can cook she can do make up, she looks almost always perfect even when she’s drunk and walks in the rain for 20 minutes, she still looks adorable with her wet hair and slightly smudged make-up. Without any experience or training, she’s shown to be the best at her make-up girl job. And she possesses one-in-a-lifetime talent for a comedian.

More than anything, she is blatantly author avatar of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. And I bet Sophie’s entire “you don’t have a dick” lecture, is probably someone said to Amy during her younger years, and something she had always wanted to rebuke.

And that is the problem with white feminism. They only care about themselves. They only care about their struggle as educated upper middle class women. Their privilege blinded them from seeing the world as it truly is. The show was shot from Midge’s perspective. There’re only a handful of scenes where we see the world from other perspective (Joel, Midge’s mother, Midge’s father…). And the world of Midge was vibrant and colorful. She doesn’t see racism, because since there’s one black girl working with her, and there’re black musicians with whom she shared a joint, racism doesn’t concern her. There’s no McCarthyism, after all, politics doesn’t concern her. Everything she cares about are her status, her personal pursuits. She didn’t even care about Susie. Did she offer to help print some business cards for her? No. Did she offer to help share the cost of the telephone? No. She wanted to be Susie’s friend, only when it benefited her.

That’s the statement of white privilege: if it doesn’t impact me, it doesn’t exist.

And perhaps that is what the show wants to tell me, that this deplorable human being was the image of 50s feminism. But I’m sure that was achieved by accident, and was not the intent of the show.