The women and power show
Aug. 15th, 2020 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessMrs. America 1.6 ‘Jill’
The focus shifted to the Senate (I think) and the Republican Party, with the focus on Jill, as a representative of a certain strand of the party, fighting against Phyllis and the power base she’s building. And it was about power.
Jill recognised and understood Phyllis more than most of the other libbers had and warning her. A couple of character moments stayed with me, Jill offering her a drink, Phyllis saying that she didn’t drink, but revealing her hypocrisiy over the white wine, while Jill said that there would be something non-alcoholicabailable. I think there was arm touching (when does it slip into the arm-touching that becomes part of harassment?) in that scene and the one with whoever James Marsden plays, the Senator who’d invited Phyllis to the strategy meeting and foisted scotch on her?
Religion obviously played a bigger part in this episode as the concept of the religious right coalesced, with the tensions over John’s homosexuality meeting and Phyllis’s feelings about the forces she couldn’t admit she was fighting against as an intelligent woman wanting to be heard (though she loves to be an autocrat) coming to boil in the confessional.
Meanwhile, an ugly, ugly light was shown on male Senators who professed Christianity and treated their secretaries so abusively. Shirley was right, as Bella eventually conceded. And again, Bella was difficult, but not always wrong and not always incapable of admitting she’d been wrong. It’s all such an interesting light on women and power, not just within the familiar ant-ERA campaign and beween them and the new alliance, but in the Senate, where Jill had to be charmin while ptting up with the male disdain that was on the same spectrum as more overt harassment, and then, suddenly, the supportive husband required her to play the supportive wife (hello Dick Cheney cameo) which meant a huge political price. And from all these years later, a bigger one than she knew. Na,es that I dimy recall from childhood are being mentioned now.
Of course, it was another episode where Phyllis still got most of the airtime - it was amusing to watch her continue campaigning from the campus phone box and unable to stop herself bossing her professor; I mean, it wasn’t just his secret gayness that made her suggest her son o study elsewhere, WAS IT? At the same time, she was so cold to her so-called friend for not manageing her husband better or the secretaries, so it’s not like they’re gilding her. (No Gloria, bcause of where the focus lay.) It was good to see more of Banks in particular, as well as the issues playing out in slightly different milieus.
The focus shifted to the Senate (I think) and the Republican Party, with the focus on Jill, as a representative of a certain strand of the party, fighting against Phyllis and the power base she’s building. And it was about power.
Jill recognised and understood Phyllis more than most of the other libbers had and warning her. A couple of character moments stayed with me, Jill offering her a drink, Phyllis saying that she didn’t drink, but revealing her hypocrisiy over the white wine, while Jill said that there would be something non-alcoholicabailable. I think there was arm touching (when does it slip into the arm-touching that becomes part of harassment?) in that scene and the one with whoever James Marsden plays, the Senator who’d invited Phyllis to the strategy meeting and foisted scotch on her?
Religion obviously played a bigger part in this episode as the concept of the religious right coalesced, with the tensions over John’s homosexuality meeting and Phyllis’s feelings about the forces she couldn’t admit she was fighting against as an intelligent woman wanting to be heard (though she loves to be an autocrat) coming to boil in the confessional.
Meanwhile, an ugly, ugly light was shown on male Senators who professed Christianity and treated their secretaries so abusively. Shirley was right, as Bella eventually conceded. And again, Bella was difficult, but not always wrong and not always incapable of admitting she’d been wrong. It’s all such an interesting light on women and power, not just within the familiar ant-ERA campaign and beween them and the new alliance, but in the Senate, where Jill had to be charmin while ptting up with the male disdain that was on the same spectrum as more overt harassment, and then, suddenly, the supportive husband required her to play the supportive wife (hello Dick Cheney cameo) which meant a huge political price. And from all these years later, a bigger one than she knew. Na,es that I dimy recall from childhood are being mentioned now.
Of course, it was another episode where Phyllis still got most of the airtime - it was amusing to watch her continue campaigning from the campus phone box and unable to stop herself bossing her professor; I mean, it wasn’t just his secret gayness that made her suggest her son o study elsewhere, WAS IT? At the same time, she was so cold to her so-called friend for not manageing her husband better or the secretaries, so it’s not like they’re gilding her. (No Gloria, bcause of where the focus lay.) It was good to see more of Banks in particular, as well as the issues playing out in slightly different milieus.
