Last month there was an incident where a female writer for New York Magazine named Vanessa Grigoriadis made an fairly innocuous comment about the New York Post’s Page Six being “emasculated”—I say innocuous because her article was mainly about Gawker and she took a mild side swipe at blood brothers Page Six in it. By most normal jibe-tossing standards, especially for gossip pages, the word “emasculated” shouldn’t be that big a deal, but since it came from a woman, the writers at Page Six completely came undone.
As for us being “emasculated,” Grigoriadis ignores that fact that half the Page Six staff is female. The male half might take her someplace private and disprove her theory, but we don’t like a woman with a mustache.
Shakes Sis has the run-down on the nature of rape threats and the insinuation that rape is some sort of compliment for your looks, but that’s not why I bring this up. I bring this up because it seems in line to me with the thesis of Susan Faludi’s book The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, which is that 9/11 created a huge backlash against independent women and a press to both idolize the dependent, helpless woman and demonize any woman who didn’t fit that stereotype. Faludi has never been one to mince words about the two sides of the coin when it comes to elevating female helplessness in order to make men look bigger—for every soft focus magazine feature about the stampede back to the kitchen, nursery and boudoir, there’s a witch that has to be burned at the stake as a reminder to everyone who wants to step out of line.
Faludi’s book has two parts, the first documenting the bizarre patriarchal response to 9/11, with the violent insistence that a terrorist attack from a bunch of misogynist fundamentalists somehow necessitates a response of abandoning a commitment to women’s equality at home, and the second part where she establishes the background of the particularly American version of the tale of chivalry, which is less knights and ladies in towers and more cowboys and delicate ladies being stolen by Indians. And how that tale gets revived and modified so Americans can hide in the fantasy of male stalwartness and female delicacy when we feel vulnerable to attack.
The “document the atrocities” part follows the formula of her famous book about the backlash in the 80s, titled simply Backlash, where she makes her case by cataloging the overwhelming piles of evidence. It’s a great story, and a lot of it will ring true with readers of feminist blogs.* The huge push on women to return to the home and “nest”—particularly that coming from the New York Times—won’t surprise anyone, though it’s damning to see it cataloged in one chapter. The violent smackdown of women who feel they have a right to an opinion that differs from the hard right party line is also documented, and the nasty reactions to writers as diverse as Katha Pollitt, Barbara Kingsolver, and Susan Sontag after 9/11 (all for saying genuinely mild things) establishes the precedent for the gut-churning furious hatred of liberal female bloggers years after the fact. The very existence of women who don’t fall in line is emasculating, a reminder of the impotent feeling people had after 9/11, and because we can’t fix that feeling of impotence, well a lot of us will try to feel bigger by stomping and screaming and threatening the unruly female. She also has an interesting chapter about the sorting of 9/11 widows (widowers were nearly invisible) into good widows and bad widows, with the ideal widow being a woman who was a pregnant housewife at the time of the attacks, with no political opinions of her own and a tendency to gush about her late husband’s physical size and high school athletic prowess. Bad widows were everyone else, including women who dared actually use their victim’s compensation to buy a house, women who moved on to date and marry after the attack, and especially women who dared to have political opinions that were contrary to the ones assigned them by the Shrub and Ann Coulter. Firefighters’ widows got a huge amount of abuse, and the class issues (working class women=likelier to work, to date unacceptably working class men, and to use their compensation checks to improve their lifestyle) around that are fascinating.
She also documents the attempts to impose a heroes-and-victims structure on 9/11 (and incidents after that), even though there’s little to no difference between the two on a day when it was all about surviving—or not. The use of gender to determine heroes and victims is fascinating, and quite damning in cases like the complete erasure of the female passengers of Flight 93 who joined in the rebellion.** But what fascinated me the most was her tale of how the firefighters were transformed from victims of mayoral incompetence, because of their shitty radios that failed to deliver them the Mayday message, to heroes who supposedly ignored the message, a story that fits American fantasies and Giuliani’s political needs, but is actually an insult to the FDNY, because it insinuates that they’re incompetent and unprofessional. It’s a great chapter for people who are interested in how Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too, because it really shows how the stereotype of the stoic, heroic fireman hurts real firefighters.
The second half of the book documents the evolution of the particularly American story of chivalry, of gunslingers and shivering maidens and lurking Indians that gets invoked in a crisis. It’s absolutely fascinating to read the parallels between the anxieties of the Puritans during the era of the Indian Wars and the ones of Americans now in the face of the barely repressed understanding that we’re vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The Indian Wars created a huge masculinity crisis for Puritan men, since women were often kidnapped from under their male protectors’ noses, and often the women either chose to stay or managed to save themselves through ingenuity or outright violence, which then was documented to great popularity in the endless captivity narratives of the time. Simultaneously, the colonies were getting established enough that women were quietly rebelling against the patriarchy, demanding (and often getting) more political and economic power. Once the backlash started (and Faludi carefully and persuasively build the case that the Salem witch trials were part of the backlash against women), it ran out of control, only slowing down briefly for the Revolution. By the time of the late Victorian era, anxieties about Indian victories were firmly displaced onto the shoulders of the Victorian child-woman who cringes in fear at the threat of Indian kidnapping (and later, rape by black men and now terrorist attack), the Indians were completely vanquished, and the ideal of the cowboy gunslinger who looks all the bigger in comparison to the tiny child-women he protects was firmly embedded into the American psyche, ready to be revived at a moment’s notice. Which is what the Bush administration did, with Bush playing cowboy and the famous Ashley’s story ad, where Bush saves the day by hugging, you guessed it, a child-woman who lost her mother on 9/11.
The book is rich with detail. I found the parallels between the Salem witch trials and today fascinating, especially how the anxious men of the community displaced their anger into the mouths of women, so that they didn’t have to take responsibility for the invective. The teenage girls who ranted and raved in ways that no one else could really get away with in Salem, that accused and screamed mainly about women who were already troublesome to the men because they had suspicious levels of independence, is a direct parallel to the Dr. Helens and Ann Coulters and Ann Althouses of today, women who gain social approval by spewing all the misogyny that right wing men feel is a bit unseemly to say themselves. Ann Coulter has to open the door to the discussion about taking away women’s right to vote; it took a raving group of teenage girls to start saying that certain women must be evil and need to be hung for their divided loyalties. Just as the witches of Salem were said to cavort with the Devil in a form that was blatantly Indian-and-French-inspired, now it is implied that feminists cavort with demonic multi-culturalism that takes a suspiciously pro-Muslim terrorist form. Witness David Horowitz’s puzzling sit-ins at women’s studies departments, as if he sincerely thinks that feminist scholars lurk behind closed doors dancing around in burquas and plotting the dismantling of Western democracy.
So, what did you think? Anything surprising? Disappointing? Anything that made you have to put the book aside for a minute and think it over? Do you like The Searchers despite its unbelievably retrograde attitudes on race and gender? Is Taxi Driver an homage or a parody of it?
*In fact, it really shows how feminist blogs are so thoroughly influenced by Faludi’s style and theories. The endless bone-picking of the media, the ability to build the case that the patriarchy exists and is lashing out against feminists through one piece of evidence at a time—it’s all very Backlash-esque.
**The notion that it was only the men who rebelled has always bothered me. It doesn’t make sense—you’d want every pair of hands you’ve got. Turns out the 9/11 Commission agrees with my gut feeling that the women were right there with the men.
63 Responses to “Pandagon Book Club: The Terror Dream”
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Oh, yeah, I found the Salem section fascinating as well, esp. since my great-great-etc. grandma was dubbed “The Queen of Hell” by Cotton Mather, mostly because she kept saying that there were no witches and the “afflicted girls” were faking the whole thing. Besides, one of her accusers (a Mr. Abbott) owed her some money and she had the unladylike audacity to insist upon being repaid. Her sons (one of them my great-great-etc. grandpa) were cut out of the same cloth; they said there were no witches, and they denied being witches, until some old fashioned torture convinced them otherwise. These days, they’d probably be waterboarded.
The same thing was at work during the post-Bellum South. The white guys in charge were smarting from their defeat, so instead of taking on the Northerners who had wreaked their lifestyle, they transferred their rage onto the helpless black population and took out their anger and frustration on them.
Faludi’s Backlash was one of the first bits of modern feminist thought that I encountered, so this took me back a ways. The repeating theme of her work–the part that I enjoyed the most–was showing how a narrative is built, and how reality is edited down and perceived incompletely so as to fit that narrative. The scope of The Terror Dream seemed to be far narrower than that of Backlash; the narrative was very specific and doesn’t seem to explain everything that’s gone on from a feminist point of view in the last six years or so the same way the previous book did.
So, what was everyone’s favorite wallbanger moment? I think mine was reading about Colin Powell’s bold assertions that the rights of the women of Afghanistan were emphatically non-negotiable, which was forgotten depressingly quickly and thoroughly. Though the desperate attempts to write about TV shows as if they were somehow indicative of a popular zeitgeist, rather than actually looking at how people were acting, was right up there.
The book made me tremble a little bit from all of the careful details that she collects and soberly presents. I have to say that I was really suprised by reading reviews of her brilliant book by people who conclude that she didn’t really prove a connection betwenn 9/11 and a climate of conservative gender norms. They couldn’t have read the book.
I’ve never seen “The Searchers” but there are enough copy-cat rescue films out there.
More and more lately I’ve become so tired of films like “Taxi Driver”wherein male brutality gets authorized through the guise of “saving women.” That’s Mel Gibson’s whole body of work isn’t it?
I thought the book was illuminating on how Americans can possibly buy the line about “playing the victim”, something that socially disliked victims (rape victims, gay bashing victims, domestic violence victims, victims of racism) are constantly accused of doing. How does someone “play” the victim? Being a victim is something done to you, not something you choose. But by redefining white men who are victimized in a situation like this as “heroes”, then the illusion that victims are safe to blame and hate is preserved.
Which isn’t to say that the men who died on 9/11 were bad or in the wrong! That’s what’s so fucked up about it. We can barely admit that they were victims, that there’s nothing wrong with you personally if you’re victimized. Even if people were heroic that day, as the passengers of Flight 93 surely were, they were, in the end, victims.
““playing the victim”, something that socially disliked victims”
Well, does it have anything to do with the fact that the word “victim” has been feminized to a degree, by both our language and culture? Thus males can never be victims or else they’re feeble little “pussies,” and ultimately they’re “demoted” to being a member of the loathsome and “weak” female sex. In another words, it’s what sportscasters and beer commercials would call “handing in your man-card.” So of course we must re-cast every man killed or attacked as a “hero” regardless of the situation or circumstance, because to do otherwise would be tantamount to speaking ill of the dead. Or in more general cases, using the greatest insult you can possibly muster against a man or even a boy in our culture…deride him as something that can be interpreted as feminine. Metallica made a song for this very situation and it’s called “Sad But True,” but that’s the culture that we live in. So yes, P.H.M.T.
It’s interesting to compare the current desperate macho posing with movies like The Searchers and Taxi Driver, let alone more modern interpretations of The Lone Man Who’s Been Wronged Bypassing The System To Wreak Revenge On The Evil Harm-Doers Who Did Him Harm - The Punisher being one of many that come to mind.
I am disturbed and appalled at the way the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed - from being real places where mortal people face death, deal death, and are exposed to a continuous barrage of unsatisfying moral conundrums involving themselves and the local population - to abstract “stages” where the most important test of a man (women don’t count) is how easily he sends soldiers to their deaths without a second thought.
In this respect, George “Black Sheep Of The Family” Bush is the perfect living embodiment (although Cheney gives him a good run for his money) of our age. Having lived a life that reads like bad outtakes from Animal House II - Chemical Boogaloo our worthless, useless, man-only-because-he-has-a-Y-chromosome “commander in chief” is peerless: He has no accomplishments, no military experience, no practical experience in business, is a failure as a person, father, and a living example of an American wastrel.
But in the current age of diminished expectations, all he needs to do is wear the right costume, stand on the correct piece of tape on the floor, mumble some insincere and incoherent rubbish and (a certain group of) Americans look up to him as if he were a real leader and not an animated stage prop.
This gives him and all his mindless worshipers license to attack anyone who strays from the party line:
Lost your husband or wife on 9/11 and you’re mad because bin Laden remains at large? The Reichwing Noise Machine says Fuck you.
Think Giuliani needs to pay a price for sticking FDNY with shitty radios? Fuck you.
Lost your son or daughter to the futility of warfare in Iraq/Afghanistan and you’re not happy about the “leadership” responsible? Fuck you.
Think we’ve been whacking the middle-eastern hornets’ nest long enough and need to bring the troops home? Fuck you.
I’ve had all the nervous macho posturing I can stand. Bring on the women…
You’re kidding, right? Haven’t you spent the last few years tirelessly chronicling the “woe-is-me” posturing from the likes of Bill Donohue, from Bill O’Reilly’s flying “War on Christmas” monkeys, from Jill Stanek and her lot claiming that her fellow fetus fetishists are under horrible, horrible attack from you godless types?Fair enough. But how does a genuine victim “play” the victim? It’s interesting that wingnuts created the myth of people who play at being victim and then became the real world examples of it, while actual victims still suffer abuse and disapproval.
I once gave a group of 18 year students FBI statistics showing that men are more likely to be victims of violent crime. They were shocked, but they still argued that men are not really ever victims. They said the FBI should use a different word.
Ummm, would it be bad to say that I still like The Searchers? Now that I’m older, and have the vocabulary for misogyny, I see it more in the film. I always did get the racism. But I see the film as being more about obsession and the destructiveness of obsession, because Wayne’s character, Ethan, is nothing if not obsessed. The ending I find especially poignant, because all the other characters are in the house, becoming part of the family, while Ethan is in the door, watching it, then turns and walks away into the desert. The imagery is fascinating, the sense of the outsider (standing in the door but not entering), the emptiness he’s facing (the desert at sunset) now that he has accomplished what he set out to do, the lack of triumph in his face and stance … one of Wayne’s best performances.
Urgh - uh, yeah, I’m a cinemaphile. Sorry.
I’ve never seen all of Taxi Driver, but what I have seen leads me to view the film again as about obsession and how irrational it is. Would the film have been less powerful if the DeNiro character had been a “let’s rescue the poor lab animals” whackjob as opposed to a “let’s rescue the 12-year old hooker” whackjob? She was only an excuse for him to be violent. (And I thought Jodi Foster was phenomenal.)
Too bad the Republicans never got past the “White hat/black hat” stereotypes of the early Westerns …
(Just as a fun drinking game - watch the film “Hallelujah Trail” with Burt Lancaster, and take a drink every time Brian Keith says “I’m a taxpayer and a good Republican!” You will be sloshed!)
man-only-because-he-has-a-Y-chromosome…
I find it interesting that in this comment, you feel the need to bash Bush by questioning his manhood. As if being compared to a woman is the lowest insult one could lob at him. Like the whole book and post haven’t been about the hyper-masculinization of men through their juxtaposition to the victim-woman. Seriously?
“I find it interesting that in this comment, you feel the need to bash Bush by questioning his manhood.”
Just like womanhood is not exclusively defined by being a wife and a mother (and subserviant, meek, and mousy), being a man is not only about sending other people to death while attempting to distract from your own deficiencies.
His entire life is defined by one failure after another, followed by scheming from Bush family operatives who shuffled him off to some other venue which he used to fail yet again.
Realizing he is a failure at some level, he keeps looking for ways to show he’s as good or better than his father. But because his father had some genuine qualities (that can’t just be faked) - Shrub is doomed to fail.
I DO question Bush’s manhood. But that’s because my definition of manhood doesn’t respect violence for its own sake, doesn’t see women as representing the opposite of manliness, doesn’t believe that domination is the only way to earn the right to be a man.
I don’t believe (as many of his followers do) that he can mend his manhood by bogus displays of cliched “manly” behavior.
A real man would be worth looking up to. Would be worth admiring. Would have real morality and not just talk. Wouldn’t have ever thought torture was a good idea and would dismiss anyone suggesting otherwise. Would not be afraid to listen to his allies. Would have fired Cheney for suggesting he was the best choice for VP. Would have respected Colin Powell’s opinions and not dismissed him as a traitor. Etc., etc., etc.
I liked “The Searchers” because of its tight plotting, beautiful cinematography, and compelling acting. Not every fiction is proselytizing a socio-political stance. (Nice frame at the top.)
This post is a silly reach, in that the whole “9 1 1 made it happen” is redundant– that whole “threatened by independent women” thing didn’t need 911 to kickstart it.
I found the whole section on captivity narratives and their relation to reality quite fascinating. I’d never really been exposed to that particular slice of history.
The thing that fascinates me most is that the gender stereotyping doesn’t come when the threat is acute, but rather afterwards, when the threat is fading. During the acute phase, where the members of the group personally know people who’ve been injured, killed, or kidnapped, the focus is much more on the real threat. Only when there’s some distance, when the threat is more theoretical than real, do you see the development of gendered narratives of male protector and female victim. I suspect that in part this has to do with the fact that during the acute phase every able body is needed to address the real threat. Another element of the dynamic is that during the post-acute phase people have pent up energy driven by fear but nowhere productive to direct it, so it goes into building a comforting narrative.
BTW, I hope it’s clear that I’m NOT defining womanhood as being meek and passive.
I’m trying to say that I don’t buy into the society-approved dichotomy that “Men” are all defined by one set of things and “Women” are defined another - and never the twain shall meet. That thinking is bullshit…
“I suspect that in part this has to do with the fact that during the acute phase every able body is needed to address the real threat.”
…and there often isn’t time to really think about what you’re doing, you just react, letting “pre-programmed” responses take over. That to me was what was so disturbing about Bush’s “My Pet Goat” moment.
It’s impossible for me to imagine a more telling glimpse into the hollow soul of that man than when he sat there, after being told about the first attack, thumb inserted firmly in his ass, and DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
That, my friends, is the opposite of leadership…
OK, I’m definitely going to read this book soon! I loved “Backlash” when I read it in college—I credit that book with helping me shed a lot of my (mostly subconscious) sexist attitudes.
The sexualization of victimhood definitely goes hand in hand with the sexualization of leadership, too, I would say. The script goes like this: women are weak, and therefore cannot be good leaders; if they are not weak, they are dominatrices (see Maureen Dowd’s recent column) or secretly men or lesbians or etc. The strong “need” to sexualize things that are not sexual points to a real problem in our culture, one that is hard to recognize (being so pervasive), much less eradicate. (Turbowombat, my partner in crime, refers to the eradication as “deconsexualization”, which is a fuckin’ awesome coinage, I think.)
P.S. I admit to liking “The Searchers”, too (and “The Quiet Man”—talk about regressive sexual attitudes in that film!).
I haven’t finished this book yet, but for me the most interesting part was how quickly the media would turn on anyone who wasn’t playing his or her designated role in the hero/victim drama they set up, and how much trouble they went to in their efforts to force a particular narrative onto the events.
It seems like it would have been so much easier to just report what was actually happening and who was actually involved, instead of trying to dig up people willing to spin a particular tale, or pushing people to give the “correct” answers to their questions.
Mike -
I think I see what you’re trying to do. You’re using the definition of “real man” as “man-as-responsible-adult”, which Shrub only fits halfway. He may be a physical adult, but he is by no means responsible. In fact, in every sense but having hair in the right places on his body, he’s very much a child.
Unfortunately, in a culture where “real man” is usually contrasted to “woman”, and where the negative traits that a “real man” shouldn’t have are feminine rather than childish (indeed, some traits of this kind of “real man” are very childish), you end up defending yourself from your allies and requiring far too much explanation to have the impact you wanted.
Yeah, I thought that was Faludi’s strong point. I don’t remember if there are examples in The Terror Dream, but in Backlash there are examples where some event didn’t go down the way it was “supposed to”–for example, a pregnant woman dying of cancer is forced to have a life-threatening C-section, which hastens her death and produces a very dead baby–are rewritten into made-for-TV movies where things go the way they were “supposed to”; in this case, the woman glowingly gives her life for her fetus, who is, of course, burblingly healthy. It’s positively nauseating.Seraph, thanks. I guess I comment here so often that I assume everybody has a pretty good idea of where I come from. I probably need to be more careful…
Oh, I do, and I’m sure the regulars do, too. Can never forget the lurkers, though…
“[…]rewritten into made-for-TV movies where things go the way they were “supposed to”; in this case, the woman glowingly gives her life for her fetus, who is, of course, burblingly healthy”
(warning, off-topic tangent)
Oh, I can see it now. And despite the fact that she’s dying of cancer, she has a great tan, bleached-blond hair, a “nice rack,” always wearing a “lovely” pearl necklace, and once the fetus is removed her abdomen quickly returns to being completely flat and taut, without the slightest hint of a stretch-mark or any other post-partum features for that matter. I’m sure it would be on Lifetime, Oxygen, WE, or even *Grey’s Anatomy (*:vomits: what people see in that show is beyond me). And of course the fetus will be male so the grieving, yet “heroic”, widower (not a “pansy” at all, which means he’ll never shed a tear, not even for his dead wife who “gave him” his precious spawn) can at least have an heir to carry on his precious sper–uh– family name. He’ll also *remarry quickly (*probably the “hot” yet “pure” and demure nurse tending to his dying wife, played by another stereotypical blonde) and nobody will be shocked or appalled (because no “hero” should be without his domesticated female servile, to make him feel so “manly” and needed, or even wanted). Yes, the way things ,should be and these people’s wet-dream over bringing back the fifties and Stepford.
Separate and apart from Faludi’s thesis, 9/11 may have been the first time the definition for “hero” contracted back down to its appropriate level, and the definition of “victim” expanded way beyond its normal level (or at least massively misplaced).
Which made the subsequent, six-year Constitution shreddin’ party all that much easier, I suppose, and why Rudy is only single-digits behind the major Democratic candidates, instead of in obscurity or sharing a cell with Bernard Kerik.
Do you like The Searchers despite its unbelievably retrograde attitudes on race and gender?
I think this is a mis-reading of the film. The film is not racist but is about racism. Ford was making a movie about racist attitudes that led to the virtual extermination of the Native Americans. Wayne’s character is virtually insane and his racism and hatred of women is apparent throughout the movie. At the end of the film, Wayne’s character is unwanted by anyone (even the woman he “saved”) and he is left alone and rejected.
MikeEss - the Goat book reading moment is indeed a perfect encapsulation of W. If Kerry had the least bit of competence on his campaign team they’d have run a series of ads showing bush sitting there nervously shifting, on split screen with the towers burning.
I’ve heard that the Chimpy McFlightSuit doll had a special crotch piece to fill out the flight suit, but I haven’t seen the pictures. If anyone has photographic evidence I’d be interested in seeing it - it’s certainly consistent with everything Faludi says. There’s something very neoconservative about the image of a third world sweatshop worker franticly glueing a ‘package’ on a Dubya doll, desperately trying to make quota so she can feed her kids.
Ha! You think we’re bad, check out the French. The word victime is always feminine in gender, even if you’re referring to a man. The flipside is that certain presitigious professions, like avocat (lawyer) or professeur (teacher), are always masculine, even if the lawyer or teacher in question is a woman.Oh, it can be a very sexist language. If you’re referring to a group of women and/or girls, they take the collective feminine pronoun elles. But the instant a single male joins the group, it immediately becomes ils.
I discussed this once with a French acquaintance. He looked at me like I had two heads.
Bitter Scribe–
Yeah, I took French for three years (and then Latin for two) and I was “amazed”– for a lack of a better word– that quite a few things and titles that one would normally associate with being “weak” or “unimportant,” had a feminine designation.
“I discussed this once with a French acquaintance. He looked at me like I had two heads.”
ROFL. I took French at an all-girls highschool, where the entire class would have a collective “WTF????” moment cheerfully supported by the teachers when we ran across such linguistic oddities, so I’ve never run experienced anyone *not* finding the elles/ils thing ludicrous. I suppose that might change if I ever went to France.
Spanish does this one, too. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that it has both feminine and masculine forms for the professions and descriptions you mentioned.
It’s interesting to compare the current desperate macho posing with movies like The Searchers and Taxi Driver, let alone more modern interpretations of The Lone Man Who’s Been Wronged Bypassing The System To Wreak Revenge On The Evil Harm-Doers Who Did Him Harm - The Punisher being one of many that come to mind.
If I was a writer, I might try some culture-jamming by pointing out that this myth much, much better suits the 19 hijackers who attacked the US on Sept. 11th. Certainly, the Valiant-Strikeback-At-The-Evil-Empire was the inspiring myth for their actions.
You’re using the definition of “real man” as “man-as-responsible-adult”,
It’s been said before, and there’s nothing in it which wouldn’t apply to both genders these days save the last line.
I had a teacher in grade school who made me write out the text of Kipling’s “If” several times as punishment for a youthful transgression.
As mad as I was about being punished, I had to admit there was a lot of wisdom in that poem…
or even *Grey’s Anatomy (*:vomits: what people see in that show is beyond me).
This would be the show where the most talented intern is a Chinese/Jewish woman, and the most competent doctor (not necessarily the best surgeon, but the one portrayed as the natural leader) is a short dumpy black woman nicknamed “the Nazi”, yes?
I found The Searchers very disappointing; it felt like Ford was genuinely trying to create a movie that vilified the racism of John Wayne’s character and condemned the extermination of Native Americans, but failed in the ending. The movie wonderfully depicts Wayne’s descent into monstrosity due to racism and bigotry, but has his character miraculously and inexplicably regain his humanity in order end as the hero instead of the villain. Meanwhile, the slaughter of the Natives is conveniently forgotten as the white family is happily reunited.
I don’t know if Ford simply didn’t get it, or if he found himself constrained by the conventions of the Western genre or studio pressure. I thought it was a great movie ’til the end; the disappointing denouement made the rest of the movie seem a tad pointless.
Taxi Driver is good though. I hadn’t really thought about it as a Western-type story before though. Travis Bickle and Ethan Edwards are very similar characters now that you mention it.
(even more off-topic answer)
Actually, the “shoulda been” TV retelling of Faludi’s story was featured as part of the episode of “ER” called “Baby Shower,” in 1996. The pregnant woman was a doctor in the same hospital, and she was played by Lindsay Crouse, who looked altogether healthier than most late-stage cancer patients but nonetheless looked plain (as Lindsay Crouse typically does — not a knock against her, but she isn’t typically glamourous).
There was little to no indication as to what was going to become of the baby, which I find perhaps more damning than if there had been a man who’d quickly replace his dead wife, because in the show the baby is just assumed to be fine with no evidence to support such an assumption, whereas otherwise there might be some doubt as to the other parent and his coping skills/choices as to a new mother for the child, etc. And after she gave birth, she promptly and conveniently died, so that no one would need to worry about whether she’d get her looks back after giving birth (and hey — cancer diet!). Anyway, just thought I’d provide a little more context as to how the TV writers did end up dealing with it.
Interestingly, it took me quite a while to find info abot that ER episode. The self-sacrificing mother storyline is buried in the episode recaps among the soap opera attributes and such, and to the extent they focus on the patients, this mom gets lost among several other pregnant women who all get sent down to the ER because of some f-up in labor and delivery. The only reason I could track it down with any certainty is because I clearly remember the mother being played by Lindsay Crouse and felt her to be slumming in such a saccharine and unrealistic role.
P.S. I admit to liking “The Searchers”, too (and “The Quiet Man”—talk about regressive sexual attitudes in that film!).
“The Quiet Man” is actually extremely progressive in its gender attitudes, even today. The whole issue about how she’s not a real wife unless she brings what’s important to her — her dowry — into the marriage, because without having that property of her own to count on, she’s nothing but a servant.
A lot of people remember the old woman giving John Wayne the stick “to beat the lovely lady with,” but almost no one remembers that he throws the stick away a few steps later without giving it much thought.
My daughter LOVES The Quiet Man, despite the very rigid gender roles, etc…
Yes, and when John Wayne drags Maureen O’Hara by the hair across the countryside that’s just so progressive!
What about Annie Oakley?
Yes, and when John Wayne drags Maureen O’Hara by the hair across the countryside that’s just so progressive!
And giving her her own horse and carriage meant that he wanted to keep her locked up in the kitchen at all times. And telling her that he wanted to ignore all of the strictures of the village (like having to conduct their courtship from the back of Micheleen’s carriage) meant that he wanted to keep her subjugated to his will.
Seriously, you need to pay attention to the whole film. Molly Haskell covered it very well in the original book of feminist film criticism, From Reverence to Rape. There’s a condensed version of her argument here.
Here’s a tiny piece of it:
(Off-topic)
“This would be the show where the most talented intern is a Chinese/Jewish woman, and the most competent doctor (not necessarily the best surgeon, but the one portrayed as the natural leader) is a short dumpy black woman nicknamed “the Nazi”, yes?”
Amongst immature fuckwits who bring their dysfunctional relationships to the workplace (and fuck at the workplace), whine petulantly about them, obsess over your stereotypical “hunky” doctor and “who is he fucking this week? Oooh, I hope it’s me because my entire self-esteem and self-worth as a woman– a like totally professional woman, seriously!– is completely dependent on that!” (eye-roll). Rather than– I don’t know–doing their jobs, since they’re at a hospital. Apparently most of the characters still think they’re in junior high or high school. That’s why I watch House and CSI instead.
The Searchers is still an interesting film, if a seriously flawed one. I do think that Ford was trying to make an anti-racist statement, but he got tangled up in that good old Irish Catholic misogyny and couldn’t resist the stuff that makes me cringe, like the scenes with Look, which gives the viewer a toxic combination of racism and sexism disguised as comedy.
togolosh wrote:
November 19, 2007 at 1:02 pm
The thing that fascinates me most is that the gender stereotyping doesn’t come when the threat is acute, but rather afterwards, when the threat is fading. During the acute phase, where the members of the group personally know people who’ve been injured, killed, or kidnapped, the focus is much more on the real threat. Only when there’s some distance, when the threat is more theoretical than real, do you see the development of gendered narratives of male protector and female victim.
I’d argue the backlash is the result of the need to reclaim power. Even if you save the immediate victims of the real threat — restore them to full physical and financial health — there’s still the imbalance caused by the attack in the first place. The victims feel powerless — and it is powerlessness that is the true sin of the victim. Humans feel the need fro power such that the attack cannot happen again.
So you have a two-step. First, you impart all of the powerlessness to the victim. This requires a bit of obfuscation, since the “hero” of the story was, in truth, powerless to protect the victim in the first place. But so long as he (it’s he, right?) recovers quickly, no one notices the flaw in the narrative. Second, you demand the power to prevent the danger from every happening again, and no price is too high — so long as someone else pays it. End result: you never feel powerless again. The victim is probably further victimized by you — but hey, victims are victims, that’s how they’re supposed to feel.
Mnemosyne, I like “The Quiet Man” enough to give it another viewing with the feminist point of view.
I agree that Mary Kate is definitely a strong character, with an independent streak unbecoming in her sexist society, and of course the Widow (and her maid, who is truly awesome) doesn’t take any crap from anyone else.
In other words, I would be very happy to be wrong about my take on the movie.
Amongst immature fuckwits who bring their dysfunctional relationships to the workplace (and fuck at the workplace), whine petulantly about them, obsess over your stereotypical “hunky” doctor and “who is he fucking this week? Oooh, I hope it’s me because my entire self-esteem and self-worth as a woman– a like totally professional woman, seriously!– is completely dependent on that!” (eye-roll).
[Currently going through Season 3] True enough - that describes Meredith and George quite well, as well as the senior doctors - and, boy, does Meredith deserve a good ass-kicking now and again.
But, hell - it’s a soap opera. Having half the cast act like they’re in high school is well within the bounds of the genre.
And besides, it’s one of my guilty pleasures that I like the friggin’ show. Alex rules!
The Searchers is an interesting example of a Rorshach test of a movie, it appears.
Mnemosyne, I like “The Quiet Man” enough to give it another viewing with the feminist point of view.
Oh, c’mon, I was actually getting to use my two film degrees for a minute there!
Molly Haskell’s book was the first film criticism book I bought as a baby film student, so I have a soft spot for her — she’s still a great general-interest starting place for feminist criticism.
“The Quiet Man” is an odd movie: male domination is the expected ideal in that village, but it’s constantly undercut by the male lead, who’s no less a masculine icon than John freakin’ Wayne.
“The Searchers” is an interesting example of a Rorshach test of a movie, it appears.
I remember reading an essay — lo these many years ago — talking about The Searchers as THE seminal movie for filmmakers of the 1970s. Not only is Taxi Driver a direct homage to it by Scorsese and Paul Schrader, it turns up in seemingly unlikely places like Star Wars (specifically, the scene where Luke returns to the burning farm).
The essay doesn’t seem to be online and I don’t feel like trying to dig out my class reader from almost 20 years ago at the moment, but The Searchers is definitely a film that’s been interpreted and re-intepreted and then someone does an interpretation of the re-interpretation.
I always find it amusing that so many of our swaggering “manly” types are always claiming that they’re the victims of everything - feminism, the culture wars, diversity, atheism, you name it.
It puts me in mind of one of Umberto Eco’s descriptions of fascists:
Eco’s description of fascism always reminded me of racist mythology.
“They’re subhuman!”
“They come over here to steal our women!” Why would your women be attracted to subhumans?
“They come over here to steal our jobs!” How could a subhuman be more competent at your job than you?
It’s no different than a schoolyard inferiority complex, merely writ large.
After the whole PIATOR rape apologist fiasco…I view everything he says through that filter now (and therefore distrust pretty much all of it and wonder why he is still allowed to post here bunny-free after expressing such indefensible opinions).
Does anyone else feel that way? Wonder how he can even show his face here again?
I say attack an indefensible, negative position if you see one. That said, I think it’s a little odd to bring that up, and attack someone’s posting rights, when they appear to be just joining in a conversation in a neutral way.
The thing I hate about the Quiet Man is that (as with too many soap opera plots) the entire thing turns on his stupid lie of omission. If John Wayne’s character had just told the Maureen O’Hara character *why* he didn’t want to punch her brother out (because he’d killed a man in the boxing ring which is why he fled to Ireland in the first place), she seemed more than clever enough to work out a different solution to her basic demand that she get the property and cash that was rightfully hers. That this lie of omission results in what can be read as a rape on her wedding night and then the wonderful public humiliation of the dragging across the village green just adds a nice little layer of misogyny to the whole. Bring that strong woman down a notch or five there you looser liar because you don’t have the guts to tell her the truth about your own fears. yeah.
That this critique of Wayne’s characters basic flaws may have been intended by Ford doesn’t make me like the film. I think the Maureen O’Hara Character should have dumped the mother fucker already. Not only for the abuse, but especially because the abuse was all to cover up the lie.
So. My thoughts on the Quiet Man. Let me tell you them.
It’s gotta be tough watching movies where you can’t control the actions of the characters.
That this lie of omission results in what can be read as a rape on her wedding night and then the wonderful public humiliation of the dragging across the village green just adds a nice little layer of misogyny to the whole.
Just out of curiosity, how does he manage to rape her when he sleeps in the living room (in a sleeping bag, no less) and she sleeps in the bedroom? I mean, I know John Wayne has a big dick, but that’s superhuman!
(And, yes, that’s the point of the broken bed: the rest of the community (esp. Michaeleen) assumes that he took his “rights” but both he and Mary Kate know that he didn’t. It’s another way that Sean prevents her from being publicly humiliated — how do you think it would go over in a small Irish village for it to be known that a new bride refuses to have sex with her husband?)
Seems like a few people need to see The Quiet Man again, and take notes or something.
(it shows on one cable channel or other several times per year, so you don’t even have to rent it if you don’t want to spend the money)
Gone With The Wind features a scene of marital rape, but The Quiet Man absolutely does not. In fact, just when you’re afraid Sean Thornton (Wayne) is going to take what’s “rightfully his”, he backs down and leaves her alone…
I know - now - that the idea is that he *didn’t* rape her, but after a good friend showed me the movie in grad school (billing it as her favorite romance ever) - and I exploded in feminist rage, because that I thought he raped her - and she insisted on rewinding it and we watched it again.
The thing is - if I hadn’t been able to re-watch right that minute? I would totally have gone merrily on my way thinking he raped her. That’s what the movie suggested to me. I was horrified by the movie, and the Wayne character, not because he was a dick, but because the movie was presented to me as a ‘great romance’ - (and I’ve since then seen it listed as such many times, though I’d never heard of it until she showed it to me). I have modified my view of the movie over time because fans of the movie have convinced me that there is more going on than I saw.
But those first impressions linger. And the first time I saw the film - I saw a clear implication that he raped his wife on their wedding night. Which is why I thought she ran away the next day……
But those first impressions linger. And the first time I saw the film - I saw a clear implication that he raped his wife on their wedding night. Which is why I thought she ran away the next day……
She didn’t run away the next day. The next day is when the drunken revelers show up with all of the furniture for her dowry and Sean is clearly shown in his sleeping bag in the parlor, where she grabs him by the arm and begs him to hide it so no one will know they didn’t have sex on their wedding night.
She doesn’t run away until a week or two later (another 20 minutes of screen time), after she voluntarily sleeps with him and then runs away because she loves him too much to let him continue to look like a wimp in front of the whole village, and she’d rather look like a bad, deserting wife than for him to look like a coward. Which is why he makes the big display of dragging her back to her brother for the benefit of the whole village.
It’s a bit of a fallacy that every sexual situation in a movie that was made under censorship (which was from 1933 to 1967, roughly) was actually telegraphing to the audience that sex occurred. There are many times when it’s clearly telegraphed the other way — there’s a famous scene in a Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movie where he goes up to her apartment for probable sex, changes his mind, and leaves again, leaving his hat behind. So she sends him the hat the next day with a note saying, “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”
Oh, but the scene in Gone With the Wind where Rhett carries the struggling Scarlett up the stairs and she wakes up in bed the next morning? The filmmakers actually referred to that scene as the “husbandly rape” when they were battling with the censors over allowing it. Ew.
After the whole PIATOR rape apologist fiasco…I view everything he says through that filter now (and therefore distrust pretty much all of it and wonder why he is still allowed to post here bunny-free after expressing such indefensible opinions).
Does anyone else feel that way? Wonder how he can even show his face here again?
Uh-huh.
First and foremost, Vanessa’s remark was blatanly misandrist. It is never ok for a woman to use the word “emasculated”. But still, that was no excuse for the NY Post’s use of a gang rape threat as their comeback.
I admit to watching Private Practice every opportunity I get. If there is one good thing about the Writers’ Guild of America strike (which is getting no press outside of TMZ), it’s that the misogynist shows will be off the air by December 31.
…btw, I’ve never watched The Searchers or The Quiet Man.
You know, I’m kind of getting the feeling that I’m not the only one who hasn’t finished the book yet (or, in my case, actually picked it up — why, yes, I am lame!)
Do we need to reconvene the book club after Thanksgiving weekend?
What do people here thik about this review of Faludi’s book in the neocon City Journal?
What do people think of this review of THE TERROR DREAM in the neocon mag City Journal?