Something to watch tonight: Thursday 20 November

Mrs. America (Waller, 2020)

The oth­er day, read­er DD (tem­por­ar­ily) of Silverstream asked wheth­er I had seen the 2020 doc­u­ment­ary about Taylor Swift, Miss Americana1 and I thought he was talk­ing about the 2020 lim­ited series Mrs. America which stars Cate Blanchett as the 1970s enemy of fem­in­ism, Phyllis Schlafly.

Which as good a reas­on to go back to my November 2020 review of the thought-provoking series as any.

By the late ‘60s oth­er civil rights and equal­ity causes were gain­ing much trac­tion and fem­in­ist politi­cians and act­iv­ists believed that the time had come for an amend­ment enshrin­ing female equal­ity (and down­right eman­cip­a­tion – mar­ried women couldn’t open their own bank accounts without their husband’s per­mis­sion). Schlafly’s polit­ic­al gift was to ener­gise con­ser­vat­ive women to oppose the idea through fear – they might be forced to go to work if they didn’t want, they might lose the pro­tec­tion of their hus­bands and their daugh­ters might be draf­ted to go and fight in Vietnam.

While Blanchett’s Schlafly is the cent­ral fig­ure in the series, most epis­odes focus on a dif­fer­ent woman from each side of the multi-decade con­flict. Rose Byrne plays con­flictedly glam­or­ous Gloria Steinem, edit­or of Ms. Magazine and well-known thought lead­er for the fem­in­ist move­ment. Tracey Ullman – always a pleas­ure to watch – is Betty Friedan, author of the icon­ic text The Feminine Mystique, with a weak­ness for wine and the com­pany of men.

…

One of many insight­ful polit­ic­al obser­va­tions in the series is that the left comes togeth­er and cam­paigns in groups, seek­ing con­sensus (or at least offer­ing a big tent to include dif­fer­ing degrees of act­iv­ism) des­pite the fact that often slows the pro­cess down, while the right prefers to align them­selves behind a single cha­ris­mat­ic fig­ure­head. But when fol­low­ers of that fig­ure­head waiver or dis­sent, there’s no room for them.

Mrs. America has a cine­mat­ic look and feel thanks to a set of dir­ect­ors with big screen cred­its includ­ing Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (Captain Marvel), Amma Asante (Where Hands Touch). It is intel­li­gent, thought­ful and astute and – when it comes draw­ing any con­clu­sions about our cur­rent polit­ic­al situ­ation – it plays its cards close to its chest, but you can still tell what it’s thinking.

Recent comments

Reader NF also liked Shetland:

The atmoshere in Shetland is unmatched for Nordic noir style storytelling. Douglas Henshall brought such warmth to Perez while maintan­ing that quiet intens­ity needed for the role. Its facin­at­ing how the land­scape itself becomes a char­ac­ter in the series, especally when you con­sider the real Shetland con­nec­tion. The trans­ition to Ashley Jensen must have been inter­est­ing for long-time viewers.

Reader TH is a fan of the new life that Dan Trachtenberg has breathed into the Predator franchise:

I loved Prey so much that I’d def­in­itely be down for Badlands, even if it didn’t star a Kiwi (and one who’s rep­ping for the film so charm­ingly in all the media). Might wait till it hits stream­ing though so I can watch it at home with the lights on…

Reader M heard me talk­ing about Pluribus on the radio last Friday:

Heard tell that you were miss­ing Albuquerque on RNZ. This triggered memor­ies: apart from being both beau­ti­ful and home to the least skilled / coher­ent driv­ing you might ever exper­i­ence, ABQ is also the set­ting for Track of the Moon Beast (even worse than it sounds), done up here by Mystery Science Theater 3000, which no one has time for and pos­sibly has nev­er heard of in Aotearoa. Quite goofy, in a 90s kind of way.

https://archive.org/details/mst-3-k-1007-trkmnb‑2.0

Where to watch Mrs. America

Worldwide (except where noted): Streaming on Disney+

India: Not cur­rently available

USA: Streaming on Hulu