Everyone Needs to Watch Mrs. America
We have now been (or should have been) inside for six months. There has been a lot of television consumption during that period. However, I would categorize some of it as mindless (bingeing all of The Office or Friends for the millionth time, for instance). I’d like to propose that you take a break from “comfort watching” in favor of paying attention to Mrs. America while you’re taking that much needed break from remote-learning (brave people read: hybrid) courses this semester.
All nine episodes of Mrs. America are available to stream exclusively on Hulu. The miniseries (There aren’t a million seasons to get caught up in instead of your readings for class!) has garnered ten Emmy nominations, including “Outstanding Limited Series.”
The show has an amazing, mostly female cast, including Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, and Elizabeth Banks. I was encouraged by the diversity among the female actors and also delighted to see that all of the episodes have female directors, and most of them have female writers.
The diversity and inclusion continue within the plot of the show. Storylines (admittedly minor ones) explore how lesbians and women of color see their places in the second-wave feminism of the seventies. The overall feeling emerges that the writers are proponents of intersectional feminism, an inclusive feminism.
This series provides viewers with a compelling history lesson, which I definitely needed, on second-wave feminism in the United States. Much of the plot is focused on the passing, or resistance, of the Equal Rights Amendment. The feminist proponents of the amendment are wrapped up in the world of politics, even when they don’t necessarily want to be. Policy change is the key to achieving equality, and achieving policy change requires social change.
In the trailer for the series, the battle between conservative and liberal women is the main focus. Phyllis Schlafly (Blanchett), who attended Washington University in St. Louis, was a conservative activist who encouraged women to resist the ERA. She was the main face of the anti-ERA movement, and yet, I understood some of her motivations for her actions, even if I didn’t necessarily want to.
https://giphy.com/gifs/fxnetworks-phyllis-mrs-america-cateblanchette-U4L…”>via GIPHY
In their efforts to fight for female equality, somewhere it seems that liberal feminists left the Midwestern housewife out of the feminist narrative, at that time anyways. With the Emmys airing on Sunday, September 20, the series will hopefully receive the renewed attention it deserves. With the election coming up in November…
Watching a miniseries based on true events of the 1970s during the twenty-first century made me painfully aware of how history can repeat itself. Some things have changed for women and people who identify as women…and some things are still painfully the same 50 years later. How can we make progress when these passionate feminists have not yet seen their ideals accepted by everyone and when some still deem them “radical” today?
There were two things I clearly understood at the end of the series: First, the reasons that American women were divided in their attitudes towards the ERA 50 years ago persist today. Second, we all need to vote in November.
If you are uninterested in the politics of feminism, Mrs. America still appeals as a portrait of family, marriage, and friendship. The characters are so far-ranging; you identify with someone. You understand their struggle.
I saw most clearly that collective struggle—the struggle of women, regardless of political view, to change people’s mind, to change the laws, because they’re not in positions of power. They deserve to be though, which is definitely a statement that, despite their differences, Schlafly and the feminists of the seventies could agree on.