Brady Life vs The Republic of Gilead

So, recently, I've been watching the first season of The Brady Bunch, from the beginning. I'm enjoying it, which surprised me a little. It's more interesting than I expected.

One thing that does shock me about it is the blatant sexism. It's more a sign of the times than the show itself, but viewed today, forty years later, it's stunning.

There's one episode where all the girls are united in their desire for a sewing machine, while the boys want a rowboat. Then there's the one where they go camping. All the girls - including Alice, who must have been camping with the Brady boys in previous years - are jumpy, nervous and very, very girly. To be fair, that could be due to the fact that they've never (except Alice) been camping before. However, in yet another episode (and all of these were within the first fifteen aired, since that's how many I've watched), the girls want a clubhouse to match the boys. The boys refuse to share, so Carol (the mother) suggests that the girls build one of their own. One of the daughters protests "But mother! We'll do it terribly!" to which their mother replies that that's the point.

So, the Brady girls start building a clubhouse, and do so terribly. The boys and their father pitch in to help, just as the girls had planned.

Thinking about this, I started thinking of feminist literature in general, but specifically The Handmaid's Tale. Written a few decades after The Brady Bunch, in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is about a dystopian future society, where women have all rights taken away. Their jobs are lost, and their bank accounts given to their next of kin. Several of the lower class men also lost rights, so it's not purely about men diminishing women - it's about a few strong men seizing power.

In the Republic of Gilead, the society described in The Handmaid's Tale women weren't permitted to do a lot of things, or think a lot of things. But, no one claimed they were incapable of it. The Brady girls truly believe they can't do things that the boys can.

Is it better not to be allowed to do something, or to not even realise that you can? To actively deny it, in fact, and use that to your advantage?

On reflection, it may be better to be a Brady than a Gilean. At least you're in a position to change your way of thinking, and therefore, your life. Whatever a Gilean woman thought, she still had to do the same things.

How very strange that there was once a time when people truly believed that women couldn't hammer nails.

New Movies!

So, it's finally happened. The film of The Time Traveler's Wife is finished, and has a release date. Two days after my birthday - Friday the 14th of August.

Watching the trailer, it seems they've stayed relatively faithful to the book. Neither Rachel McAdams nor Eric Bana look exactly like I pictured Claire or Henry, but they are both very good actors, and the film seems to have kept the major plot points. I'm looking forward to seeing it. The trailer can be viewed here.

Another book-to-film being released soon is My Sister's Keeper based on the book by Jodi Picolt. The trailer for that, again, seems quite faithful to the novel. I'm hoping it can revive my original love of the book, especially with Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin - who appeared in Definitly, Maybe - in two of the lead roles. It's interesting to see Cameron Diaz playing a character who's entire point is that she's a mother, but she seems to pull it off. That's out this Friday, and the trailer can be viewed here.

Finally, I'm afraid to say that I've cancelled my Unlimited Card. As anyone who reads this blog might have noticed, I'm no longer able to spend as much time in the cinema as I was before. I hope to get it back once I'm a little further through my degree.

Dreams to Dream

There's a scene, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West which may be the most hauntingly beautiful and sad thing I've seen in animation.

This one.

That cat, Cat R. Waul has tricked a large group of mice into coming out west so he can take first their money, and then their lives.

The American Tails series is essentially a metaphor for several conditions faced by immigrants to America. The first film was set in 1885, and Tanya and Fievel's family are Russian Jews, who are continually victimised by the cats, which tend to represent any corrupt power they need to. They come to America believing that there are no cats there, and the streets are paved with cheese. They quickly find this isn't the case, and are forced to pay the cats not to eat them. They beat them, of course, but then there was this sequel.

So, Cat R. Waul. A dreadful piece of work. If this wasn't meant to be a kid's film, I've no doubt he'd shoot and/or torture his associates occasionally, just so none of them got any ideas about disrespecting him (incidentally, that worked very well for Captain Hook in the original book of Peter Pan).

But, when he hears this young mouse singing, he's enchanted. He doesn't notice, in that scene or later, that the other cats wonder what's got into him, or that they're making fun of him. Considering that Miss Kitty, the other cat in the scene, doesn't seem to notice, the fragile bond between Cat R. Waul and Tanya seems entirely personal.

This doesn't change Cat R. Waul as a person. He's still perfectly willing to kill all the other mice, only panicking when "the Diva" seems about to be caught in the trap. Since he and Tanya have no contact with each other other than this (and she never really mentions him), he's never forced to confront this hypocrisy. At the end he suffers a symbolic death, and is, of course, never seen again, until another villian is needed for one of the spin offs.

I guess I can't really sum up why that scene touched me.

Incidentally, An American Tail, released in 1986, was the first Don Bluth film to beat out a Disney film at the box office, grossing more than Basil, the Great Mouse Detective (also a very good film about mice). All Dogs Go to Heaven, which I've also discussed here, another Don Bluth film, was later released opposite The Little Mermaid. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West was not directed by Don Bluth, and went up against Beauty and the Beast.

You can see why they tend to be cult films.

Don Bluth against Disney, in some ways, mirrors the development of Sacnoth against Squaresoft. Don Bluth originally worked for Disney, as the creators of Koudelka were refugees from Square. Interesting bit of trivia.