April 12, 2011

It’s difficult to know whether to be thrilled or disheartened that a film from the 1950s understands women better than most entertainment today. And yet, that simultaneous delight and despair at apprehending the social and cultural phenomena of a bygone era, as it plays out in its own time, was what struck me most while watching the 1959 film “The Best of Everything”, a tableau of New York’s mid-20th century working-girl culture.

What is on display – both stylistically and dramatically – are women whose ambitions extend beyond the bifurcated work-or-family stereotype and exemplify, at least in fantasy, what gender equality might look like if it weren’t so intimidating to men. Here, women do not passively accept their fates or the limits of the culture, but dare to want more – much more – the ascending career, the financial independence, the whirl of romantic love and the security of marriage all at once. And though they demand and pursue the ideals they hold, many still become casualties of their out-sized dreams, in a world that wants them to settle for less.

“Everything” offers, by many accounts, the vision of women “Mad Men” would like you to see but falls short of in substance. Stylistically, they are the same. In fact, the lushness of style – the fashions, the furniture, the promising bustle of Manhattan on the cusp of its international prominence – are similarly on display in both canvases, but whereas “Mad Men” is stylistically darker, “The Best of Everything” evokes a certain social darkness that bursts open the seams of sexism, misogyny and feminine ambition in ways “Mad Men” reduces to self-serving clichés.

For instance, in “Mad Men” the turmoil of Betty, an unhappy housewife is resolved when she finds a new husband. In “Everything” the beautiful typist Greg is spurned by her lover and in despair, falls to her death. The idea being that in “Mad Men” women are rescued, and in “Everything” they must rescue themselves – or die. In “Mad Men” playing mistress to a powerful man is sexy and glamorous; in “Everything” only a proper marriage will do. When one female executive, played by Joan Crawford, leaves her job to pursue an elusive relationship, rather than settle for less than what she wants, she returns to the office.

In his essay “The Mad Men Account” published in the New York Review of Books, the critic Daniel Mendelsohn impugns the show’s overall treatment of social issues, suggesting that where complexity is needed, superficiality suffices.

“[The show] proceeds, for the most part, like a soap opera, serially (and often unbelievably) generating, and then resolving, successive personal crises (adulteries, abortions, premarital pregnancies, interracial affairs, alcoholism and drug addiction, etc.), rather than exploring, by means of believable conflicts between personality and situation, the contemporary social and cultural phenomena it regards with such fascination: sexism, misogyny, social hypocrisy, racism, the counterculture, and so forth.

…

When people talk about the show, they talk (if they’re not talking about the clothes and furniture) about the special perspective its historical setting creates—the graphic picture that it is able to paint of the attitudes of an earlier time, attitudes likely to make us uncomfortable or outraged today.”

The irony here is that “Everything” isn’t reimagining a historical perspective, it is a document of one. And rather than that particular reality provoking outrage, despite the social norms of the time, it presents something aspirational; the focus of the film, versus the TV show, is not misogyny but female ambition (Misogyny, at least in the film, is a byproduct of feminine ambition and talent, not a reason for precluding it).

There is nothing more “uncomfortable” about the world the film depicts than the world as it exists today. For women, much is still the same. It is still necessary to be fierce in the fight for it all, for the right to craft a professional and personal reality beyond what is common or acceptable. The uncomfortable thing is that the women in “Everything” do not resign themselves to their fates the way the women of “Mad Men” do, which speaks to either a gross misunderstanding of mid-century women or our need to retroactively judge them as less enlightened.

The women of “Mad Men” and the women of “Everything” suffer the same injustices of social imprisonment. But while the “Mad Men” gals resolve to daintily traipse around in their cages, the “Everything” women are clawing their way out, so indomitable are their spirits, their urge to have everything they desire.

(I also want to write on the film’s ideas about love but I have to finish a column on Tom Cruise!)

Headlines are buzzing that Justin Bieber declined to meet a group of children affected by Gaza rocket fire during his highly-publicized trip to Israel.  And that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in response, canceled his scheduled meeting with the teenaged superstar, which was to take place the day before Bieber’s show at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park on April 14.

To which I say:  Give Bieber a break.  Bibi Netanyahu took advantage of the public relations opportunity offered by his meeting with the global superstar to invite the children to attend, according to haaretz.com.  Bieber apparently canceled after learning of this curveball.  The singer is just 17, and he’s been burned before—thrust into political hot water when a Rolling Stone reporter—very inappropriately, I might add—asked the then-16-year-old to comment on abortion and other political issues. 

Bieber has hinted about his feelings in several recent tweets: ” i want to see this country and all the places ive dreamed of and whether its the paps [paparazzi] or being pulled into politics its been frustrating,” one tweet read.

Other tweets stated: “i’m in the holy land and i am grateful for that. I just want to have the same personal experience that others have here” and “You would think paparazzi would have some respect in holy places. All I wanted was the chance to walk where jesus did here in isreal.”

While other artists have declined to perform in Israel for political and/or security reasons, Bieber and his mother, Pattie Mallette, a born-again Christian, were excited about visiting the Holy Land, Bieber’s manager, Scott “Scooter” Braun” told me in February, when I spoke to him about the documentary “Justin Bieber:  Never Say Never.  “Justin told me he wanted to rearrange his touring schedule because he wants to do seder in Israel,” Braun—who has become Bieber’s Jewish “father figure” —said in a phone interview.

When I asked if Bieber was going to visit sites such as Yad Vashem, Braun said, “He wants to see it all. And it’s not just him; I want to take the entire crew, put them on tour buses and let them see the country.  And can I be clear on something?  It isn’t just about going to Israel.  If the right situation presented itself and we got invited to go to Egypt [note: Braun said this before the democracy-related unrest] or Jordan or any of these places, we’d go as well, because at the end of the day, music isn’t something that’s supposed to be held to one group or another.” 

Bieber’s Tel Aviv concert is expected to draw some 60,000 viewers; let’s hope the experience proves a positive one for the young singer, who seems like a real mensch.  He even recites the “Shema” with Braun before every one of his shows, in part, to make the Jewish members of his crew feel at home. 

Bieber and his crew had been gathering in “prayer circles” before each performance, led by Mallette:  “I felt like if we were going to say a prayer ‘in Jesus’ name, amen,’ that Dan Kanter [the show’s music director] and I, who are Jewish, should be represented as well,” Braun said.  “We’d do the same if we had someone Muslim or Hindu in the group – we’re all-inclusive.  So Dan and I would say the ‘Shema,’ and after the third show, as we were about to say it, Justin chimed in.  I asked him, ‘What the heck was that?’ and he goes, ‘I memorized it.’  He was like, ‘This is something Jesus would have said, right?’ and I said, ‘yes,’ and he’s like, ‘Then I want to say it with you guys.’  I explained that it’s one of our holiest prayers, and that it means the Lord is one and he thought that was cool.  He knows it’s in ancient Hebrew; he knows that Jesus would have said it and since Dan and I are every close to him, he wanted us to feel included as well.  He’s a very special kid.”