Tag: Amanda ReCupido

Top 10 of 2011: Boardwalk Empire

All the way back in January 2011, guest writer Amanda ReCupido shared her take on the first season of HBO’s award-winning Boardwalk Empire. Since then, the post has been getting steady traffic, and currently stands as #8 in 2011.
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HBO’s Boardwalk Empire
With its first season complete and two Golden Globes under its belt (Best TV Drama and Best Actor in a TV Drama), Boardwalk Empire, HBO’s prohibition-era Sopranos/Mad Men hybrid, has gotten plenty of attention. And it’s something feminists should be paying attention to as well. Like Mad Men, the show doesn’t gloss over the sexist elements of the era, but instead exposes them in both stark contrast and comparison to how we view women in our society today.
The Peggy Olsen of the series is found in Margaret Schroeder (played brilliantly by Kelly Macdonald), who is wise beyond her era, yet remains limited by her gender. At the start of the series, we see her suffer physical abuse by her husband (so much so that she miscarries, and not for the first time). When she appeals to a wealthy politician (our protagonist Nucky Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi) to find work for her husband, he takes her under his wing, eliminating her abusive husband and setting her up with a job in a fancy dress shop. It is here that we encounter the division of class between the clientele and Margaret, an Irish immigrant whose boss assumes is uneducated and dirty (other ethnic and religious tensions abound in the turf wars between the Irish, Italian, and Greek mobs throughout the season). Soon Nucky takes a romantic interest in Margaret and offers to put her and her children up, though he won’t marry her. Margaret must weigh the costs/benefits of this situation (security for her and her children versus her neighbors thinking she’s a whore), but in the end she doesn’t have much of a choice, like most women in this show and of this era. But despite the boundaries around her, Margaret remains well-read, involved in local politics and with the Women’s Temperance Movement, and takes control of her sexuality (in the 1920s, birth control meant douching with Lysol). It is her struggle for both mere survival and to retain her honor in a time when the odds are against her that make her journey and triumphs so satisfying and enjoyable to watch.
See also: #10 in 2011 and #9 in 2011

Guest Writer Wednesday: Boardwalk Empire

With its first season complete and two Golden Globes under its belt (Best TV Drama and Best Actor in a TV Drama), Boardwalk Empire, HBO’s prohibition-era Sopranos/Mad Men hybrid, has gotten plenty of attention. And it’s something feminists should be paying attention to as well. Like Mad Men, the show doesn’t gloss over the sexist elements of the era, but instead exposes them in both stark contrast and comparison to how we view women in our society today.
The Peggy Olsen of the series is found in Margaret Schroeder (played brilliantly by Kelly Macdonald), who is wise beyond her era, yet remains limited by her gender. At the start of the series, we see her suffer physical abuse by her husband (so much so that she miscarries, and not for the first time). When she appeals to a wealthy politician (our protagonist Nucky Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi) to find work for her husband, he takes her under his wing, eliminating her abusive husband and setting her up with a job in a fancy dress shop. It is here that we encounter the division of class between the clientele and Margaret, an Irish immigrant whose boss assumes is uneducated and dirty (other ethnic and religious tensions abound in the turf wars between the Irish, Italian, and Greek mobs throughout the season). Soon Nucky takes a romantic interest in Margaret and offers to put her and her children up, though he won’t marry her. Margaret must weigh the costs/benefits of this situation (security for her and her children versus her neighbors thinking she’s a whore), but in the end she doesn’t have much of a choice, like most women in this show and of this era. But despite the boundaries around her, Margaret remains well-read, involved in local politics and with the Women’s Temperance Movement, and takes control of her sexuality (in the 1920s, birth control meant douching with Lysol). It is her struggle for both mere survival and to retain her honor in a time when the odds are against her that make her journey and triumphs so satisfying and enjoyable to watch.
The other female characters are similarly dependent on men, and either try to escape this grip or find power within it. Angela (played by Aleska Palladino), who has a baby with Nucky’s protege Jimmy, dreams of running off to Paris with her lesbian lover, but she feels trapped by Jimmy, who overpowers her in every way. Jimmy’s mother, Gillian (Gretchen Mol), who had Jimmy young by a much older man, offers to take care of Angela’s son for her so that she can have a life of her own. Perhaps Gillian wished someone had offered her the same.
Though Gillian is a grandmother, she is still very young and works as a showgirl (this is an age where the only jobs for women seemed to be as dancers, prostitutes, or nannies – they either worked in childcare or for the pleasure of men). When Jimmy gets into trouble, Gretchen helps the only way she knows how – by seducing his enemy for information. Nucky’s old mistress similarly uses pregnancy as power against a prohibition agent she sleeps with. One could argue that all the women on the show use their sexuality as a type of currency, as there was little other option at the time.
There also remains the notion that women’s reproductive choices were not theirs to control. Nucky chides Margaret for using the Lysol like “any common whore,” the prohibition agent tells his barren wife to pray instead of considering an invasive medical procedure, and Jimmy decides without consulting Angela that they should have more children. This backwards thinking, however, is not far from the discussions happening today in which restrictive laws prohibit women from freely controlling their own bodies. 
NYMag had argued that aside from Margaret’s character, all the other women appear to be nude decoration for the HBO premium. Upon further reflection, I’ve realized that the show doesn’t quite yet pass the Bechdel test. For those unfamiliar, to pass the test a show must 1. Have two women, 2. Who talk to each other, 3. About something other than a man. All of Margaret’s conversations are about Nucky. She speaks with Nucky’s mistress about how they’re fighting over Nucky; she speaks with a fellow “concubine” about how to keep Nucky; she even speaks with her temperance leader about whether she should accept Nucky’s offer. Even in a scene with Angela and her lover the two women talk about how they couldn’t be seen together or Nucky would cut off their money. On the one hand, this proves how so very dependent women were forced to be in this time period. On the other hand, the show’s writers could do a better job developing their female characters.
As for me (and the Golden Globes), I think this show has plenty of potential, especially when it comes to its women. What do you think? Do you watch the show? Do you root for Margaret like you do for Peggy and Joan? Leave your comments below! 
Amanda ReCupido is a writer and arts publicist living in New York City. She is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess and can be found on Twitter at TheUndomestic.

Movie Review: Inglorious Basterds

*This is a guest post from the author of The Undomestic Goddess.

I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds when it first came out and then again recently in the sweep of the Oscar season. I remember upon first viewing being surprised that, unlike all the posters and marketing would have you believe, Brad Pitt is not the hero of this story. In fact, it is an unassuming, quiet, doe-eyed Jewish girl, Shosanna (played by Melanie Laurent) who carries the film. Brad Pitt and his cronies just kinda happen to be there, bludgeoning and scalping people (this is, after all, a Tarantino flick), and faltering in their plans to sweep the Nazi regime, while Shosanna plots, schemes, threatens, and even fraternizes with the enemy in her mere disguise as a woman to bring the Third Reich to its knees. It is because no one expects her to plan such an attack that she is not viewed as a threat and able to get away with it. Shosanna’s womanhood is both her handicap and her ultimate weapon.

To recap: The film starts out in a brutally tense scene in the farmlands of France where the “Jew Hunter” (played brilliantly by Christopher Waltz) finds and kills a Jewish family in hiding, missing only the young Shosanna, who escapes (her bravery here foreshadowing her later triumph). We later see her fixing up the marquee of her own cinema (a woman owning a theater = YESSSS), which we’re told was left to her by her deceased aunt and uncle, who she presumably ran away to after leaving her murdered family. (It should also be said that she has a black man in her employ – in the still-racist 1940s – and they appear to be lovers. Bonus equality points and for seeking out a fulfilling relationship.) Here a young German soldier and war hero strikes up a conversation with her. Later we find out that a German propaganda film has been made about his exploits, and he wants her cinema to host the premiere. This means that all the Nazi higher-ups would be in her theater, including Hitler himself. And so she gets the brilliant idea to burn the theater down.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt and his buddies also have their eyes set on blowing up the theater, but their plans don’t go as smoothly as Shosanna’s (again, men = suspicion). They rendezvous with the famous German actress (and undercover British agent) Bridget von Hammersmark (played by Diane Kruger), only to have it blow up in their faces. A note about Miss von Hammersmark: Out of the two main female characters, Shosanna and Bridget, she is the one with the overt sexuality, the typical female allure, the glamour of the movie star. And she is the one who gets into the most trouble. Even with her power of celebrity, she cannot overcome the politeness of womanhood to get herself (and her cohorts) out of a sticky situation with German soldiers in a bar, or out of a confrontation with a dangerous old friend (well, he is the “Jew Hunter,” and even my boyfriend remarked, “NO ONE says ‘no’ to an SS Officer”). Her femininity ends up to be her downfall, while Shosanna’s typically feminine silence offers her power.

But while Shosanna is able to complete her scheme, her projected sexuality gets her into trouble, too. The German’s soldiers’ aggression and sexual advances leaves her with no choice but to shoot him, and in a moment of presumed “feminine” weakness, feels sorry for what she has done, goes to check on him, and gets shot herself. I really hate the two actions done by the women in the moments before their respective deaths. I can’t agree that Shosanna, so cool and calculated and plotting (typically cinematic male characteristics) would have regretted saving her own life by shooting an enemy soldier and in who she never really had any interest in the first place. And I hate the fact that Bridget, already sensing that the SS Officer has found her out, allows herself to be escorted into an empty (ie “where no one can hear you scream”) room with him. While the female characters are not perfect, this just illustrates how each could not overcome their second-class status in the male-dominated Nazi regime.

But in the end, Shosanna is our real hero. By her edits of the propaganda film, her face is the last the Nazis see as the theater burns. As the movie ends, we learn that the Jew Hunter will get credit for the theater burning and the end of the war, but we really know that this time, it took the cunning of a woman to fell the most evil of men.

Amanda ReCupido is a writer and arts publicist living in New York City. She is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess and can be found on Twitter at @TheUndomestic.