I really shouldn't watch TV. I mean, maybe I caught the show on a bad day, but it's still depressing. Here's this hit new TV comedy about a woman lawyer, no less, that should be extra-relevant to our lives and have the potential to make us laugh very hard and thus brighten our days, and we've never seen it. So last night, while I was printing out my dissertation, Liza decided to give it a try. So she turns the TV on.
First thing we see is a scene in which Ally teaches her ex-husband's new wife, and now, apparently, her friend and colleague, how to *really* enjoy her first cup of coffee. "You are about to drink this coffee the way most men make love," she says, "skipping over all the foreplay." Ally then instructs this other woman in the fine art of coffee foreplay--teasing yourself first with the smell, postponing drinking it while dragging out the anticipation, etc. After several minutes of this, they both drink their coffee, with appropriate orgasmic noises. We then cut to the credits.
I suppose that if I were in a more generous mood I could read this as subversive--two women having found a way to get each other off even if their men can't do it--but even before the credits I was fed up with it. Maybe it's because I don't drink coffee and I just don't understand. Or maybe because there's just something pathetic to me about using a beverage as a substitute for the erotic satisfaction that heterosexual sex fails to provide. Or maybe it was because this pseudo-subversive moment was trapped inside such a relentlessly heterosexualizing frame (the whole joke being that they're *not* having sex with each other, because they are of course both straight, but rather having sex with the coffee). Or maybe it was because I had the feeling that there were a lot of guys out there getting their BVDs in a wad watching two very skinny, very blonde, very pouty women climax over their capuccino.
Anyhow, I wandered away for a minute, and when I came back, there was a woman from the office complaining about the fact that the atmosphere was sexually charged and that the place was a hostile working environment in which sexual harrassment was constantly taking place. She tries to get Ally to sign off on a complaint about this. Ally won't. Not only does Ally argue that this woman is overreacting to nothing, but she implies that insofar as this woman may feel sexually harassed, it's her own fault because of the way she dresses, flips her hair, and wears so much perfume that she "could be flammable." Now, this is coming from a woman whose entire wardrobe comes out of Heather Locklear's Melrose Place OfficeWear collection. In fact, all the women on this show appear to have been dressed by Amanda's personal shopper. But I guess this is what being a 90s woman is all about. Not minding that you're being ogled by your co-workers while you trip around in 3-inch heels and a micro-mini.
It was at this point that we gave up. It's just too depressing to see these characters wander blindly through this morass, not even realizing that they're caught in the meshes of the patriarchy. How dumb do women have to be in TV land, anyway? Would Ally have to be a rocket scientist to suspect, for instance, that the fact that she has acquiesced so completely to corporate culture that her response to an attempt to change the power dynamics in her firm is to turn on her female colleague and tell her she's asking for it *might* have something to do with the fact that heterosexuality as she experiences it is such a shallow and empty farce that she has been reduced to making love to a caffeinated beverage?
I guess the positive way to look at all this is that I'm damn proud to be with a woman who is going into a small law firm that represents unions, where she will dress like a normal human and work hard at things that really matter instead of spending all her time either competing with her women co-workers for the attention of The Man or sneaking off into a corner with a double latte.
[one week later]
OK, I gave *Ally McBeal* another try. While it was entertaining (especially the little lawyer guy with the clicker and the squeaky shoes--Liza really liked him) I still find it disturbing in terms of the messages (viz., Ally ranting at length to her friend about how being sexually aggressive is ruining her life). However. The *most* viscerally disturbing thing about watching that show is looking at Calista Flockheart. Has nobody, in their big ol' glowing reviews of this show, ever brought up the fact that this woman is emaciated?
I don't mean thin. I mean when she turns sideways she disappears. I mean when I look at her head, I'm seeing a skull with makeup and some eyebrows. I mean we've got sunken eye sockets going on. I mean that in that shot of her holding Renee's hand you could count the bones in her wrist.
I'm not saying this facetiously. I've seen anorexia, on real people, and this is exactly what it looks like. We're not talking like Courtney Cox or even Tara Lipinski. This woman is actually starving. Of her own free will, I'm sure. But she's still starving.
Noticing that, and not being able to stop noticing it, made the whole thing sort of ghoulish for me. Ally's body type is part of her whole "goofy vulnerability" persona. If she stops looking frail, that'll really change the way people read her character. So of course she's keeping her weight down. Granted, she wouldn't have to be *this* thin in order to play into type--but it's a real fine line, and it's no wonder she's crossed it. How time-consuming and nerve-wracking must it be to try to maintain your weight so that it never gets out of the 10-pound window of opportunity that exists between "pathologically underweight" and "thin enough to look good in those miniskirts"?
I don't mean to flame anyone who likes the show; like I said, it's funny, which distinguishes it from much television, and TV needs more shows centering on women. But it was spooky to be watching this, and seeing the skeleton under her skin, and thinking, "Nobody else is seeing this. She's starving in front of thousands of viewers and nobody's seeing it." Because it means that either I have a particularly morbid cast of mind, or something is really wrong with this picture.
Ah well. I promise not to watch it any more,
The Plaid Adder
Wanna see last week's critique? Go here.
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