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In 1991, Susan Faludi published her landmark text, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, <\/i>which argued that the 1980s saw the media perpetuate a series of myths and falsehoods in order to scare women against the strides they\u2019d made during the feminist revolution of the 1970s. A large section of the book criticized movies of the late 1980s, written and directed by men, which told stories of miserable women whose lives were \u201cruined\u201d by feminism. <\/span><\/p>\nWith those films now turning 30 years old, the question is: Do they still show lives of frazzled desperation? Can the \u201880s backlash against second-wave feminism still be found in these films, or is there a new way of reclaiming them for the women of 2017? <\/span><\/p>\n The late \u201880s weren\u2019t exactly the best time to be female, especially if you watched anything released in theaters. Eddie Murphy\u2019s second stand-up comedy film, Raw<\/i>, devotes nearly half of its runtime to criticizing newly empowered women, simultaneously talking up their presumed manipulativeness and stupidity. But this isn\u2019t an example in isolation \u2014 mainstream Hollywood in 1987 especially felt the need to remind women of their place. <\/span><\/p>\n Adrian Lyne\u2019s Fatal Attraction<\/i> is the film Faludi devotes most of her time to, and it has become synonymous with the critique of \u201880s feminism. Touted as the movie that \u201cscared the pants on men,\u201d Fatal Attraction<\/i> sees Michael Douglas\u2019 family man, Dan, threatened by the scheming working woman he had a one-night stand with, Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). Faludi argues that Fatal Attraction<\/i> holds up Forrest as an example of the barren career woman, so desperate for love, marriage and a child \u2014 the things she\u2019s rejected for years \u2014 that she\u2019s willing to kill for it. <\/span><\/p>\n Looking at Lyne\u2019s filmography as a whole, past and present, it\u2019s hard not to keep that image of Fatal Attraction<\/i> going in 2017. Forrest starts out as a progressive woman, smart and competent in her career who\u2019s seemingly driven mad by little more than Michael Douglas\u2019 penis. But there\u2019s a desire to reclaim Alex Forrest for 2017. Her craziness notwithstanding, Forrest is an example of the constantly shifting ground women are forced to stand on. <\/span><\/p>\n In the 1970s, women were told to shun domesticity, to seek their own careers and identities, only to spend the next decade being punished for that independence. It\u2019s a similar path they tread now. They\u2019re told to take care of themselves, yet deal with a government that daily tells them they can\u2019t take care of themselves and need men to make decisions for them. Women are told to have children, yet condemned for the manner in which they have them, raise them, or decide not to have them. It\u2019s enough to make any woman turn into an Alex Forrest. <\/span><\/p>\n In 2017 Fatal Attraction<\/i> is a cautionary tale for women more than for men, reminding them of their inability to have it all. As much as Alex Forrest has accomplished in her personal life and career, the narrative reminds her that by society\u2019s standards she\u2019s unfulfilled without the white picket fence and house in the country that Dan and his family have. It\u2019s a fact Alex herself isn\u2019t even aware of until Dan callously cuts off contact with her after their passionate weekend. Dan wants to move on and pretend it never happened, and as a man he\u2019s allowed to, even encouraged by the audience to kill her. The film\u2019s intent in 1987 may have been to make Dan the hero, but with 30 years to mull it over, it\u2019s hard to believe he didn\u2019t have it coming.<\/span><\/p>\n
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<\/a>Other films attempted to move away from denying women stability and offering them an \u201calternative\u201d lifestyle, blending domesticity, career, and personal identity. Charles Shyer\u2019s Baby Boom<\/i> follows driven executive J.C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) as she struggles to deal with her high-pressure job and the child she\u2019s inherited from a deceased relative. Unlike Alex Forrest, J.C. has the job and the baby \u2014 the man in her life, played by Harold Ramis is equally driven and uninterested in children \u2014 but comes to the realization that \u201chaving it all\u201d is a fantasy. Instead of becoming a murderous she-devil, J.C. adapts, moving to the country and starting a baby food conglomerate. The implications here, for Faludi, are that women are only able to succeed by conforming to their motherhood and working within that domain; there is no room for outside careers separate from their mothering. <\/span><\/p>\n