{"id":8943,"date":"2018-03-08T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-08T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=8943"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:31:38","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:31:38","slug":"the-goldie-age-feminism-in-the-1980s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-goldie-age-feminism-in-the-1980s\/","title":{"rendered":"The Goldie Age: Feminism in the 1980s"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve mentioned in previous<\/span><\/a> articles, the 1980s weren\u2019t a great time to be a female. The end of second-wave feminism in the \u201870s left many Americans believing equality among the sexes was \u201csolved.\u201d As author Susan Faludi described, there was a backlash that sought to undo everything the Women\u2019s Libbers had pressed for by creating a pop-culture world of fear-mongering and outdated myths to scare women back into domesticity. <\/span><\/p>\n

All of this is perfectly encapsulated in two films that bookended the decade: Private Benjamin<\/i> (1980) and Overboard<\/i> (1987), both starring Goldie Hawn as two very different women, both aimed at showcasing the \u201cmodern\u201d woman of the era. One falls perfectly into where the \u201870s ended and the dreamy future of feminism, and the other is a reminder of where women ended up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Private Benjamin<\/i> tells the tale of Judy Benjamin, a sweet-natured daddy\u2019s girl whose world is upended when her husband dies on top of her on their wedding night. Depressed and frightened about her future, she enlists in the Army. Initially shocked at the harsh realities of what the Army entails, the newly minted Private Benjamin begins to grow up and learn how to take care of herself. <\/span><\/p>\n

Private Benjamin <\/i>situates its heroine as the active agent in her own story. Judy is introduced as an overly made-up woman who\u2019s blindly followed the path laid out for her, getting her MRS degree by marrying the bland Yale Goodman (Albert Brooks), a man whose name underscores an Ivy League pedigree and the overall tone that he\u2019ll \u201ctake care\u201d of Judy. But Yale\u2019s death leaves Judy adrift. If she\u2019s not a man\u2019s daughter, girlfriend, or wife, who is she? These are questions many women grappled with in the face of an escalating divorce rate and burgeoning independence. <\/span><\/p>\n

Judy\u2019s traditionally feminine character clashes with the male-dominated world of the military. That\u2019s poignant considering 1980 saw the first graduating class of women from the Air Force, Coast Guard, military, and naval academies. Her recruiter (played by Harry Dean Stanton) sells her a life of luxury and beaches, emphasizing that the military will cater to her needs, a concept she synthesizes through the lens of never having to be independent. In the military, as in life, there aren\u2019t any concessions made for Judy. Once again, a man has told her what to do and she\u2019s bought it, but with no exit strategy, she can\u2019t do anything but endure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Private Benjamin<\/i> never tries to say the military isn\u2019t for women. As Benjamin becomes more confident, she dreams of being a Thornbird, an elite squad of parachute jumpers. Because of the strides in second-wave feminism, there\u2019s never any doubt Judy will get the position she wants; if anything, it is the male ego that stands in her way. After Judy becomes a Thornbird she\u2019s sexually harassed and almost assaulted by her commanding officer, a harbinger of how the decade would be dominated by a new code of conduct regarding harassment in the workplace. Though Judy decides to leave, it\u2019s never a moment of weakness, but humiliation for her C.O. <\/span><\/p>\n

Because women were now in the workplace, establishing their own identities, it\u2019s not surprising that Private Benjamin <\/i>makes Judy a woman who understands how past history has limited women. Case in point: Her relationship with Yale is absent any sexual satisfaction. Unlike later films in the \u201880s, where the goal is to remind women they can\u2019t \u201chave it all\u201d \u2014 success in both their business and personal lives \u2014 Private Benjamin<\/i> allows for both. <\/span><\/p>\n

After achieving her career goals, Judy falls in love with Henri Tremont (Armand Assante) a picture-perfect man who gives Judy the sexual gratification she\u2019s been missing and, more importantly, a man she feels deserves her. But where she was willfully ignorant of her husband\u2019s faults, she notices Henri is temperamental and a womanizer. Instead of trying to please him and go through with a marriage she knows she\u2019ll be stuck in, she rejects Henri and ends the film independent and confident of her future. Private Benjamin<\/i> takes the strides women made in the \u201870s and crafts a world where a woman can take on a man\u2019s realm in business, find love, and get married or not \u2014 either is acceptable. <\/span><\/p>\n

Goldie Hawn was the perfect star to play the spunky Judy. Her characters throughout the \u201870s were earthy and bordered on ditzy, yet possessed an awareness of how they hid their heads in the sand. Private Benjamin<\/i> gave Hawn the tools to tell audiences she was more than just a cute blonde with a giggle. She was a serious actress who wanted to give women a role model to enter the \u201880s with. If only she\u2019d been allowed to maintain that\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1987 was the apotheosis of the Backlash Era, with landmark films like Fatal Attraction<\/i> and Baby Boom<\/i> acting as reminders to women that nothing matters unless you have a happy relationship to go with it. Overboard<\/i> takes that to extremes with the story of Hawn\u2019s Joanna Stayton, a wealthy heiress who spends her days painting her nails, berating her staff, and ignoring her husband. After she falls off her yacht and contracts amnesia, a carpenter she\u2019d insulted, Dean (Kurt Russell), gets revenge by telling her she\u2019s his<\/i> wife, taking her home, and expecting her to be caretaker to him and his three sons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where Judy Benjamin pulls herself up by her bootstraps, Joanna Stayton is an entitled daughter of privilege. Though she\u2019s independently able to take care of herself \u2014 it\u2019s actually her buffoonish husband, Grant, who needs her financially \u2014 her shrewish personality is her ultimate sin. It is only through Dean knocking her off her pedestal, demeaning and humiliating her in his ramshackle house, that she learns what\u2019s important in life. Private Benjamin<\/i> brings up questions of sexual harassment in the workplace, yet by 1987 the audience isn\u2019t meant to bat an eye at Dean making jokes about Joanna\u2019s presumed sex life with him. Later on, when their relationship turns romantic, there\u2019s no issue regarding where the boundaries are, considering Dean has kidnapped and lied to Joanna. <\/span><\/p>\n

Overboard\u2019s<\/i> entire conceit is that women are the only ones who can take care of a household. Dean\u2019s house is slovenly, his children illiterate, and he has no issue with that; he reminds Joanna that he and his boys are \u201cpals.\u201d This puts it on Joanna, in her new position as matriarch of the household, to fix everything. She not only becomes proficient at homemaking, she has time to come up with an idea for the golf course that Dean and a friend want to create. (The film makes no mention of the fact Dean and his friend profit from Joanna\u2019s idea, becoming the faces of this thriving golf course.) The script presumes that the household realm is entirely a female\u2019s domain. Any woman could have come in and fixed it, so long as she\u2019s a woman. Where Private Benjamin<\/i> told women they had the tools to care for themselves, Overboard<\/i> demands they care for others, even if they\u2019re not biologically yours.<\/span><\/p>\n

The end of the film also posits a world where a woman is forgiving. Where films like Fatal Attraction<\/i> require the death of the overly ambitious female, Overboard<\/i> compels Joanna to forgive Dean for his flaws because they have true love between them. Her money can be utilized to benefit Dean and his boys, making them upwardly mobile. The difference between him and Grant, Joanna\u2019s soon-to-be-ex, is that Dean puts Joanna in her place. She won\u2019t get a big ego under his watch because he\u2019s shown her reality. This is brought to its inevitable conclusion when Dean asks what he can offer Joanna that she doesn\u2019t already have. She tells him, \u201cA little girl.\u201d In the end, Joanna learns independence and wealth are disposable and can\u2019t stand in for domesticity, where a woman has a husband and children to care for. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hawn\u2019s appeal to both men and women allowed her to transition and represent women at each end of the decade. Her Judy Benjamin is fierce yet soft. Her Joanna Stayton is cold but pliable. Goldie Hawn came to embody the ideal woman, and remind women in the audience what they could do to be happier people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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As I\u2019ve mentioned in previous articles, the 1980s weren\u2019t a great time to be a female. The end of second-wave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":467,"featured_media":8944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/467"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}