Rambling About Ism-y Stuff

I watched an old Johnny Carson Tonight Show episode from 1974 last night (they’re on Amazon Prime), and was struck by the casual chauvinism displayed by the host. They had Joan Embery of the San Diego Zoo on, with two other zoo personnel there to help handle a 13+ foot python. They were all standing on stage holding the beast, when Johnny stops talking to Ms. Embery and starts asking questions of the unmiked zoo guy holding the python’s head.

It seemed that it was completely natural for him to turn to the man for information, ignoring the miked, designated (but female) spokesperson for the zoo. And the zoo guy had no problem with it.

So that struck me as an example of the need for feminism.

On the other hand, directly thereafter I tried to watch the terrible 1998 movie, The Avengers, with Ralph Fiennes as Steed and Uma Thurman as Mrs. Peel. It seemed like it was going for “tart dialog between two super-agents” but produced “smug banality between incompetent punching bags” instead. Boring action, pointless plot, and no chemistry between the leads.

But more to the point, the interesting thing was how they Mary Sue’d Mrs. Peel. She’s a PhD meteorologist who has better agent skills than Steed, bests him at fencing, and is smarter than him throughout (at least through the 60% of the movie I was able to stomach).

The movie had a strong feminist theme, achieved in large part by marginalizing Steed’s character. The effect was to destroy the team’s synergy and create an unbalanced movie.

In the end, it was a strike against feminism.

What’s My Point? Good question, I’m kind of just musing here. Here goes: I think I was a typical 13-year old who thought nothing of Carson’s behavior back in 1974, and so feminism wrought in me a needed change. But overreach by feminism, as in The Avengers, does a lot of damage to their cause (the same is true of racism issues).

My father used to say, “Always give the other fellow an out,” meaning that even if you had justice and righteousness on your side, cornering and crushing the other guy was counterproductive. You would just make him dig in his heels and fight back, and you wind up with more alienation between the parties.

If you really want constructive dialog and progress toward some sort of resolution to social issues, you need to have a path to reconciliation, not a Conan-esque battle plan. Otherwise what is a struggle for rights for the oppressed becomes a struggle for survival for the oppressor. And that obviously makes things worse.

Militant feminists, social justice warriors, and Black Lives Matters activists take note.