Tiger Beatdown

So, Mad Men has begun. And, this weekend, we finally got our first look at Betty Draper. For those not spoiled by the Internet and its countless “Fat Betty” jokes: She’s gained weight. And I am beginning to fear that I may have to redact my previously stated love of Betty Draper Francis, Bitchmonster at Large. I’m starting to hate her, nowadays, in the precise same way that I hated the characterization of Vera on Downton Abbey.

Now, let us be clear, here: I’m still in favor of making Betty a miserable, stunted, mean person. I’m even in favor of making her a terrible mother. I still think that’s more realistic, and interesting, than “redeeming” her or keeping her around as a passive, pitiable victim. Betty’s culture infantilizes women — particularly pretty, middle-class white women — and rewards them for infantilizing themselves. In her society, she is the ideal, and her defects as a person aren’t solely her fault; they’re built into the ideal itself. I mean, this is not my idea. This is Mary Wollstonecraft’s idea:

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are, in some degree, independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection, which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection, have not much delicacy… Men are not aware of the misery they cause, and the vicious weakness they cherish, by only inciting women to render themselves pleasing[.]

So, there you go.

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I have a bad habit, with movies. I don’t get to see them as often as I used to — I don’t really cover them much for work these days, and they’re expensive to see recreationally — so when I see one that I like even a little, I tend to obsess over it. I watched Black Swan about ten times, if that means anything to you. I knew it wasn’t actually that good, but I couldn’t stop going back over it, and analyzing it, to figure out why.

The latest victim of my weird, obsessive movie-watching is “Game Change,” on HBO, which I’ve watched three times. I don’t think it’s a good movie; there are points, in fact, where I find it to be a fairly terrible movie, both in terms of its politics and in terms of its basic craft. But it makes me uncomfortable, in the ways that I like movies to make me uncomfortable. In fact, it’s made me uncomfortable in entirely new, and terrifying, ways.

At a certain point, in this movie, I found myself identifying with Sarah Palin. Not just sympathizing, not just empathizing: Full-on, gut-level IDENTIFYING. With Sarah Palin. A woman I’ve spent most of the past four years despising.

Now: I’m a fan of empathy, if not of Sarah Palin. And I’m of the opinion that any movie that can get you to feel this way, that can actually crack open that level of compassion for someone you actively hate, deserves close consideration. I have an entire meditation practice, so that I can cultivate those feelings about people I dislike, and for the most part, it doesn’t work. I sit there, attempting to feel compassion for some blogger dude who freaked out on me for being too feminist, and I just crack up laughing. This movie got me to feel a level of kindness, for a despised person, that I can rarely feel.

But also, close consideration reveals “Game Change” to be a fairly sexist, irresponsible, silly movie. So, if you’ll bear with me for a moment, I want to talk about this. From both sides.

1. The Personal 

“Game Change,” on its most basic level, is the story of a girl getting in over her head, the fault for which is only half her own. She’s tapped for a job she’s not ready to perform, everyone (including her) assumes that she’s ready to perform it, and the rest of the movie is comprised of both sides figuring out the extent of their fuck-up, and learning to hate each other. It’s remarkably painful to watch.

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