Misspoke

Trying to keep the screed brief today, my point yesterday was not that the 1970s were a golden age and "kids today" just don't get feminism and grouse-grouse-old-lady-rant etc.  No, my point was that the machine which once spat out jiggling and airheadedness (but also happened to toss in the occasional "Maude" and even allowed non-white people on TV outside of the form of Magical Black Women and without Tyler Perry's, nor even Oprah's, influence) has bloated to an extreme degree, AND writers are a lot less common than they used to be.

I look back at some of the hyper-earnest scripts we used to have served up to us, and of course I can see how (a) naive and (b) self-importantly WRITERLY it was (there's a post in "writerly", to be sure - and a relevant one as an author).  A certain stretch of 70s TV tended toward didacticism, which isn't a load of fun.  When you can hear the writer's ax on the stone, it's not entertainment, and it's not sophistication.

But sheesh, at least someone tried on occasion.  In between Farrah  Fawcett and Loni Anderson, there WERE women like Erin Gray (cruelly reformulated in Season Two - to be "softer" and more "feminine" and "sexy" - of Buck Rogers, but actually a lot of fun, and rather strong, when they first debuted her) and of course Bea Arthur, bless her bones.

Mojourner points out to me that access is such, now, that awesome women of enormous talent are out there to be found in a quantity we would not have heard of when we were kids.

But the thing is, the quantity of trash has gone up, too.  My intention had been to comment on THAT - on the ubiquity of narrowly defined womanhood (and girlhood), and how much greater the flood is now than when I was a kid.

Not that "when I was a young'un, life was so much better" - that tiresome old song of the middle aged and geriatric, ditty of fear and judgmentalism and frank self aggrandizement.  No, it was supposed to be a note about how gross cheap culture is, and how in a world where not everyone chooses to refute and ignore it, surely it has some kind of negative effect.  I'm old, strong, and contrarian enough looking at fashion magazines only makes me feel BETTER about myself, it doesn't leave me barfing to a size three.

But I'm not typical, and I'm not convinced there aren't an awful lot of girls out there getting fed, essentially, a non-nutritious mental and social diet.  That bothers me, even knowing my nieces are not typical either.  Just because the people I love most may be safe from the vagaries of this vast, swirling morass of crap doesn't mean I don't care about the squillions who are submerged in it and who might not have life preservers.