Both.
The "I love Lucy" vision of the 1950s is rather popular with conservatives -- or hadn't you noticed? It may in part be down to misplaced childhood nostalgia, but I suspect there's rather more to it than that: it was a very conformist, authoritarian era.
(BTW, it's still not mutually exclusive with you disliking USA.)
I don't dislike the USA per se; there are aspects of it that I like and admire a lot. There are other localized aspects that I despise: but hey, don't let my nuanced opinions get in the way of your desire to pigeon hole me.
]]>Blogging is the written equivalent of standing on a box on the sidewalk, expounding to passers-by. Such acts were once relevant to political and social development.
]]>The " Stepford Wives " viewpoint.. As you express it? Is clearly a very US of American point of view and it’s worth noting that and that “...? The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical thriller novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who begins to suspect that the frighteningly submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands.
Two films of the same name have been adapted from the novel; the first starred Katharine Ross and was released in 1975, while a remake starring Nicole Kidman appeared in 2004. Edgar J. Scherick produced the 1975 version, all three sequels, and was posthumously credited as producer in the 2004 remake. "
No link in the interests of avoiding the Harsh LASH of Moderation...in which interest I will allow myself only ONE Link hereafter...but note the dates.
Here in the UK the principle source of In Home Entertainment in the 1950s was much as it had been for decades and that was the Radio...yes I know but Sex Hadn't been Discovered Yet, and Contraception was very chancy and unreliable . But TV was coming along and by the time of the '60s we were being BOMBARDED...more than one TV channel, Gosh WOW ! And ..." By the dawn of the 1960s, television in the UK was no longer merely a gimmick or a novelty. Following the broadcast of Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953, the number of television sets had grown spectacularly in homes up and down the country. Regular programmes were being scheduled on both ITV and on the BBC, and several programmes had caught the imagination of viewers like little else before (for instance, Nigel Kneale's Quatermass science fiction thrillers, shown from 1953 to 1959).
Despite its burgeoning popularity, the technology required to broadcast signals and receive them in homes was decidedly primitive. Family evenings spent huddled around a tiny black and white set could be easily spoiled if the wind dislodged the aerial by even a fraction. Owing to the exorbitant cost, most TV sets were rented rather than purchased - so a familiar visitor to many households was often the TV repair man, somebody whose knowledge of valves and horizontal hold knobs was nigh on miraculous.
At the start of the decade, the commercial channel ITV had a stranglehold over the ratings in the UK. Not restricted by the higher 'Reithian'1 ideals of the BBC, ITV's stated aim was to provide programmes with mass market (often lowest-common denominator) appeal. Much of its schedules comprised a tasty melange of imported American action series and Westerns with big-money game shows and quizzes. However, in December 1960, ITV showed the first episode of a drama series that would go down in history as Britain's best-loved programme of all time: Coronation Street. At roughly the same time, ITV increased the amount of drama and plays it was carrying, generating huge audiences for what now appear to be quite high-brow adaptations of complex stage plays. The man responsible for a lot of this shift in thinking (and for commissioning such legendary programmes as The Avengers) was a Canadian called Sydney Newman. Seeing how successful he had been at ITV, the BBC decided to poach him and offered him a job as head of Series and Serials for the BBC. "
And so forth, as being easy to look up. My first Boss/Line manager was ex RAF and he enjoyed a certain local fame in his neighbourhood for having the first TV ever seen in town. Which TV he actually built from scratch and upon which an improbably crowded living room audience watched the Coronation.
When TV appeared in the days of my teens it was absolutely LOADED with bought from US of American TV programming. Every Night a Western plus many variants on The “I Love Lucy” pattern and this plus the British Social Pattern of Marriage and The Woman’s Place. All of this piled on top of the Radio Programming...The Archers, Mrs Dales Diary and so forth...again A Woman’s Place was fixed as if in Stone. This wasn’t Stated, because it didn’t NEED to be, anymore than did other social attitudes for...well , one of the Really Popular Light Entertainment TV shows on British TV was “The Black And White Minstrel Show “ ...look it up if you haven’t heard of it. I think that you will find it instructive that it was so very popular. The Black And White Minstrel show was last broadcast in the UK in...1978! Look it up on U Tube but prepare to feel nauseous.
But back to The Step ford Wives?
Way back in the late 1970s my Mother demanded that I teach one of her friends “To FIGHT” this because my principle physical recreation of those days...apart from Girls...was Martial Arts in various forms. I explained that her mate would be much better off going to a regular self defence course as maybe run by a female copper or an ex military female person - and I would find one! Mum EXPLAINED that this was a very BAD idea since her mates Husband...who was very Upper Middle Class Professional, had taken to punctuating their arguments on the future of their kids by seizing her by the throat and shaking her. Apparently they had met at university and thereafter married with children, after which time HE had become much more fundamentalist Jewish and SHE considerably less so and this made the very serious Stepford Difference.
So I discussed the wisdom of establishing a safe house to retreat to...take the Kids and RUN, but where and how?...and then taught her how to break a forward strangle hold and counter attack and follow up to that attack if it was only partially successful . And so on and so forth, and this in my Mums very tiny kitchen. It worked. Hubby suffered a burst eardrum...glad she didn’t have to follow through for it becomes ever so slightly lethal after the initial defence...and they divorced. Last I heard he had retired to Israel and she was running a restaurant ...after he failed to become a fully qualified murderer he was not such a bad chap really for he helped me to bury my Mums old Dog -who was dead - and explained to me that I was pronouncing 'RIGOUR ' incorrectly ..This as I was standing shoulder deep in a grave in my garden.
All so very long ago, but all such a short time ago.
But Things are So much better these days, Eh Wot?
I don’t know about Stepford Wives Land but, well, we in the UK owe an awful lot to Barbra Castle ..
“Barbara Castle should have been Labour's – and Britain's – first female prime minister. What a role model she would have been: passionate, fiery and absolutely committed to social justice. She was a brilliant orator. In her diaries, she writes about "playing" with the audience – teasing them, driving them to anger, to laughter and back again. And there was no one better at getting Labour conference on her side. In an age of tub-thumping, political rhetoric, before television put a premium on conversational styles, Barbara found a way of speaking that was strong, commanding but never macho. I first met Barbara in the early 1970s when she was shadow social security minister, I was in my first job, at Age Concern, and we both appeared on a TV special on pensions, pouring scorn on Keith Joseph's proposed second pension scheme that would have left women with lower pensions than men in return for equal contributions. Afterwards, she was mobbed by an adoring studio audience. Back in government a few years later, she introduced Serps to guarantee a second pension to all employees, women as well as men. Barbara's biggest achievement, of course, was the Equal Pay Act (pdf), introduced in 1970 following the strike by women workers at Ford's Dagenham plant. Women MPs were few and far between – indeed, there were more MPs called John than there were women in the House of Commons. They were the butt of sexist jokes, from Tory and Labour men alike, and stereotyped as only being interested in "women's issues". But Barbara never flinched from taking on the cause of equal pay. “ ..
Which should take you to the quoted article without giving a Link.
But that Link that I’m allowing myself?
There was a piece in the BBCs site a few days ago that should serve to ward of any self congratulatory smugness that we might feel on the WE Have Progressed so Far ... RA US!
“ Violence against women worldwide is 'epidemic'”
]]>I can think of a couple of organizational factors and human behavior that might lead to it.
Specialists syndrome - their focus was on X. The trappings were just bait. If they could have figured out another era to run the experiment with internal consistency they would. But it came up first, and no one objected, so off they went. See also, groupthink.
Also, if information comes from outside the specialty (psychiatrists/sociologists/anthropologists (IIRC), its likely to be given less weight or outright ignored.
Related to Specialist's syndrome - let the intern/junior associate/low paid consultant/contractor do it. Someone who doesn't give a damn and merely wants to be done and over with. Or worse, they were a fan of the era...
I bet others who've had experiences with odd to inappropriate choices by large organizations can come up with more with a bit of thought.
]]>That's the in-world logic, of course; the logic for the author of using the Stepford Wives stereotypes of the 1950s is self-evident.
]]>And excuse me if I also chuckle at the unintended irony of you using steampunk as an example of a new literary genre. This is fiction that worships Victorian the tropes of industrial progress. How derivative can you get? Not saying it isn't fun. But is really original or just a rehash?
]]>...which explains why I was able to pick up the US hardback so cheaply - [less than big-river-marketplace lowest price of £2.81]
it's an ex-library book in VG condition
the cover art wouldn't lead anyone to rush across a bookstore to buy it, IMO
it was issued fourteen times in its life, if that's any consolation
so OGH has some readers in Jefferson County, WA
]]>Oh the irony. The Lucy character was not only a fairly powerful (if not in a making money outside the home sense) female character, but married to {shock, horror time} a Mexican.
In a case of life imitating art (or vice versa) Lucille Ball actually was married to Desi Arnaz, and they were the real-life co-owners of Desilu Studios, which name may be familiar to people.
]]>Detail - Desi Arnaz was a Cuban-American, not a Mexican or Mexican-American.
His family were well off in Cuba before the revolution. His father was apparently the mayor of Santiago de Cuba, the second biggest city in Cuba, immediately prior to the Revolution. He was arrested after and jailed for six months, and all the family property confiscated. They apparently left for the US shortly after.
]]>When it was initially proposed that "Glasshouse" may be tied to the "Accelerando" universe I felt the segue between the two was perfectly clean. The tech in "Glasshouse" is derivative of the tech at the end of "Accelerando" and the absences (Aineko, the Vile Offspring, etcetera) I always interpreted as collateral, or even the purpose, of the Censorship Wars.
As for cluttered and unpredictable, the Censorship Wars are the perfect 'cure'; you now have a human universe that knows of no outside influence (see above absences) which can be reintroduced/ignored as the new plot dictates.
Sorry, too many years overthinking the plot. Regardless, would love to see a sequel someday but will be more than happy with more Laundry and Halting State universe books.
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