Reminders of how we are shaped by history
Mrs America BBC2, Wednesday Yellowstone RTÉ2, Tuesday Who Do You Think You Are? RTÉ One, Thursday
The Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution was written in 1923 and was designed to end discrimination against women in the areas of divorce, property, employment and so on. It languished unratified for almost 50 years until a group of so-called Second Wave feminists started actively campaigning for it in the late Sixties. By 1972, it was passed by both houses of Congress, and needed ratification by 38 of the 50 states to pass into law.
It seemed the target would easily be reached, until Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative homemaker from Illinois, organised a successful campaign to stop it in its tracks – 48 years on, it still has not been passed.
Schlafly was an intriguing, if deeply unpleasant, woman and in many ways one who would most have benefited by the passage of the amendment. Indeed, when it received renewed attention in the late Sixties, she was silent on it, given that her area of Republican Party interest was nuclear defence and diplomacy. Only later did she seize on it as a path to national prominence, and she employed populist tactics to encourage State representatives to block it, including bribing them with home baking by distributing loaves with the label: ‘For the breadwinners from the breadmakers’.
She claimed the amendment would see young women drafted to fight in Vietnam (the conflict there was at its height) and diminish the role of women who worked in the home, even though she herself had married a wealthy man and had a full-time housekeeper.
On the opposite side were the feminists – lawyer Bella Abzug, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm
(the first woman to run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and the first AfricanAmerican to do so), the radical Betty Friedan (author of The Feminine Mystique), and Ms magazine founder Gloria Steinem.
The story of their clash is compelling told in Mrs America, and this largely is down to an extraordinary cast. Cate Blanchett is cold and robotic as Schlafly, all Fifties twinsets and pearls in a counterculture world. Astonishingly, though, she is eclipsed by Rose Byrne in a powerhouse performance as Steinem, the freewheeling proponent of abortion rights as well as all the other aims of the amendment.
There is phenomenal support from Tracey Ullman as Friedan,
Sarah Paulson as a conservative supporter of Schlafly, Margo Martindale as Abzug, Uzo Aduba as Chisholm, James Marsden as Republican congressman Phil Crane, whose efforts to get Schlafly into bed are rejected, and John Slattery as Phyllis’s husband.
In one disturbing scene, after Phyllis returns home from meeting politicians in Washington DC (where one suggests she take the notes because she is a woman), her husband subjects her to what we nowadays would call spousal rape, which was not a crime in the United States at that time – or in Ireland, for that matter.
What is fascinating about Mrs
America is the way it shows a clear line from the Seventies and the Moral Majority to the present day. Rights across the Atlantic are being rolled back; Phyllis’s fondness for exaggeration and falsehood quite clearly is no foreign territory to the current incumbent of the White House; and on so many matters, liberals and conservatives remain as polarised as ever.
All of this could be heavy going were it not for creator Dahvi Waller, a veteran producer of Mad
Men (a show that also dealt with sexism and rising feminism), whose unerring eye for detail and exquisitely observed feel for the period, from its clothes to its music, makes it all hurtle along at speed. It’s terrific, easily the most stylish US import I’ve watched this year. Also off to a good start was
Yellowstone on RTÉ2. It’s in its third series in the States now, but only just arrived here, likely as a late buy-in to fill the lockdown-devastated schedules. It’s the story of John Dutton (a careworn Kevin Costner), who owns the largest contiguous ranch not only in Montana but in the entire United States, and his family – Luke, a former US Navy SEAL, who is married to a Native American woman; Beth, his manipulative financier daughter; and Jamie, a lawyer and aspiring politician who can see benefits to both sides as property developers attempt to buy some of the ranch for new housing.
As Beth, Kelly Reilly steals the show, a blousy, sassy, ruthless Alexis Carrington clone. Indeed, while Yellowstone is entertaining, it also is derivative, but in a good way – there are hints in there not only of Dynasty but of Dallas and
Falcon Crest too, as well as recent shows such as Succession.
The pilot was meaty, and with modern-day conflict between Native Americans and those intruding on their land also front and centre, it seems the Wild West in many ways hasn’t been tamed at all.
One good thing about our current situation is the chance to watch programmes we missed first time round. In Who Do You Think You
Are? I was intrigued by the story of Lee Mack’s grandfather Joe, born to an unmarried Irishwoman in England and brought back to Ballina, where he was raised by his grandparents in poverty while his mother emigrated to domestic service in Canada.
Historian Diarmaid Ferriter revealed that Mack’s great-greatgrandfather was always in trouble with the law for running a shebeen, and that he once claimed compensation from the Free State government after the windows of the house were shot out during the Civil War.
All three programmes reminded me that history is a heartbeat, whether it’s the relatively recent Sixties and Seventies, the Twenties, or the move west across the US in the 19th century. Every generation paves the way for those that follow. Sometimes good, as was the case for Mack’s other grandad, who survived the Battle of the Somme, and sometimes bad – it’s incredible that the world’s foremost democracy still has not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.
Battles sometimes are exhilarating, but wars take a little longer to win. In our Covid reality, we all need to bear that in mind.