Mrs America review: Cate Blanchett shines in 70s feminism drama
There are parts of Mrs America, a nine-episode mini-series for FX on Hulu, in which it flexes its full-budget cable bona fides: good bouffant wigs, expensive 70s-styled sets, a megawatt cast. It has not one, but two character-cementing power walks for its star, Cate Blanchett, as Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist conservative activist justifiably loathed by many Americans. In the first, she silently saunters down a pageant runway in a patriotic swimsuit, game to put looks ahead of intellect. In the second, halfway through the first episode, she marches into the Capitol soundtracked by Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride, a pink tweed dress walking against feminist protesters outside and blue-suited men within. It’s a bold proposal, to ride through the 1970s’ women’s movement and counter-revolution with an icon of the religious right, and in Blanchett’s hands, it’s electric.
It’s also a splashy contrast to the show’s strength: thorny conversations and the personal moments which form movements, for better or for worse. Though it can at times wade into wonky thickets (primary delegates, how do those work?), Mrs America is a punchy disco-ball of a show, a full portrait of Schlafly’s root in the women’s campaign against women and such second-wave feminist icons as
Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba) and Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman).
It’s a tricky move to base a show around the fight over the Equal Rights Amendment, a piece of legislation first introduced in 1923 to enshrine protection from discrimination by sex in the constitution. Trickier still to make the linchpin Schlafly, the anti-feminist, anti-gay “family values” crusader whose coalition of conservatives tanked the ERA, once a bipartisan surefire, in the course of a decade. But Mrs America, created by Mad Men writer Dahvi Waller, mines the past for conflicts and contradictions with contemporary relevance, splicing warm-hued archival footage with deeply researched scripts with a roving structure. Each episode focuses on one woman (as go the titles – Gloria, Shirley, Betty etc) as she navigates the public fight for equal rights amid the personal struggles for opportunity, unity and political coherence in one’s private life.
There’s a common and familiar theme of principles versus practicality in these stories. Byrne, in particular, is excellent as Steinem, the media darling of independent womanhood grappling with her role as a leader who instinctively attracts publicity. Aduba’s Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president in 1972, is a deep well of unfathomable confidence and frustration at the compromises made for progress. Margo Martindale takes no prisoners as Representative Bella Abzug, an organizer of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and Elizabeth Banks pinch-hits as Jill Ruckelshaus, a Republican feminist alarmed by the rise of Schlafly’s farright strain in her party. Feminist-focusing
moments speak to contemporary struggles at coalition building, such as how a space like Steinem’s Ms Magazine is less amenable to black feminists like editor Margaret Sloan (Bria Henderson) than its utopian vision admits.
And punch for punch there’s Schlafly, the focus of the first episode and, for lack of a better term, humanized anti-hero of the show’s feminist vision. Mrs America takes pains to color in the black-and-white dichotomy – Schlafly and her Eagle Forum bad, feminists good – with which most viewers will probably enter. In Washington, Schlafly is cut off from her missile strategy spiel by a congressman who wants her to take notes; the men continue without her as she fetches a pen. She comes home to her husband Fred (John Slattery) weary; he wants to have sex, she doesn’t. Guess who wins out.
With Blanchett, masterful as ever and an executive producer on the show, you can’t help but step into Schlafly’s shoes, and there will be those who argue, fairly, that Mrs America gives too much latitude to Schlafly’s gender crusade over her racist, homophobic fight to preserve her upper-class white status. Elements of this work into series subplots: Schlafly’s anti-gay agenda traps her beloved eldest son in the closet, and her home is run by black women on staff and her spinster sister. But I’d argue that like The Americans, another prestige FX project set in late cold-war America, Mrs America burrows into the loyalties, betrayals and motivations of “them” without condoning the implications of their actions; Schlafly’s abetting of the Klan in her coalition, though presented here as a tactical move for numbers, says volumes about her politics.
Schlafly ultimately won the battle – the ERA died in 1982 three states short of ratification, and the election of her dream candidate, Ronald Reagan, ends the series. But the war continues. Waller has said she began the project before the 2016 election, before the #MeToo movement, before a widespread state-level crackdown on abortion access, before select states revived the fight to ratify the ERA by rescinding the deadline. Whether or not you see prestige anti-hero treatment as illuminating or obfuscating the connections between Schlafly’s “traditional” values and Make America Great Again is, I suppose, a matter of how you fill the void behind Schlafly’s steely composure in a flawlessly executed series. But there’s no doubt an intoxicating thrill in tracing how, exactly, we got here.
Mrs America begins on Hulu on 15 April with a UK date yet to be announced
dreds and hundreds of kittens,” Zweigart says, forecasting his organization’s workload in the next few months. “That is a crisis.”
One female cat and her offspring will produce, on average, 100 cats in seven years. And current feral population estimates for New York City hover in the tens of thousands. Each year, over a million cats nationwide are euthanized and thousands more die, unable to survive cold winters and competitive cat colonies.
“It actually mirrors our healthcare problem,” Zweigart says of the city’s response to the feral crisis. “We have unnecessary suffering and high costs because we’re not providing basic services.”
The basic service he’s referring to is TNR (trap, neuter, return) – the vast majority of which, along with rescues and adoptions, is performed by small, not-for-profit organizations. TNR often involves certified experts and months of planning. Feral cats are generally hostile towards or scared of humans and thus extremely difficult to trap. Rescuers will coordinate with neighbors to withhold food – a hungry cat is more easily trapped. Still, according to Scroggins, about 30% of trapping missions fail. If they are trapped, rescuers will take them in batches to highvolume spay and neuter clinics and, once they are healed, return them to their homes outside.
One positive side-effect of the coronavirus pandemic is the influx of foster and adoption applications. But with the closure of public and private shelters, the number of cats continues to outpace the number of foster homes. To fill the gap, one Little Wanderers volunteer shares her home with 11 cats, and Scroggins is reaching capacity as well. “We have five cats and seven dogs already, you know? We live in a studio apartment in Manhattan!” she told me.
Little Wanderers and Flatbush Cats rely on donations for everything from cat food to emergency amputations, but they are down while Little Wanderers’ veterinary bills have increased by 57%. Typically, Flatbush Cats partners with a fellow not-for-profit group, the Toby Project, to operate a mobile spay-and-neuter clinic each month. Little Wanderers relies on the ASPCA to spay and neuter rescues and community cats – the procedures are free for rescue groups. But both the ASPCA and ACC have been forced to halt spay and neuter services. Although organizations protecting animal welfare have been deemed “essential”, new regulations, staff and medical supply shortages, and social distancing protocol make it impossible for them to function normally. Considering the ASPCA provides “tens of thousands of spay/ neuter surgeries for owned, homeless and community cats each year”, the impact of the closure will be explosive.
I asked Scroggins how her life had changed since New Yorkers were ordered to shelter in place, and she explained how climbing unemployment rates were affecting even owned animals. Pet owners who previously visited low-cost facilities can no longer afford pet care and shelters that take owner surrenders are closed. Little Wanderers is taking in more owned animals than ever and Scroggins’ agitation is palpable through the phone. “But,” she sighed, “we can’t say no. It’s hard to say no.”
Max, a Little Wanderers volunteer, has been feeding about 80 feral cats for the past 15 years. In response to dense New York living, feral cats form social colonies around available food sources. To support population control efforts, invested citizens can volunteer to become designated feeders, providing the colony a daily meal. “There could be rain, snow or zero degrees and I go outside every single night. It’s just something I cannot stop,” Max said. Feeders also work with rescue groups to help sick or injured colony members and support spay-and-neuter efforts. There are more than 3,100 registered colonies in New York and Max tends to six of them.
But the real heroes, he insisted, were the founders of Little Wanderers, whom he affectionately referred to as the ladies: “Those ladies are incredible.” After he lost his maintenance job at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts due to coronavirus closures, the ladies were able to get him a steady supply of cat food through Instagram requests and PayPal donations. He does worry, however, about the coming months. “Right now I have some food for them. But what’s gonna happen in two weeks, three weeks, a month from now, I don’t know.”
Zweigart and several dozen volunteers are attempting to adapt and find ways to make room for more animals. But he maintains a healthy perspective: “None of us can really help animals or each other if we’re all sick.” He urges allies around the city to show up – donate, trap, transport, foster – when some normalcy resumes and shelters are drowning in kittens.
Above all else – above the dwindling resources and growing costs – rescuers, volunteers and feeders are worried about the cats. About the suffering they will endure as the streets go silent. I asked Scroggins what the future held. “I’m nervous,” she said, pausing for a moment to envision it. “I’m very nervous.”