Mrs America
review: Cate Blanchett shines in 70s feminism drama
4 / 5
stars4 out of 5 stars.
The starry
mini-series digs into the feminist wars of the 1970s, and finds a formidable
antihero in the Oscar-winner’s take on Phyllis Schlafly
Adrian
Horton
Wed 15 Apr
2020 09.10 BSTLast modified on Wed 15 Apr 2020 09.12 BST
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 far-right 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
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