Bunnies and stewardesses: Fall TV's racy slant

[seabeyond]

Certainly, AMC's "Mad Men" seems to have loosened the jar lid with its highly successful exercise in flesh-friendly, misogyny-laced nostalgia.

And it might be no coincidence that the upcoming series — like "Mad Men" — all have retro elements to them. ("The Playboy Club" and "Pan Am" are both set in the 1960s, while "Charlie's Angels" is a revamp of a 1970s Jiggle TV progenitor.)

Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., the executive director for Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, suggests that, particularly in dour financial times, male viewers — not to mention the overwhelmingly male decision-makers at the networks — might be looking to retreat into less complicated, more comforting times.

*

That could be especially true in an era when men — at least the ones not on TV, anyway — find themselves losing economic and social ground to the fairer sex. "As women continue to gain economic, social and political power, there is always some sort of backlash, a desire to put women 'back in their place,"' Lauzen adds.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44335313/ns/today-entertainment/

[WinkyDink]

1. The false memory of a halcyon time in America for white males.

[AngryAmish]

2. Does Dr. Lauzen have any evidence that the poorer economic times make for more flesh on TV?

I suspect it is just blather on her part.

[fasttense]

3. It's so typical of corporations and monopolies to provide easy sex-laden entertainment.

Corporations and monopolies have no real competition. Without competition, creativity and intelligence is left behind in order to pursue easy money. In the case of entertainment, easy money is sex. It's very easy and cheap to do porn or semi-porn. It requires little to no imagination and can be staged without many props or elaborate special effects.

So when corporations rule TV and entertainment, the results are boring and filled with sex scenes.

[Raschel]

4. Sex always sells, but I find Mad Men to be much more than about sex.

[Johonny]

15. I like that show

It actually matches a lot of the work places the retired guys tell me about. It also destroys the whole "getting America back to its moral high ground of the 50's" mantra. In a way it contrasts the stale joyless work environment of today shown on "The Office".

[woo me with science]

6. A thousand channels of Idiocracy,

and that includes the "news" and "history" channels.

There's a purpose to it all.

[polmaven]

5. K&R..

The poor, misunderstood white men are being discriminated against once again, I see. And, naturally, their first reaction is to blame the wimmins.

"a desire to put women 'back in their place,"' Lauzen adds.

Couldn't be more on the spot.

That's why I like to come here...Not nearly as many misogynists here. For that matter, bigotry on the whole is rare...not completely absent, of course, but rare.

[RockaFowler]

7. This article is a little off

Sex sells in The Playboy Club - and I'm not going to defend that show one bit. I think it will last possibly 3 weeks before NBC yanks it for another SVU repeat.

But Pan Am is more about independent women wanting to travel the country and be well more free. The only reason they used the 60s for a backdrop is that Pan Am was huge back then. It's really more of a nostalgia piece.

Charlie's Angels is gonna be all fluff. And really shouldn't TV be all fluff. I'm just glad we've got a TV show with strong women again. It's about time . . .

[SoCalDem]

10. People often forget that in that era, young women could aspire to be:

1) a wife/mother
2) a teacher
3) a nurse
4) a receptionist
5) a typist/secretary

and that was about it, except for the truly low paid jobs in sales

When "stewardess" jobs started to be ballyhooed, it was no surprise that young cute girls would apply in droves. Free travel, and access to a totally different pool of marriageable men they would have never met in their little home towns.

This was an era when girls were expected to live at home with Mom & Dad until they married, and more did not go to college, than did.

This was their one chance to break away from the norm.

Of course once in the job, many found out that it was a lot like a perpetual beauty pageant where weigh ins & girdle checks were also a part of the deal, and when they did find a man they wanted to marry their career was over..but for many of the early 60's "stews" they had a great time traveling and widening their horizons. Not many really regretted it all that much..

[seabeyond]

13. and had to accept the continue use of a play thing for the many male travelers as their right

entitlement. endure harrassment.

[SoCalDem]

14. which is why many happily "found their guy" and "retired"

I had three high school friends who went to TWA stew-school and all of them wrere :done: by their 3rd year:) Back then it was not a long-term career for most ..

[Tesha]

8. Try as I may, I'm having a tough time seeing "Charlie's Angels" as a woman-negative show.

(Please note that I'm *NOT* commenting on the current crop of shows.)

In what way was "Charlie's Angels" woman-negative?

Yes, the Angels were undeniably attractive women, but they
were also intelligent and capable; they solved the problems
and got themselves out of jams *THEMSELVES*. Were they
not good (albeit fanciful) roll models for young women?

Or am I forgetting things?

Tesha

[Bunny]

9. And they did it all while braless and never, ever mussing up their hair.

Just like me and all the other women I knew!

[Yavin4]

11. Yeah, I Recall the T&A Shows from the 1970s

When Charlie's Angels, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Three's Company were all on the air, we were going through dour economic times.

When things turned around in the 80s, we saw the reprise of the family sitcom, Cosby, Family Ties, etc.

[Romulox]

12. I'll stick to the women's shows (Sex in the City, et al.) with their cast of ugly, flabby men!

Now THERE is a role model! :rofl:

[Cleita]

16. Well, since I was a young woman back then and I knew

women who were both bunnies and airline hostesses (stewardesses), I guess I'm looking forward to the nostalgia angle of it. (I worked at Continental Airlines for a while and you weren't allowed to call them stewardesses but hostesses.) Also, those women made more money than the rest of us office drones, even if it was trading in on their looks, in a market where women made a little more than half of what men made. Yes, the sexism was rampant, but yet economically they were more liberated than the rest of us and maybe in a weird way a vanguard for the feminist revolution that followed. It was because the rest of us wanted the wages and glamourous jobs that they had and decided that there was no reason why we couldn't earn the same as them even though not as gifted in the looks department.

[sufrommich]

17. Mad Men is hardly a love letter to the era. If anything it

exposes the limited opportunities of women and people of color in the 60s. It's main writer is a women. I don't know about the other shows, I haven't seen them yet.

[seabeyond]

18. in a racially and sexist charged environment, to put that show on today

seems to me to be feeding the very problems we are having.

maybe those opposed to this behavior takes away what you have. but i wonder that the people that are ok with it, creating the chaos today, and not goated into this thinking with shows that glorify it for entertainment.

i don't know. really.