Spoiler: Feminist rant ahead.
I never watched “The Rockford Files”, mostly because the character of Jim Rockford was so damned endearing that I couldn’t stand the torment of his hapless misadventures.
That said, we have the second season of “Banacek” on order (for real not from Netflix) because I know we’ll watch them over and over as we did with the first season, as we do with the all-time pinnacle of heroic narrative, “The Saint.” It doesn’t get better than that, folks.
Why the rant? Go ahead, I double dog dare you, think of an equivalent female character in popular culture. Books, films, comic books, radio, I don’t care if she’s in tights and a cape or has little fairy wings, you try to come up with a single female character who is attractive, strong, smart, kicks ass AND – this is the important part, of course we can do the rest but this is the sine qua non – has a sense of humor.
It can’t be done. Carole Lombard got most of it, Myrna Loy too. The young Lauren Bacall comes closest, I think, but still doesn’t quite make it. (Don’t even mention Katharine Hepburn or Uma Thurman, neither was/is funny.) I want likeable, strong, smart, beautiful and funny. And I want them to figure out the mystery before anyone else does. You could make a case for either Elizabeth Montgomery or Lucille Ball, but I think you’d lose on the kick-ass component because both were constrained by their era to defer to their husbands. Fictional Cawti, Barda and Siva never solve the plot nor make a joke. Pam Grier would have been funny if she had the lines, but she didn’t.
Simon Templar, Archie Goodwin, Vladimir Taltos – just once in my life I’d like to have a role model who needs to wear a bra.
Okay, after I got all that written out, a lovely rant if I do say so myself, Robert, that expert practitioner of enlightenment through evil, looked at me and said, “Mrs. Peel.”
Fine, then. Name two. Or one who can’t be called a sidekick.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Mrs. Marple?
Post a Comment