#a history lesson for those of you born in the 90s#or the aughts
Here's the thing, tho. I actually had this very conversation with my mum about a month ago. Talked about the tv shows in the 1950s with the perfect housewife, the post-war attacks on gender, sexuality and race roles, the invention of the "feminine" and "masculine" within contemporary society, all of it.
We talked for a good hour about all of this. I walked her through all the propaganda she saw as a child, all the tv shows she watched, the music, the films, the fashion, all of it. Gave her examples to everything she watched.
My mum is a boomer. She was born late 1950s, so she grew up with 1950s tv -- and 1960s. And 60s, whilst there was occasionally a push to escape *some* of these nauseating tropes, still largely followed the same patterns.
She watched American '60s sitcoms like Bewitched. What's the plot of Bewitched? A powerful woman who can do anything marries a mortal. This woman can go hiking on mars if she wants to. The mortal insists she do everything expected of her "wife" and "woman" role-- the mortal way. Clean my house-- but no, don't twitch your nose to clean it in 3 seconds, scrub this fucking house top to bottom, and hand-cook my dinner (again, instead of 3 minutes, spend 3 hours making and cleaning it all up.) Like, not only do you have to do all these chores or you're a failure as a wife and woman, but it ONLY counts if you fucking suffer. And you can ONLY use your powers when it is convenient to me, a man-- such as helping me thrive in my career with all the men in the office
Who's the villain in this show? The witch's mum (played by an iconic lesbian from Old Hollywood, Agnes Moorehead, by the way) who tells her daughter 'you are better than this. Your husband is a piece of shit, just fucking leave him and do whatever you want. He's a controlling, manipulative sadistic piece of shit who just wants a maid and a mother. Fuck this guy. And if you're really going to stay with him, stop making yourself less by being with him. You're a powerful woman who can do anything. Fine, you want to keep the house, make him dinner? Whatever. Twitch your nose, get it done, and spend the rest of your day doing literally anything else.'
The MUM is the villain in that show. She is repeatedly shown as such. For telling her daughter that her husband is diminishing her, that her daughter is capable of anything and is more powerful than her fucking loser husband, and that she does NOT have to allow her husband to make her SMALLER than she really is (and he is). In effect, Endora is the villain for raising her daughter to believe that she can be a man's equal, that her powers should not be hidden or rejected, and that she does not have to keep shrinking just because her fucking loser husband is demanding more space.
The villain is the feminist, lads. The villain is the mum who tells her daughter when she is being abused by a fucking piece of shit.
And don't even get me started on Jeannie in I Dream Of Jeannie where a woman with the power to do fucking ANYTHING (like, breathe in space, whatever) runs around calling a man 'master' in sexualised fantasised "Arab" clothes (and occasionally people in brown-face).
My mother had NO FUCKING CLUE how much propaganda was being placed on her as a boomer. Once I explained this stuff she said it felt like her head was exploding. But she NEVER ONCE THOUGHT ABOUT IT. No one ever once said to her 'hey wait...' Ever.
Now, I'm desperately in love with Elizabeth Montgomery, who plays Samantha the witch, and as a feral Xennial/Millennial who was raised by television, I was very aware of all of this propaganda that I was watching. And I still just was desperately in love with Elizabeth Mongomery, and lived for the moments that her mum was proved right.
But I don't think that was the norm. I've always been very attuned to tv-- that's literally why I got a phd in it, I can see more to tv than a lot of people. but I don't think that is the norm, and I have been made very aware by neurotypical people that this is NOT how the vast majority people watch television. They don't see the propaganda or the constructions behind it all.
So I don't think it's just the 90s, 00s and 20s kids who need to know this shit. I think EVERY ONE has been controlled with this shit, and we all need to know this.
Especially because, historically, boomers and silent generations are the ones who tend to vote most conservatively (tho I suspect because we are in The Worst Timeline, there are a lot of younger people who need to see this, too because they are drifting farther and farther right into really scary areas).
So many of them, like my mum, had no idea they were even being manipulated into thinking this way, and behaving this way.
So yeah, signal boost cos kids need to know that these absurd boundaries that have been set by cis-het white Christian people (especially white men) for what marginalised people outside of these categories are allowed to do, allowed to be? Yes. We should signal boost this, encourage younger generations to think about this. Yeah, we should make sure the 90s and 00s generations know this.
But the Silent Generations who orchestrated these boundaries because THEY were so offended and traumatised and FRIGHTENED by women, people of colour and queers having any place besides under their shoe? They created all this propaganda to try to get these marginalised groups back under their shoe. They were the ones who inflated the pink/blue, created the racist, sexist, homophobic, neurotypical bullshit propaganda? THEY are the fucking villains and deserve to be recognised as such.
They created this propaganda, that was then ingested by the Boomers and then parroted out as "Truth?"? Yeah, these Boomers sure as hell need people around them to be like 'what are you talking about? That's not the truth, Ellen.'
