In reimagining the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly as a prestige-TV antihero, the new FX series Mrs. America overlooks some uncomfortable realities.
Mrs. America is an ambitious, smart, and well-acted show that turns policy and politics into nine bingeable episodes (though it lags toward the middle). Still, just as Bombshell did with its portrait of Kelly and her Fox News colleagues, the series’ supposedly complex depiction of its conservative white protagonist in some ways shies away from Schlafly’s most unpalatable beliefs. The show admirably attempts to make the messy politics of the 1970s — including the difficulties of coalition building on the left and the dangers of fake news — speak to our current moment. But it pulls its punches about its right-wing protagonist’s history of racism, ultimately making the show’s dramatic stakes and conclusion less powerful and relevant than it could have been, and more of a TV history version of Sean Spicer on Dancing With the Stars.
While different episodes are designed to spotlight more of the other characters, they all come back to or revolve around Schlafly. The show opens by illustrating her home life and politics, showing how her anti-communist sentiment evolves into the attacks on feminism that she is now most well-known for. Her friend Alice (a fictional character played by Sarah Paulson), suggests that she put her efforts into fighting the Equal Rights Amendment. “What I am against is a small Northeastern group of establishment liberals putting down homemakers,” Schlafly says, referring to feminists like Friedan and Steinem. “The libbers love to say that they’re dedicated to choice, but if you dare to choose the path of full-time mother, if you don’t feel enslaved, you’re just dumb and unenlightened.”
This is juxtaposed with subsequent scenes of Schlafly being objectified by her husband, who pressures her to have sex after a long, tiring day of work. In other words, the show tells us, in a sentiment echoed by some of its other characters, Schlafly was working against her own interests: pushing against women’s empowerment even as she struggled to empower herself in her own life. It’s telling that Mrs. America imagines her that way. We don’t actually know how trapped Schlafly felt in her own marriage, if at all, but the liberal imagination seemingly can only understand conservative white women as failed white liberal feminists.
read more
