The Fascination of Betty Broderick

From a Feminist Viewpoint:

In the middle of the night in 1989, she made her way to the bedroom of her ex-husband and his new wife and killed both of them in their sleep. She never denied having done it. The question all these years has been "What is wrong with her?"

Elizabeth Ann Broderick clearly had something wrong with her. She had been a beauty and an A student in high school, married a promising medical student she adored and put him through med school and then law school, bore him children, and lived the picture-perfect married life as expected of children born in the post-WWII baby boom. He rose in his profession, the family vacationed in Aspen--and she had all the money in the world she wanted.  She was charming and beautiful, if a bit of a drama queen, and swore that all she had ever wanted to be was a "mommy."

There were cracks in the marriage all along, and nothing either she or her high-powered lawyer husband Dan did much of anything to resolve issues. Buying something, having another baby, moving to a more prestigious neighborhood--none of the traditional solutions did anything but fan the flames of her discontent.

Watching The Betty Broderick Story series, a part of the Dirty John on USA Network, I was thrust back to the 1992 series A Woman Scorned, starring Meredith Baxter-Birney as Betty Broderick. The earlier series did not give much time to Dan Broderick, but focused on Betty, and portrayed her as irrational, on the surface almost as much as deep down. Baxter-Birney's rage burned through the small screen, and her ability to display a cool exterior whenever it was needed was extraordinary acting indeed. The new series shows us that Dan was no paragon of mental health either, but at least balanced enough to see that his home situation was getting out of hand. He tried to limit the children's exposure to her, the more violent her moods and language became, and it would seem he hoped that at best one day she would leave them and him alone. Betty was unpredictable; Dan was rock-hard but at least better at human transactions.

In 2020, with the tightly-wound Amanda Peet playing Betty Broderick, we see a young couple working hard to fulfill the American fantasy of married life, and it takes a while before the picture becomes a horror movie with the ring of truth. Betty is a Jekyll-Hyde character, female 1980s version, who cannot sleep at night and feasts on the rage she holds for her husband. She goes to their former home, yanks his expensive clothes out of the closet, and burns them in the backyard. She drives her car into the front of his new house. She calls him hundreds of times, leaving obscene messages on his answering machine, and when talking to her children on the phone uses vile language about their father and his fiancée relentlessly, all the while they, in tears, beg her to stop.

This is more than a story of the worst marriage known in U.S. history. It is more than a story of a woman becoming unhinged at losing her husband and children. It is more than a story of what Betty Friedan called "the problem that has no name," a woman  who bought the myth of marriage being the most rewarding career she might have and finding herself depressed and unfulfilled. These factors are all part of it but is something else here--two people living out the same madness, a folie a deux, feeding each other's mental illness in the only way they can understand. She fears losing him and she drives him away. But it's more than that; he acts out her fears by having an affair with a younger, more desirable version of her. In the real-life story, Betty gained weight and her anger made her physically unattractive--how they will achieve that in this nuanced reimagining of the earlier series I do not know. (The final episode on Season 1 airs tonight, July 14, and the series will continue with her story next season.)

Betty's illness is at the heart of the story. She becomes a different person through her mental deterioration. She cannot accept her part in Dan's inevitable choice to leave her. From the 2020 vantage point one cannot help wondering why this woman did not get help sooner--even though we do know that the personality disorders (Wikipedia says narcissism and histrionic personality disorder) she had are not exactly curable. Today there are anxiety drugs and antidepressants that probably would have helped, and maybe a brain scan and a few months at a rehab-spa would have done some good. As it was, she rejected therapy and chose to indulge her obsession with her own anger, fear, and hatred until it won out, once and for all.

We don't understand all we know about the tawdry tale, but it will fascinate us until the day we are able to put a name to it.

What Is a Male Chauvinist?

From a Feminist Viewpoint:

Whether or not you ever heard of a male chauvinist, you do need to know about them. The phrase has been all but replaced, but it still rises to the surface occasionally.

Nicolas Chauvin was a legendary soldier in the First Army of the French Republic and in the Grand Armee de Napoleon. He is said to have been wounded in battle 17 times, resulting in considerable maiming and disfigurement.  A noble fellow, Chauvin adored his commander and loved his homeland even more--if that were possible--so much so that Napoleon personally granted him a Sabre of Honor and a pension of a few hundred francs. He is thought to have served in the Old Guard at the Battle of Waterloo, and to have shouted "The Old Guard dies but does not surrender!" implying that ultimate blind and unquestioned devotion to one's country was not only a good thing, but the expected thing.

 

There is some doubt the real Nicolas Chauvin ever existed, but is, rather, a folk hero emblematic of a kind of fanatic patriotism whose zealotry bordered on a personality disorder rather than genuine heroism. The French word Chauviniste was coined to cover extreme patriotism, but, as Bonaparte fell from favor, the term evolved to mean a mindless bias on almost any topic.

 

It was not until the late 19th century that chauvinism took on the meaning "excessive or prejudiced support for one's own cause" and came to used in contexts other than nationalism. As the Women's Liberation movement grew in the early 1960s in the United States, the phrase "male chauvinist" was born. A man who patronized, disparaged, or otherwise denigrated females in the belief that they were inferior to males and thus deserving of less than equal treatment or benefit was termed a male chauvinist by women who were in the vanguard of the fight for women's rights. The word "pig" was added to the phrase, as more people used the word pig to describe a group perceived as the enemy--as the counterculture of the day used the term pig to characterize brutal police. 

 

Now, rather than male chauvinist, we're more likely to use the word misogynist, which means a man who hates women. A male chauvinist was likely to deny he hated women--frequently responding that, to the contrary, he "loved women too much," which indicated an extremely skewed definition of the word love.  If they, as healthy heterosexuals did, participated in sex with women, such men equated the act with love, in spite of the fact that the two are hardly one and the same. Misogyny manifests in numerous ways, including sex discrimination, overt hostility,  patriarchy, male privilege, the belittling of women, the disenfranchisement of women, violence against women, and the sexual objectification of women. This behavior had been rampant in the 20th century, and women's objections to it came as a total surprise to the men who were criticized for it as women began to revolt in mid-century. In the 1950s and carrying over to the 1960s and 70s, women were portrayed in advertising and pop culture as objects, playthings, and obedient mental deficients. We were either overtly sexual objects or happy housewives. Billboards and bus cards used images of women to sell all manner of items, from wine ("Had Any Lately?") to automobiles. Throughout the 60s many of those ads were critiqued by graffiti saying THIS INSULTS WOMEN. If an attractive female office worker in a major city walked past a construction site on her way to the office, she was likely to be bombarded with catcalls and profanity by the macho men operating shovels and heavy machinery. They were male chauvinists, all--exercising their right to exert their masculine impulses. The fight for women's rights and the subsequent movement against male domination and exploitation was sometimes confusing.  

 

Society has made great strides since then. However, male chauvinism is not dead; it's not even asleep. It survives in many guises, and the exposure of more of its facets does boggle the mind. We've lifted the stone to uncover sex trafficking (known in the days of the Feminism of the 19th century as "white slavery," yet not spoken about much for almost a century.) We are pondering the value of pornography. We know about the psychological grooming of young girls--and boys--and the exploitation of them by their teachers and priests. Today we can examine the phenomenon scientifically. But at the root of it all is the acceptance of male supremacy and power. This stems from the prevailing Victorian attitude of male superiority, which we are bound to find out is a baseless concept that has been allowed credence for a couple of centuries too long. 

 

We are inundated with new names for things. New phrases for old behavior pepper our conversations. Machismo has become toxic masculinity, simple courtesy and civility ia now known as political correctness, and is not seen as a good thing. 

 

Things have changed somewhat, and at least we are talking about them differently. We are offended by the overt exploitation of women for the pleasure of men. We cringe at the portrayal of women as merely sex objects in the films of the 1950s and 60s. The man of those days was almost invariably a male chauvinist, and who could blame him? Hugh Hefner was a hero to them, and young women actually vied for places in Playboy Magazine. An examination of this phenomenon is still ahead of us, as strip clubs abound, the porn industry is thriving, and plastic surgery has become an art of body reconstruction.    

Too much emphasis on physical appeal has led us to this. We human beings are naturally sexual creatures. But that is not all we are. One gender is not superior to the other and it does not require force to support the idea that it is. If there is a battle of the sexes, there will not be a victor. The Old Guard may have to surrender, or at least compromise.

 

 

 

On the Wrong Side of the Battle

Left, Phyllis Schlafly; Right, Cate Blanchett

From a Feminist Viewpoint:

The mini-series "Mrs America," which aired recently on FX and Hulu, chose to focus on the woman who was hellbent on destroying the Women's Movement of the 1960s and 70s, and they cast the charismatic and talented Cate Blanchett to portray this fierce human being as an elegant, soft-spoken and smart. I don't remember her that way.

Not that I knew Schlafly personally, but I was an early recruit to the Movement, stimulated by the watershed book The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. In a period when women's rights had been ignored for decades, Friedan eloquently described the dilemma young American wives faced. Conventional wisdom dictated they should be content--happy even--with life in the background while their husbands rose in the worlds of business, politics, power, and glory. I was a mother at the age of 23; the year was 1963. My baby was precious and precocious, but something told me tending her and my young husband's needs was not quite what I had expected when I walked down the aisle. I was experiencing what Friedan identified as "the problem that has no name," meaning I was not fulfilled by being a passive participant and cleaner-upper while all the attention and all the rewards went to somebody else.

Schlafly was one of those housewives who, married to a powerful big-city lawyer, found it offensive that anyone would suggest that she was not living the ideal life. A practicing Catholic, she had six children and proclaimed them the greatest achievement any woman could ask for. While espousing the glory of being a "homemaker," she dedicated her life to Republican politics, in hopes of being granted an appointment to office after years of hard work on building her base of support, women who bought her version of their reality even though her own was quite different. Her message was to housewives: You are the fortunate ones; you have that powerful man to do the difficult work while you are privileged to stay at home and raise the next generation. She was a throwback to the Victorians who not only believed a woman's place to be in the home but also that they should love it.

My first reaction when I heard about a TV series dedicated to this creature was an incredulous jaw-drop. Who would want to see a series about her? Trailers of the project revealed that the series was to be about the Women's Movement, however; and that featured in it would be actresses portraying Friedan, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm--and all the women I had admired as a young and "trapped" housewife. I thought it might be fun to revisit those days of upheaval and hope, even though I knew it did not end well, and that the reason it didn't lay at the feet of Phyllis Schlafly.

Watching the episodes of "Mrs. America" I experienced an eerie sense of deja vu. I saw the confabs at Ms. Magazine, with Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) at the helm and the very vocal participation of Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman), Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale), and others. My recollection of Steinem in those days was that she wasn't as wispy as Byrne plays her--she always had a strong presence although she was very feminine and sexy. Byrne seemed a bit delicate in the early episodes, but as the series went on she grew into the role, rather as Gloria herself seemed to do. I don't like to think of Betty Friedan as being that contentious and volatile, but Tracey Ullman had her looks and style down pretty well, so I could have been wrong.  I never saw Betty looking as disheveled and disgruntled as Tracy did, but I admit I didn't see her when the cameras were off. I used to see her on television, holding her own with confrontational male interviewers and working very hard to appear gentle and ladylike. I remember once she wore a feather boa which wafted in the televisual breeze as she spoke of women's rights. She did get emotional occasionally, but I am not sure that was her default position.  Once when an English actor deliberately pushed her buttons on a daytime talk show, she blurted out a phrase I had never heard before, "You, sir, are a male chauvinist pig!" 

To me the actors coming closest to the real life people I followed in the movement were Uzu Abuda as Shirley Chisholm and Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug. These two had voices and personal appearance down pat. It was a time when solid characters emerged--women with personalities, substance and at least the appearance of clout. They weren't beauties, these Women's Liberation Movement founders, but they had brains, humor, and courage.

I enjoyed looking back at those early days at the resolve and intellect of the women who had such an influence on my life, but it was poignant seeing them again as young and so very determined. It was painful, however, to see them trying to work within the system, trusting the powerful politicians who gave lip service to supporting them all the while apparently looking for ways to weasel out of any real action to help, backing the women for their own part, hoping primarily to manipulate them to get an even stronger hold on power for themselves. There were details of the battles they fought--some I didn't know about, some I did--portrayed in the series in a no-nonsense way.

"Mrs. America" was well produced, slick and beautifully written and acted, but, gripping as it was at times, it ended up minimalizing the women who threw themselves into the work of gaining an equal foothold in a man's world. 

Because its emphasis was always on Phyllis Schlafly. The series exposes her family life, her husband, her devoted sister-in-law and all those children who certainly provided at least as much stress as most children do. There was Phyllis' own personal ambition to get a law degree and get into politics, all the while claiming to be a housewife, and also claiming that was the most important job a woman could hope for. Her life was actually a model for a liberated woman--her husband supported her goals and backed her financially, women worked for her without pay, yet she made a name for herself through public appearances agitating against Women's Liberation by misstating its goals and its methods. She truly despised the movement and did what she could to create a counter movement celebrating women who did not dare to assert themselves. Cate Blanchett is one of the best actresses working today, and one of the most sympathetic ones. Her version of Schlafly is perhaps too much like Blanchett herself; where Schlafly was strident and sarcastic, Blanchett brings more class to the role than the real one ever had. Her polish makes her appear a bit two-faced where Schlafly's rage was never far beneath the surface.

It would be possible to watch the whole series and come away disliking Phyllis Schlafly, but I think it would also be possible to come away wondering what that whole movement was about. However, if you lived through it and believed it was going to change history, the real question is, what was Phyllis Schlafly all about? With all the power she amassed, what did she accomplish? And why is there a series about her at all?