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PenOnBeadedChain -> RE: "I dream of jeannie" vs. "bewitched" - kink factor (1/19/2010 7:45:13 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Drifa
I can't even watch these shows today. The excruciating thing in both cases is that the male in both shows is so insecure in his own masculinity that he has to forbid the powerful woman from using HER powers, even when they would do him nothing but good.
It was a little parable about how threatened men felt by women in the workforce and in the sexual revolution, I think.
Whoa. This blows me away Dirfa. Very astute call. I think this was doubly true of Bewitched, as she not only was reining in her powers so that her husband could feel like he was "making it" for them (in their post-war suburban American Dream) without the aid of any artificial (supernatural) prosthesis, but Samantha was also on a purely mortal level the more capable of the two of them. Darrin was an all-round klutz and she ran circles around him socially, intellectually, and emotionally even before twitching her nose. Yet she still allowed him to feel, nominally, like "the one ruling the roost". The ultimate strong woman propping up a weak but I guess endearing man.
Now the question is, how conscious do you suppose the writers were of this parable aspect? I would assume that was the very point. In fact, they were expressing something bubbling in the culture already (it was the 60s, so all of that was in full swing). And I suspect even the old-school men of the time who watched these shows, even as they expressed some fretting at the new "uppity women" all around them, were secretly getting some relief, even catharsis, out of being subtly parodied in those shows. My theory is even the Ralph Kramdens (see The Honeymooners from a decade earlier) of the time were getting flat-out worn down by the tiring facade they had to put up all day pretending to know how to run everyone's life (let alone their own).
So, I'd suggest that at least Bewitched was actually greasing the skids for (or reflecting at least) what was going on in society. "Jeanie", I'm not as sure about. Major Nelson was not put forth as much as a ridiculous figure as Darrin. His only hapless moments in fact were when Jeanie's childish antics got him in tight spots. And he was at once solicitous but also condescending toward her (she was, after all, a slave in a bottle). Now that I think about it, Jeanie seemed like a bit more of a backlash piece. She definitely was reining in her powers (and to take her act in for even a moment, you knew what those powers really symbolized, yes) so the Major could keep his status quo thing going. Stay home and be sexy, but don't get in the way of my important patriarchal expression of manhood at the Pentagon, please.
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