276
PARTISAN REVIEW
It
never occurred to me until I read Mona Harrington's op-ed
piece in
The New York Times
(January 15, 1989) that I had witnessed
"an attack on a woman holding power of her own," or that Tess's
boss, the mean, wily and upper-class Katherine, was riding for a fall
in both love and career because "she appropriates the sexual ini–
tiative." True, Tess who "offends none of the more serious rules for
women" ends up with the prince and the corner office, and her busi–
ness acumen does owe much to what conventionally is called wom–
an's intuition. But is it really useful, as Susanne Ramey Legaultso
stated
(The New York Times,
February 7, 1989), "to discern in this
lighthearted romp a patriarchal, woman-hating subtext compounded
by twin bogies of Democratic cowardice and Republican duplicity"–
the former allegedly "fearful of pressing the claims of the disinher–
ited" and the latter "capitalizing on this fear"? In other words, must
we keep invoking the assumptions of social realism - which never
panned out for art-whenever we go to the movies? Isn't it possible
to suspend our sober side when watching a film , and to champion
the equality of women without jumping to conclusions about Rea–
gan Country or the latest political flip-flop? Can't we presume that
Nichols would parody the most salient and exaggerated contrasts of
upper- and working-class lives, would juxtapose them, and would
capitalize on their cliches, in order to amuse us? It seems to me that
he kept one eye on directing this comedy and his other one on the
Oscar- even though he is as aware as everyone else of our inequali–
ties and the need to do something about them. Why, then, must so
many movie critics envision every stereotyped and overdrawn movie
hero and heroine as representative of the class struggle-which soc–
ialist societies have pretty much abandoned? And does free associa–
tion from a farce to all of our social ills do anything more than con–
fuse the issues? In other words, why are dedicated feminists, earnest
intellectuals, and ordinary citizens no longer expected to take time
out for play? Is it because films have been declared art and thus must
be taken seriously, because work is supposed to be "enjoyment"
rather than labor, or because ideology and reality have become inex–
tricably intertwined? Although I have no answer, we must question
this confusion of realms, which inevitably is puzzling not only to
feminists but also provides ammunition for antifeminists and to the
average person who doesn't know what to think ofliberated women–
of professional women who are able to work and play with men with–
out relying either on their seductive powers or their seducibility.
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