 | A WRITER'S WIT |  J. Damski |
My Book World
Lehman, Elizabeth J. Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture. Lawrence: U Press of Kansas, 2011.
Lehman centers her book around five topics: 1) how cinema treats women in the early 1960s; 2) how young women navigate leaving home in the late 1960s; 3) single women in the early 1970s sitcoms; 4) working women in 1970s action series; and last, single women dealing with sexual aggression in 1970s film. All throughout, Lehman draws from 1960s and 1970s film and television shows to explore these topics of popular culture. For example, she draws on character Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to demonstrate how, with careful tinkering by writers and directors, Mary walks a fine line between keeping her sex life on the down low and yet confronting her boss about why she is paid less than the man who has preceded her as producer of the news. But though the author’s analysis may seem like a TV Guide description at times, she uses television and film to demonstrate how US women transition from the world of their mothers and grandmothers to the mid-century world of marked change for the lives of women. In the latter part, she utilizes a book/film like Looking for Mr. Goodbar to explore how women seeking an active sex life messes with the heads of young men raised like their fathers, how such men can turn violent because they’re no longer in charge of such a negotiation. An interesting read for younger people to see how far (or not) American culture has advanced during the early twenty-first century.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Marguerite Duras
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Cumming
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margarita Simonyan
FRI: My Book World | Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot
Lehman centers her book around five topics: 1) how cinema treats women in the early 1960s; 2) how young women navigate leaving home in the late 1960s; 3) single women in the early 1970s sitcoms; 4) working women in 1970s action series; and last, single women dealing with sexual aggression in 1970s film. All throughout, Lehman draws from 1960s and 1970s film and television shows to explore these topics of popular culture. For example, she draws on character Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to demonstrate how, with careful tinkering by writers and directors, Mary walks a fine line between keeping her sex life on the down low and yet confronting her boss about why she is paid less than the man who has preceded her as producer of the news. But though the author’s analysis may seem like a TV Guide description at times, she uses television and film to demonstrate how US women transition from the world of their mothers and grandmothers to the mid-century world of marked change for the lives of women. In the latter part, she utilizes a book/film like Looking for Mr. Goodbar to explore how women seeking an active sex life messes with the heads of young men raised like their fathers, how such men can turn violent because they’re no longer in charge of such a negotiation. An interesting read for younger people to see how far (or not) American culture has advanced during the early twenty-first century.
Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Marguerite Duras
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Cumming
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margarita Simonyan
FRI: My Book World | Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot
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