"Agent Carter" season one discussion and spoilers

[DEWLine]

And now the discussion's got me wanting to do some digging into what feminism in the USA was building up from to get to the likes of Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown (a name new to me).

 

[DEWLine]

There's got to be a mess of motives behind the MCU version of Roger Dooley's behaviour towards Carter.

(Interesting that they took one of John Byrne's more disposable creations to repurpose him this way.)

 

[Greg Cox]

Darn right! Who coined the name "Ant-Man", anyway? (Same genius who coined "Absorbing Man", I trust? )

Both Stan "The Man" Lee...a genius in my book...albeit a sometimes-corny one.

Also the same guy who coined the name "Spider-Man".

And "Mister Fantastic" and "Doctor Doom" and "Magneto."

Nobody ever said early Marvel Comics were subtle in their nomenclature.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And now the discussion's got me wanting to do some digging into what feminism in the USA was building up from to get to the likes of Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown (a name new to me).

Just one aspect, but an important one, is that the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution which guaranteed women the right to vote in every state had been ratified in 1920, just a generation before 1946. The 1920 presidential election was the first in which women could vote in every state.

 

[Greg Cox]

By coincidence, I just finished reading "The Secret History of Wonder Woman" by Jill Lepore, which does an impressive job of placing Wonder Woman in the context of American feminism, going back to the suffragette movement of the early 1900s.

And, yes, after World War II, there was definite pressure to put women back in their traditional roles of housewives and mothers. WONDER WOMAN, in fact, was condemned by some (including the infamous Dr. Wertham) for not promoting marriage and motherhood enough. And after WW's original creator died, his replacement seemed to have made a deliberate effort to water down any feminist messages and stress more "feminine" themes like fashion and romance.

Among other things, a regular backup feature on "True Wonder Women of History," which had featured mini-bios of Joan of Arc, Madame Curie, and so on, was replaced with features on marriages, weddings, etc. And WW suddenly spent more time mooning over Steve Trevor and wishing he would propose to her.

Sounds a lot like what Agent Carter is running into now that the War is over . . . .

 

[RJDiogenes]

Okay, I liked it a lot, as expected. The show looks great and has a nice cliffhangeresque atmosphere. Agent Carter could use a sense of humor, but, judging from her conversation with Jarvis, that is a plot element. The sexist elements were a little overdone-- men would be more likely to be overly polite to the point of condescension than rude, and that scene in the restaurant was just embarrassing-- but they did also demonstrate that women were equally sexist, which is uncommon these days. There were a few anachronisms in the dialogue, like Howard Stark's "Really?" and Captain America's "It's my choice" (which would be cringe-worthy even in a contemporary story), but they also included some nice period touches, like Carter's "Crikey O'Riley!" That's the sort of thing I like to see in historical pieces (and one of the main sources of fun in writing them).

But, minor nitpicks aside, it's definitely off to a great start. This will be a must-have on DVD, I think, when it's over.

And now the discussion's got me wanting to do some digging into what feminism in the USA was building up from to get to the likes of Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown (a name new to me).

You could research the Adventuress of the 1800s, the Suffragettes of the turn of the century and the New Woman of the 1920s to begin with, but there's a lot more to it than that. It's only the word Feminism that's new-- the concept goes back to the beginning of human civilization.

 

[Guy Gardener]

And now the discussion's got me wanting to do some digging into what feminism in the USA was building up from to get to the likes of Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown (a name new to me).

Just one aspect, but an important one, is that the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution which guaranteed women the right to vote in every state had been ratified in 1920, just a generation before 1946. The 1920 presidential election was the first in which women could vote in every state.

I doubt the Amendment said anything about foreign nationals being allowed to vote in US Elections.

Why is she in America anyway?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And now the discussion's got me wanting to do some digging into what feminism in the USA was building up from to get to the likes of Steinem and Helen Gurley Brown (a name new to me).

Just one aspect, but an important one, is that the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution which guaranteed women the right to vote in every state had been ratified in 1920, just a generation before 1946. The 1920 presidential election was the first in which women could vote in every state.

I doubt the Amendment said anything about foreign nationals being allowed to vote in US Elections.

Why is she in America anyway?

Sexism knows no national boundaries.

I don't believe they've said why she's in the States, or still in the States; I was wondering that, too.

 

[Forbin]

Normally what I see are people who keep posting every week about how much they hate a show. If they do that without watching it, they legitimately leave themselves open for criticism for opining something without knowledge. But why are they bothering to follow the discussion for something they clearly don't like anyway?

I often wonder that myself. Maybe it's just the human need to socialize, the desire to participate in whatever it is that everyone else is discussing. They may hate the shows everyone else is talking about, but they don't want to be left out of the conversation. Or something.

I think that's it - I kinda did that with Voyager. I didn't like the show, but as a lifelong Trekkie and a member of the BBS, I wanted to be able to discuss it with everybody. Such behavior may not make sense to some people, but there it is.

 

[Marsden]

The season 2 SHIELD headquarters, the Playground, is a former SSR bunker, which has made me wonder if both shows are using the same sets. However, they can't be the same facility in-universe, since Peggy's SSR offices are underneath Manhattan, and the Playground is out in the wilderness, somewhere remote enough that they can launch large aircraft from it undetected.

I knew the geographic location was certainly different, but the floor design seems similar.

There were a few anachronisms in the dialogue, like Howard Stark's "Really?" and Captain America's "It's my choice" (which would be cringe-worthy even in a contemporary story),

How are those words anachonisms? The words existed in English, do you mean their usage? I thought people really were making choices back then.

But there certainly has been changes in some words usage, like Incredible was not exclusively a good thing, just unbelievable.
Can you explain, and why would that be cringeworthy?

I don't believe they've said why she's in the States, or still in the States; I was wondering that, too.

Me, too. She doesn't seem to act like she has any family living, maybe she was in New York and discharged from uniformed duty and didn't have the money to fly back and decided to just stay and start over.

My biggest disappointment was Col. Phillips was nowhere to be seen. Even when they were showing those flashbacks, he wasn't shown. I think that's a really minor thing to be my biggest disappointment so that's why I didn't mention it the first time.

 

[Forbin]

CNN did a halfway decent documentary on the Woman's Lib movement in the 60s, including Steinem and Brown, on their series "The Sixties." You might be able to find it on demand.

 

[Christopher]

There were a few anachronisms in the dialogue, like Howard Stark's "Really?" and Captain America's "It's my choice" (which would be cringe-worthy even in a contemporary story),

How are those words anachonisms? The words existed in English, do you mean their usage? I thought people really were making choices back then.

But there certainly has been changes in some words usage, like Incredible was not exclusively a good thing, just unbelievable.

There were some interesting bits of '40s slang I heard while listening to the Adventures of Superman radio series, things we probably won't hear in the show because they'd be too obscure to modern ears. Like "He's a bad actor" -- which didn't mean that someone's thespian skills were lacking, but that he performed bad acts, i.e. was a scoundrel or criminal or dangerous/untrustworthy person. And then there's "strictly from hunger," meaning lousy, the worst, poor in quality -- i.e. like something you'd only eat if you were desperately hungry, or like a disreputable action you'd only perform out of poverty and need.

And of course they used "gay" to mean carefree and happy-go-lucky. Indeed, at the time it probably would've been applied to promiscuous heterosexual behavior -- carefree in the sense of not caring about morality and propriety. I think it was around the '40s-'50s that it started to become a euphemism/code word for a different kind of sexual impropriety, but it wasn't until the '70s that its association with homosexuality became common knowledge and superseded its other uses. (It was still seen as innocuous as late as the '60s, as evidenced by the Flintstones theme song: "We'll have a gay old time.") But I doubt we'll hear that word used authentically in this show, since modern audiences would take a very different meaning from its use.

I don't believe they've said why she's in the States, or still in the States; I was wondering that, too.

Me, too. She doesn't seem to act like she has any family living, maybe she was in New York and discharged from uniformed duty and didn't have the money to fly back and decided to just stay and start over.

Seems clear enough to me. She's an SSR agent, and the SSR is based in New York City.

My biggest disappointment was Col. Phillips was nowhere to be seen. Even when they were showing those flashbacks, he wasn't shown. I think that's a really minor thing to be my biggest disappointment so that's why I didn't mention it the first time.

Tommy Lee Jones doesn't come cheap. They would've had to pay Chris Evans residuals for the use of his footage; they probably didn't want to pay out residuals to too many actors for a single episode.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Seems clear enough to me. She's an SSR agent, and the SSR is based in New York City.

Yeah, I think we all got that. The unanswered question is why SSR is keeping her on. Right now, she seems like the lone foreigner in SSR. Heck, we don't even know how she got into SSR in the first place, do we? Do we need answers? No, not really, I don't think.

 

[Greg Cox]

The real (if unavoidable) anachronism is that it's 1946 and nobody is smoking!

By coincidence, I watched an old "Man from UNCLE" episode last night in which entire plot revolved around a booby-trapped ashtray. Probably not a plot we're going to be seeing on ABC in 20015, despite the period setting.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

The real (if unavoidable) anachronism is that it's 1946 and nobody is smoking!

By coincidence, I watched an old "Man from UNCLE" episode last night in which entire plot revolved around a booby-trapped ashtray. Probably not a plot we're going to be seeing on ABC in 20015, despite the period setting.

It is the year 20015, the Padashaw Emperor Shadam the IV has outlawed smoking.

 

[Christopher]

The real (if unavoidable) anachronism is that it's 1946 and nobody is smoking!

I remember watching old Mission: Impossible episodes and being struck by how much smoking was a part of the accepted cultural vocabulary and rituals of the time. For instance, if a woman took out a cigarette, it was a signal that she wanted a man to approach her and offer her a light, which was a way to initiate a conversation. And then there were things like slipping a secret message to someone in a matchbook.

 

[Dac]

Overall, I really liked it - but oh my god, WHO THE F**K IS SHOOTING THESE SHOWS?!

First Agents of Shield looked awfully vanilla with some painful FX in its first year - now Agent Carter, a show set at the dawn of the pulp/film noir era and it looks like a soap opera?! WTF?! My brain cannot comprehend how other shows like Breaking Bad can have some jaw dropping visuals set in parking lots and residential homes, yet a show that features a secret spy office hidden in New York and a disused factory thats making super weapons looks like a daytime soap. Maybe its my TV, but everything looks flat with no contrast whatsoever - and that just robs the show of any extra jazz it should have, being about a femme fatale spy in the superhero world of the 1940s!

 

[Admiral2]

Because eventually some utterly kool-aid drinking devotee of the show will pop up and say "What? You can't give up after just two eps! You have to watch the entire run crazy glued to your chair with no bathroom breaks to get the true feel of its greatness!!!"

So you're subjecting yourself to unpleasantness because someone might try and involve you in a conversation you would presumably have no reason to be involved in because you aren't at all involved in watching the show?

Mmmmm, yepper, that's a roger. If you choose to involve yourself, that can be your prep work. Again, totally your choice.

Normally what I see are people who keep posting every week about how much they hate a show. If they do that without watching it, they legitimately leave themselves open for criticism for opining something without knowledge. But why are they bothering to follow the discussion for something they clearly don't like anyway?

It's not always a matter direct discussion. Here's why I mentioned what what I did in the previous post.

Ages ago co-worker recommended I watch Firefly because it was by Joss Whedon and just generally the awesomeness. I watched an episode and hated it. Fast forward, I got into a discussion here about something else involving Joss Whedon and had occasion to mention how I felt about Firefly, and got a couple of iterations of the "You can't just watch one episode out of order" dirge. Fast forward again, and to promote Serenity Syfy showed all the Firefly eps in a proper-order marathon. So I watched all the eps the way i was supposed to, and even shelled out some bucks for a Serenity movie ticket. End result: I felt after the movie the same way i felt after that first viewing. It's got a couple of funny moments and quirks but overall its a horrid little series based on an idiotic conceit (Cowboys in Space speaking Chinese) and no amount of quirky dialogue or situations or character development made that conceit any less idiotic.

Did I have to? Nope. It was entirely my choice to go all out with a show I initially gagged on in the faint hope that I'd see what fans see. I didn't. I have since learned my lesson (mostly) and go with my gut on first viewings.

That said, it's not like I frequented the Firefly thread to engage in a weekly slam fest. I saw what I wanted to see, said what I wanted to say about it and moved on. All I'm saying is there are ways you can end up in discussions about shows you hate that aren't totally voluntary.

 

[Turtletrekker]

ABC will be re-airing the first two episodes on Saturday.

 

[Greg Cox]

And of course they used "gay" to mean carefree and happy-go-lucky. Indeed, at the time it probably would've been applied to promiscuous heterosexual behavior -- carefree in the sense of not caring about morality and propriety. I think it was around the '40s-'50s that it started to become a euphemism/code word for a different kind of sexual impropriety, but it wasn't until the '70s that its association with homosexuality became common knowledge and superseded its other uses. (It was still seen as innocuous as late as the '60s, as evidenced by the Flintstones theme song: "We'll have a gay old time.") But I doubt we'll hear that word used authentically in this show, since modern audiences would take a very different meaning from its use.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) is generally believed to be the first mainstream movie to use the word "gay" in the modern sense--although that possibly flew over the heads of most of the audience at the time.

Context: This being a screwball comedy, Cary Grant gets stuck wearing nothing but a frilly woman's nightgown. When queried about it, he quips "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!"

This was apparently an ad-lib on Grant's part and it's been debated whether the double meaning was intentional . . ..