"I feel authoritative, feminine and decisive; in the mood to clobber Scargill, or take a ride in a tank...The Falklands goggles are yet to be seen on the catwalk" So writes Hermyone Eyre, in the ES Magazine of 9th December. All made up to look like Mrs Margaret Thatcher.
"I am 30, made up to look 50" she goes on. This is an empowering look, but worth recreating "if you are in your twenties, when looking older is still an advantage and pearls and bows come across as ironic. For anyone else it's a look to be followed not to the letter but in spirit. Have I made myself clear?" she ends.
I was reading this on the tube, during rush hours, when we were all packed as sardines - that transportation should be so bad in this country and this city in particular is but another legacy of Mrs T's policies.
I felt like throwing up. Forget about fashion capitalising on the film The Iron Lady which will open on 6th Jan, with Mrs Thatcher interpreted by the glamorous Meryl Streep. This article does not seem to have been written by someone endowed with any brain.
Photographer: Martina O'Shea
I am not happy about glamorising Mrs T. I lived through her time, I was summoned because I could not pay the bloody poll tax (£750 per year was impossible for me to find, I was a student!), I was there in the poll tax riots (which the film glosses over, in fact political commentary is non-existent in this film). I had my PhD viva on the day Mrs T. finally made her departure from number 10, the 26th of November 1990, and I remember coming out of my viva feeling elated because I had passed, to be greeted by a crowd of jubilant students - surely they can't be doing this for me, I remember thinking in bewilderment, I had not heard the news, I had been in a classroom with my examiners. They were celebrating Mrs T's demise of course, it all became clear in a flash. I joined in the big party.
I despise Mrs T's policies and what she stood for, the racism, the provincialism, the wanting to keep women at home to look after young children - nurseries places were drastically cut by her, the stereotypes she would encourage e.g. "single parent families breed criminals".
I remember the cold winter of discontent, the miners' strike, and the devastation and erosion of communities that the Iron Lady brought about.
A piece by Sarah Churchwell in the Guardian compares Marilyn Monroe, also the subject of a new film, My week with Marilyn, and Mrs Thatcher, suggesting similarities between the two "icons". Churchwell's piece barely manages to make sense, it's a bit like watching someone on the trapeze suddenly failing to grab the swing but then doing it, with difficulty, on a second attempt, when she finally states "as parables about powerful women, there are serious objections to both My Week with Marilyn and The Iron Lady. The latter often seems more interested in Thatcher's dementia than her career, and keeps putting her daughter Carol in the frame to suggest the moral of today's favourite sexist cautionary tale: career women ruin their children's lives. My Week with Marilyn falls back on the cliché that Marilyn's career ruined her own life, that her stardom destroyed her"
Oh well, she has suddenly realised that the comparison is not quite plausible after all and is trying to save face - "the most tortuous comparison I have come across in ages Sarah" says a commentator and another writes "I don't recall Monroe destroying a country's manufacturing industry and forcing millions of people into poverty - but I'm willing to be proven wrong, Sarah"
Who is behind The Iron Lady? Who wants a whole new generation of young Brits and Americans believe that the policies of The Iron Lady and indeed the Iron Lady herself are to be admired, something to aspire to?
Whilst I do think Meryl Streep is a great actress and no doubt she has brought much compassion in her interpretation of Mrs T, who in the film is portrayed as suffering from dementia (we see her life through flashbacks), I just cannot make head or tail of this film. Why now?
"I don't know whether it's a science fiction film or a horror movie. It's certainly not a documentary," said former Derbyshire striking miner John Dunn, when previewing scenes from the movie.
I rest my case.
(All photos modelled by Alex B.)
That is a pretty pitiful comparison. Though to be fair, both cautionary tales are completely unfounded, so at least they have that in common.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what the conservative movement in England is like. Over here, ours is run by complete nutjobs, albeit cunning and powerful nutjobs. If this was an American movie about Ronald Reagan, they'd portray his term as "the good ol' days", when the reality is that Reagan would actually be considered too liberal to nominate, now, let alone elect.
So why now? Because people are starting to see and smell the BS, and the conservatives don't want that. They need to romanticize Thatcher the way America has romanticized Reagan.
Well, there's one enemy you haven't forgiven....
ReplyDeleteThe revival of interest certainly says something. The film's director, Phyllida Lloyd, is someone whose work I can't stand. The only film I'm aware of is Mamma Mia, which I haven't seen, but I have sat through her attempts to direct opera at ENO and before that Opera North. They were shallow and derivative, ending (for me) with the ENO cycle in which Bruennhilde becomes a suicide bomber. All very fashionable for some people in 2005; but less appealing in 2007. I came away thinking that the only thing the director had to say was, "look at me, aren't I clever."
I think most of us who were in the UK in the 80s remember where we were when we heard that Mrs Thatcher had resigned. I was working in a northern university, and most if us (staff and students) simply couldn't believe it. The atmosphere in the pub that evening(I did say northern......) was like Christmas and New Year in one.
The only event to rival it was the 1997 election, but look where that took us.