'Mrs America' Episode 4 draws parallels between political discourse in the '70s and online rhetoric today
Spoilers for 'Mrs. America' Episode 4, 'Betty'
With four episodes out, ‘Mrs. America' has received its fair share of criticism, especially in terms of the show painting the antifeminist movement led by the notorious Phylis Schlafly (Cate Blanchett) in a sympathetic light. That matter is up for debate, and both sides make some compelling arguments.
Without getting into those arguments, however, what one can agree on is how the FX miniseries, through its depiction of the ‘70s second-wave feminist movement and Schlafly’s successful opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, has outlined some glaring parallels between how the fight still continues today in the battle between conservatives and liberals, between feminists and antifeminists, between the Left and the Right.
And nothing draws more attention to these parallels than episode 4, ‘Betty’.The episode that focuses on Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman), the author of ‘The Feminine Mystique’, her rivalry with Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), and her debate with Schlafly where she said the latter should be burnt at the stake, highlights many important things. For example, it casts a heavy glare on the tokenism prevalent in white feminism, Friedan’s deplorable views on homosexuals, and the conservative movement’s shady links to racist organizations. But above all, in the overall narrative, it highlights the flaws in the way in which debates tend to take place around topics as contentious as feminism.
In the last few years, a narrative we have often heard is that the overwhelming power of social media has stripped all nuance away from debates. Collette Snowden, a senior lecturer at the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, in the University of South Australia wrote in an essay in 2016: “The ability for people to engage in arguments at a distance on social media has revealed an appalling lack of civility in many deep pockets of misogyny, ethnic antipathy, and general intolerance for difference.”
Yes, social media’s contribution to the downfall of political discourse cannot be understated. But that doesn’t mean the tactics that we see now -- excessive use of hyperbole, ad hominem, trolling, etc. -- are new. And ‘Betty’ effectively shows that.
For example, how Al Goldstein of the satirical magazine, Screw, attacked Steinem can easily be compared to how misogynistic trolls attack women online. In the episode, we see the magazine had an illustration of a naked Steinem and a variety of penis illustrations around it. It was a game called “Pin the c*** on the feminist”. The magazine had also published the phone number of Steinem’s Ms. Magazine offices, encouraging readers to call and harass them. This can easily be seen as doxxing and targeted harassment, even if those terms may not have existed in any context back in the ‘70s.
Another example of how the discourse was astonishingly similar back then is visible in Schlafly and Friedan’s debate. The former employs copious amounts of logical fallacies in her arguments, including false dilemmas, the bandwagon fallacy, and the ‘Tu Quoque’ fallacy. Even Friedan resorts to ad hominem attacks on Schlafly, but that too bears a striking resemblance with how trolls often push people enough for them to break, thereby pulling them down to their level.
Yet another important facet of social media political discourse was visible in Steinem’s distaste at Friedan choosing to debate Schlafly. She believed it would give someone she considered a nobody a bigger media reach. This is an argument often cited by people on Twitter when others quote bad takes. The logic being that such a thing would only amplify the bad take further.
‘Mrs. America’ may be a biographical drama. But the way the showrunners have written the story, it also proves to be an incisive commentary on how discourse exists around contentious topics -- be it the ‘70s, or be it 2020.
'Mrs. America' drops new episodes weekly every Wednesday only on Hulu.