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Cellar Scribblings
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on July 10, 2020, 10:17:29 am ---I loved Bewitched. Back when it was still on in primetime, it was a big issue in my family for a while. It was on at, like, 8 p.m. and my dad was really adamant that my brother and I had to go to bed by 8. So I was always really upset (if only they'd had DVR -- problem solved!). Finally even my grandmother suggested to my dad (her SIL) that maybe he could just let me watch it. So finally, he did.
What I didn't realize at the time was that Bewitched is a perfect allegory for pre-feminist marriage, and not just because Darren has a career and Samantha's a housewife. (The first episode was in 1964, the year after Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was published.) Darren is head of the household and makes the rules. In one episode, Samantha has to ask his permission to buy a new coat and he refuses for some reason. (That episode is also interesting from our perspective: After he refuses the coat, Endora casts a spell making him extremely stingy. At one point, he goes into the office and is horrified to find his secretary wastefully using just one side of pieces of scratch paper when she could write on the backs. Now it would be the other way around!)
Most telling, Samantha has these great powers but under Dareen's rules was required to keep them under wraps at all times.
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As a kid I 'got' that this was how households were expected to run, but it just seemed so wrong to me. Darrin always had to be right, and be in charge. As for Endora, I didn't like her attitude that Darrin was beneath her.
I do remember an episode later in the show's run, when Tabitha was around. Darrin had wondered aloud if it would be better for Samantha to go public about being a witch, and she used her powers to give him a dream to show him what could happen, and he wok up and decided that it should stay secret.
--- Quote from: serious crayons on July 10, 2020, 10:17:29 am ---That Girl, which I also loved, started a couple of years later, running immediately after Bewitched. It was very feminist. So the two shows were like "before" and "after" bookends.
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Jeff Wrangler:
I'll always remember one episode where Endora told Samantha that the closest Samantha would ever get to Bermuda was an onion. ;D
southendmd:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on July 11, 2020, 03:53:41 pm ---
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Hilarious!
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on July 11, 2020, 03:53:41 pm ---As a kid I 'got' that this was how households were expected to run, but it just seemed so wrong to me. Darrin always had to be right, and be in charge. As for Endora, I didn't like her attitude that Darrin was beneath her.
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It seemed wrong to me, too. My own family wasn't quite that rigidly traditional. As for Endora, I think she's just kind of the stereotype bitchy MIL who won't mind her own business -- except in this case she has powers.
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That is hilarious. I wouldn't have remembered the opening scenes on my own but watching that I can see that it's an exact recreation of it, shot for shot -- the mannequin winking, the hair messing, literally every single shot -- except with some goofy stuff thrown in.
I'm not the hugest fan of that show in general, but when it comes to musical satire, I tell you, between that and "Ding Fries Are Done," it's genius.
CellarDweller:
--- Quote from: southendmd on July 12, 2020, 01:50:31 pm ---Hilarious!
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--- Quote from: serious crayons on July 12, 2020, 01:51:07 pm ---That is hilarious. I wouldn't have remembered the opening scenes on my own but watching that I can see that it's an exact recreation of it, shot for shot -- the mannequin winking, the hair messing, literally every single shot -- except with some goofy stuff thrown in.
I'm not the hugest fan of that show in general, but when it comes to musical satire, I tell you, between that and "Ding Fries Are Done," it's genius.
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I'm glad you both liked it! Family Guy appeals to my sense of the absurd. The things they do on that cartoon just make me laugh. One of my faves is Bobby McFerrin (Don't Worry, Be Happy) falling down the stairs.
Then, someone edited it to make it last for 12 minutes. I've never watched the full 12 minutes, but the fact that someone did it wrecked me for a while.
It was just like when someone did a 5 minute loop of the teacher from the Peanuts cartoons talking. I will admit I watched the 5 minutes of it, laughing, and then made it my ring tone.
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