Hi Neo, (sorry for how long this is!)
Thank you for calling my attention to your post, and for your comments. We don't get HBO- (the prices charged for cable already make me furious as we watch very little television and I refuse to pay more) so I didn't see the show. It sounds as if it plays better than it reads, which is often the case with theatre. The review in the paper said that television wasn't as effective a medium as stage, which makes sense-- I think it's that one-on-one intimacy allowed by the stage that can make something like that work well.
I am blanking on the childbirth monologue but laugh at your "overly graphic". My husband frequently comments at parties how amazed he is that I can get into these detailed, personal conversations about birth and women's problems in the grocery store or the post office with perfect strangers. Women have a very high tolerance level for graphic!
I think you probably hit the proverbial nail with your word "empathy". The show obviously spoke to a great many women, and though it certainly had a lot of PC leanings, it touched so many deep feelings it overcame the politics to a certain extent, allowing even conservative women (like me) to identify, even though there were some monologues that left me very cold (e.g., anything involving minors)
I just finished an interesting book by Marlin Fitzwater (remember him?) called Esther's Pillow, a fictionalized account of something that happened in his family in 1911 and was never talked about until he heard it on his father's deathbed. A young attractive schoolteacher comes back to her hometown after attending college to teach and because she is smart and educated and proud, the townspeople resent her. Eventually they get worked up enough to tar and feather her to make her leave town. Instead she goes to the DA and prosecutes, tearing the town apart.
Neo, I was so furious reading that story. I think of all the suppression, all the abuse heaped on women who stepped outside the box, and how even when I grew up in the 50s, we were taught our place- what was allowed and what women just "didn't do". vaginas were just secret places that you never talked about, and that were embarrassing and even bad, and so was being a woman and deviating from the assigned role. In a broader sense, the book is also about the power of group pressure, and the evils of self-righteousness and intolerance.
I suppose there is some of that anger, some of that THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE AND WE"RE PROUD OF IT attitude behind VM. All of us have this anger about different aspects of life- it's not just women of course, but VM was about and for women. It isn't great literature, probably not great theatre, but it was right on target for this time and place, tapping into the emotions that are there whether we agree, or approve, or care.
I appreciate your fair and honest response to it by the way!-- it wasn't a great read so it must be the live aspect that really sells it. |
