The Iron Lady should be called the Irony Lady
Last night my husband wanted to watch a movie on NetFlix so we chose The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep, having heard it was good. What was good about it was Streep's performance, of course, and some of the other acting. That is about all I can say for it.
Anecdote: A colleague, whose father teaches at Oxford, has her doctorate from Oxford, and taught there as well, told me that when she was growing up, Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister and that told her that women could do anything and were not constrained in their potential success by being a woman. Ironically, Thatcher would not have held to the political views of feminists. She got where she was because she bypassed those ideologies and ways of being and faced the world of men head on. She didn't let her womanhood become an issue when she saw bigger problems for her country. She was PM of the country, no her sex.
All the movie did was make me a bit angry and make me want to read a real bio of her. Where did her staunch conservatism come from? How did she view feminism and other such issues? How did her education at Oxford affect her? How did the class divisions influence her? This movie does not address any of this; it is a fiction, largely. Quite disappointing, and rather a waste of two hours of my life I won't get back and could have spent much better, probably reading a good biography of her.
I often show in one of my classes a video clip of her debating in Parliament. It's quite funny; she was more than capable of using the invective and heckling that are part of that system. When I finish this doctorate I will have time to read biographies that really explore this person, who changed history despite how this movie portrayed her as a doddering old woman. My husband pointed out that at the beginning she told her young husband, "I won't be satisfied washing the tea cups" and the last scene is of her washing the tea cup. A not-so-subtle statement, perhaps, from the director that her life was meaningless?
Anecdote: A colleague, whose father teaches at Oxford, has her doctorate from Oxford, and taught there as well, told me that when she was growing up, Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister and that told her that women could do anything and were not constrained in their potential success by being a woman. Ironically, Thatcher would not have held to the political views of feminists. She got where she was because she bypassed those ideologies and ways of being and faced the world of men head on. She didn't let her womanhood become an issue when she saw bigger problems for her country. She was PM of the country, no her sex.
All the movie did was make me a bit angry and make me want to read a real bio of her. Where did her staunch conservatism come from? How did she view feminism and other such issues? How did her education at Oxford affect her? How did the class divisions influence her? This movie does not address any of this; it is a fiction, largely. Quite disappointing, and rather a waste of two hours of my life I won't get back and could have spent much better, probably reading a good biography of her.
I often show in one of my classes a video clip of her debating in Parliament. It's quite funny; she was more than capable of using the invective and heckling that are part of that system. When I finish this doctorate I will have time to read biographies that really explore this person, who changed history despite how this movie portrayed her as a doddering old woman. My husband pointed out that at the beginning she told her young husband, "I won't be satisfied washing the tea cups" and the last scene is of her washing the tea cup. A not-so-subtle statement, perhaps, from the director that her life was meaningless?
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