Happy Belated 40th Mary Richards

As many of you may not know, yesterday (September 19th) marked the 40th anniversary of the premier of the groundbreaking  The Mary Tyler Moore Show. While the show has been out of syndication for a good while now, and thus kind of out of our generation’s cultural radar I think it is worth looking at for a) a slew of really radical reasons and b) I love this show. Succinct and objective journalism? I think so.

To give a brief synopsis, Mary Tyler Moore is a sitcom about the life of Mary Richards: single career girl. She is hired as an assistant producer (and later promoted to producer) of the nightly news at a small and semi-defunct local television station, WXJM. This, alone, is remarkable for 1970. Single women were really NOT on television (I’d hate to make the claim she was the first, because I’m sure there is some obscure show or personality I have missed) and the story of Mary Richards is very distant from how women have been (and still are) portrayed on television, for a bevy of reasons I will run down.

1) Mary started the show single, remains single throughout the show and is STILL single upon the end of the show. She DOES NOT get married! That is absolutely huge. There are, to the best of my recollection, no episodes of botched-almost-weddings (a token Golden Girls plot), and really no acceptance of the few marriage proposals Mary does receive. Also, Mary does not “Woe is I” herself over her status of being single; instead she is proud of it. This is a remarkably different narrative than the majority of women’s narratives seen on television. I’d be hard pressed to find another show that truly adheres and upholds such a narrative throughout its run on television. Also, not any of the men Mary dates becomes a central character, her being positively single is of essence to the plot.

2) The gender ratio of central characters is a majority of women. This too is remarkable. There are only three central male characters and they are her co-workers (the male lead of the show is given to Ed Asner, her charmingly cranky boss) while the female characters have a variety of roles. There is Rhoda: her single sidekick, Phyllis: her married landlord, Georgette: a co-worker’s girlfriend and Sue-Ann: her co-worker. Each character has a life drastically different from Mary’s, and that is the point. Each of these characters show a diversity of women’s lives in the 70s (sadly, they are all white and slightly aside from Rhoda, middle-class). Another note of the gender dynamics that is a bit troubling is that most of the women are exclusively seen in Mary’s apartment (the private sphere) while the office is male-dominated (the public sphere) and Mary is amphibious between these two worlds. Not that the male dominated office does not limit her; it certainly does and she combats that as much as she can. Which leads me to my next bullet!

3) Fighting sexism in the office!  In the first episode she clearly states that her marital status is immaterial to her ability to perform the job she is applying for. She wears pants to work in one episode and its a REALLY huge deal! (Her boss asks her not to wear them again, in later episodes the pants continue to return to the office.) In the beginning of season three she demands to know why she gets paid less than the man who had her position before, gets totally blown off and the gender-wage gap becomes a consistent point of Mary’s ire for the rest of the series. It was not a problem that went away in 30 minutes and the audience never heard of it again, satisfied that the writers at least attempted to address the issue. It is ever-present, just as it is in women’s lives. In another episode Mary is asked to be on a board meeting to give a woman’s perspective in an effort to make the station appear more diverse and she makes light of the fact that she is only there as a token. There are numerous more examples and I could continue to list them but the point is very clear. Mary has her feminist lens on and is very aware of the limitations placed on her because she is a woman. It is through subtlety and a resistance to happy half-hour “morality” tales nicely wrapped up and finished that these issues are presented, and the genius of presenting them through a sympathetic character shifts very controversial issues to being palatable and easier to digest for a mass audience. Change is certainly promoted, just not as finger wagging or wrist slapping.

4) Did I mention Mary has sex outside of marriage? Yeah. That is just radical enough to keep it at that. There is also no tone of slut-shaming about it either. One of my favorite scenes is when Mr. Grant (her boss) is suggesting that he may be dating “that kind of woman” Mary pointedly asks “How many men does it take to make a woman “that kind of woman”? He is (as would anyone else, I imagine) totally stumped for an exact number.

As we reach the end of this very long post, one may ask “So what? This show is forty years old, I’ve never seen it and it probably no longer has any relevance.”

 “But it does!” I argue, and I argue that it does chiefly for this. Examine women-centered shows and how many of them revolve around catching a man, men-related things and over-the-top validation through consumerism. Mary isn’t flopping around like a fish waiting for her perfect-man  or Jimmy Choo heels. She is presented as already complete, content with her life and insistent on her career. It’s a narrative rarely found in today’s culture, and her autonomy to me makes it so remarkable.

I asked my Grandma (who was somewhat rigidly conservative for a very long time) what her reaction to the show was when it first came on air. She said it allowed her to view women differently, not just as married housewives but as single women with careers. Also that women (gasp!) could have sex before marriage. Considering my Grandma introduced me to the show as a child, and buys them on DVD for me as an adult, she considers these positive messages. I can be fairly certain that my Grandma is not the only person whose perspective changed while the show was on air.

In closing, check out the show! It is beyond worth watching, is considered a classic piece of American Television and has a damn catchy theme song (I’d hate to meet the person who can still frown after hearing it.)

Mary, you made it girl.

If you want more information, the wiki article is an excellent source!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Tyler_Moore_(TV_series)