ALLY MCBEAL, 1999 and the Feminists

[RonPrice]

ALLY MCBEAL

In 1999, the year I retired from full-time teaching in Australia, the Ally McBeal show was at the height of its popularity. It won an Emmy Award for the Outstanding Comedy Series. The show ran for six seasons, starred Calista Flockhart in the title role as a young lawyer working in a Boston legal firm and focussed on the romantic and personal lives of the people in a law office. The environment was highly sexualized with dating and flirting, drinking and humour dominating. The show, the series, was heavily music-oriented. Ratings dropped off in the fifth season and the program was cancelled after six seasons. Feminists complained about McBeal’s emotional instability and lack of legal knowledge among many of their other complaints.1 -Ron Price with thanks to 1Ally McBeal, Wikipedia, 2009 and a review of Tim Appelo’s Ally McBeal: The Official Guide, Harper Collins, 1999 by Ian Lace in Film Music on the Web, December 1999.

Some called it the freshest, most deliciously

politically incorrect show to have crossed

the Atlantic: eccentric characters, outrageous

madcap humour, cartoon-like fantasies and

sentimental melodramas. A unisex restroom

where the characters dance, sit on each

other’s laps, discuss their innermost

romantic yearnings, lose frogs down

toilets and where toilet lids operate by

remote control. Some lines like: "Men

are like gum: after you chew awhile,

they loose their flavour; and "Tell me

what kind of lie works here?" convey

some of the tone of the series and.....

Ally’s in the middle of a popular culture

insistent on offering images of grown

single women: frazzled, self-absorbed

girls with male power and with female

powerlessness seemingly harmless and

cuddly, sexy, safe and sellable. Female

bodies, traditionally sexualized & linked

to emotionality operate as the barrier to

women's full and effective participation

in the professional and societal spheres.1

And I was settling down into retirement

away from the fast lane, from being job-

bed, from endless meetings and endless

conversations--into solitude, into a world

of writing, Bahá'í studies and none of the

Calista Flockhart and that Ally McBeal!!

1 Michele L. Hammers, “Cautionary Tales of Liberation and Female Professionalism: The Case against Ally McBeal, Western Journal of Communication, Vol. 69, 2005.

Ron Price

19 August 2009

[spot]

We're a site on which posters post original content, Ron. We're not an Internet wall for fly-posting.

[RonPrice]

I am a poster, spot, who posts "original content." Everyone who writes, in the end,writes on a wall of some sort. This site is not for fly-posting and I am not a fly and my post was original. It must be said, though, as Einstein put it when he said: "I only had one idea in my life that was all mine." I have utilized ideas from (1) Tim Appelo’s Ally McBeal: The Official Guide, Harper Collins, 1999 by Ian Lace in Film Music on the Web, December 1999 and from (2) Michele L. Hammers, “Cautionary Tales of Liberation and Female Professionalism: The Case against Ally McBeal,” Western Journal of Communication, Vol. 69, 2005. But I have only utilized the ideas, quoted them in part---but this piece of writing is mine, spot. I rest my case,spot.-Ron Price, Tasmania

[Betty Boop]

RonPrice;1234704 wrote: I am a poster, spot, who posts "original content." Everyone who writes, in the end,writes on a wall of some sort. This site is not for fly-posting and I am not a fly and my post was original. It must be said, though, as Einstein put it when he said: "I only had one idea in my life that was all mine." I have utilized ideas from (1) Tim Appelo’s Ally McBeal: The Official Guide, Harper Collins, 1999 by Ian Lace in Film Music on the Web, December 1999 and from (2) Michele L. Hammers, “Cautionary Tales of Liberation and Female Professionalism: The Case against Ally McBeal, Western Journal of Communication, Vol. 69, 2005. But I have only utilized the ideas, quoted them in part---but this piece of writing is mine, spot. I rest my case,spot.-Ron Price, Tasmania


Welcome to Forumgarden Ron, I hope you enjoy it here :-6

Maybe the fear was that you would post and run, we see many of those and become disappointed that no further interaction takes place.

[mikeinie]

The other reason was for the shift of the show was that it started moving from a primarily female viewing show to men starting to watch it in larger numbers. The humor, the good looking women and the definite shift in power as some of the male characters become more interesting.

The whole series when the guy she really loved (Billy I think) started walking around with all the woman following him everywhere was brilliant, of course in the end he behavior had to be excused because he had a brain tumor, but as the show progressed the men became stronger characters and women became absorbed in emotion and relationship issues.

The best one was when one of partners got the jury to start singing the song from The Music Man ‘Ya got trouble’

It was a great show.

[RonPrice]

In the last few hours, since my last post, I was reading the following about the music/soundtrack for the film Titanic. The words were in The Chicago Tribune:

“...in Titanic Horner gave us almost nothing new. And many in the soundtrack world are wondering whether the score qualifies as an original work, or might be better viewed as an adaptation..By now, it has been well established that people hear derivations of many other works in Titanic: Enya’s Book of Days, Hans Zimmer’s Radio Flyer and Horner’s own Rocketeer, Star Trek:Wrath of Khan and Braveheart.

“Certainly Horner has created an immensely satisfying and emotional listen, hummable to abstraction, and brilliantly scored, orchestrated, and produced. Unlike many soundtracks, all of the music on the CD is heard virtually in its entirety in the film itself...Of the many explosive tracks, perhaps the best are “The Sinking and “Death of the Titanic. Here Horner pits emotional motifs of the love theme against a constant syncopated brass, violin and percussive piano struggle to stay alive as the ship begins to die."

-------------

Originality is a question that many people have about works in the arts. I leave this interesting comment with you.-Ron in Tasmania

[spot]

RonPrice;1234704 wrote: this piece of writing is mine, spot. I rest my case,spot.-Ron Price, TasmaniaI didn't doubt that, I'd merely googled how many other forums you'd already posted it to before you put it here.

[RonPrice]

As you now know, spot, I post all over the internet. My enthusiasm for such an exercise probably comes, in part, from trying to publish with traditional publishers for years, decades, before the internet arrived. Now, with a few clicks I get readers all over the place. Writers like to have readers in the same way that talkers like to have listeners.-Ron in Australia

[fuzzywuzzy]

Umm Ron? you can stop writing .."Ron in Australia" They know already, okay?

Now how about we say ...there is no feminism ...it's dead and buried . We've forgotten what it all meant and young women today do not know what it means .

Spot, is this a friend of yours?

[RonPrice]

Point taken, fuzzywuzzy, about the fact that there is no need for the inclusion of my name. As far as the issue/subject of feminism is concerned, you might like to take a look at Wikipedia among other sites and sources on feminism. According to two authorities, Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves. The first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s and the third extends from the 1990s to the present. The story is not over even if it seems to be for some. It is a big subject that can't be told in a small box like this. Leave it all with you, fuzzywuzzy.

[spot]

fuzzywuzzy;1235019 wrote: Spot, is this a friend of yours?No. Ron seems to be trying to educate me on topics the forum wasn't discussing.