margo stan eve apologist

unreal was so deeply of its time in a lot of ways but it must be said that in some ways ahead of its time and by that I mean that I think we as a fan culture are now much more open to toxic power imbalance yuri

oh no I fear I am going to make another post about the great lie that really just re-articulates points I’ve already made ad nauseum!!

I mean look. maybe it’s a slightly different point. maybe. anyways it’s just like I feel like in discussions of queer subtext (between women) in movies it does kind of get slept on (which is fair in many ways given the amount of screen time taken up by george brent who as per usual does nearly put me to sleep with his acting) BUT like. they really did draw a lot of direct parallels in that movie between Maggie and Sandra’s relationship to each other and both of their (esp Maggie’s) relationships to Pete. idk it sort of makes me think of that whole shirley maclaine thing in the celluloid closet about how they never really talked about the children’s hour being gay (crazy) and my (and many people’s) experience of it being so incredibly moving and like. so deeply in touch with queerness despite that. like it’s so incredibly good in spite of the lack of conversation about it. and I’m like tempted to say the queerness (DISCLAIMER: OBVIOUSLY WAY LESS PRESENT AND OVERT AND INTENTION) in the great lie is good and interesting to me because of a lack of conversation or intention behind it which is like largely true but if I’m to believe my sources (mary astor and ed sikov) it wasn’t like. as fully unacknowledged as it could have been. which isn’t to say anyone was like let’s make a gay movie <3 but that they were like hey this will directly compare Maggie to a father. this will read as Maggie being the pseudo-father of Sandra’s child. and they all said yep well let’s do it. which obviously the intention there is NOT to be like oh Maggie’s gay or Maggie and Sandra are gay or Maggie is gnc or anything like that, and that’s not the actual conversation being had, but it’s also not nothing. which tbf it has to still be less than the children’s hour bc even if they didn’t talk like directly about lesbianism or whatever they HAD to have talked about Martha’s feelings and what the relationship looks like and everything so. like that also can’t be absolutely nothing. anyways I do think my point is correct that the queerness is so interesting and layered and honestly present bc no one thought too hard about it or talked about it all that much. I can’t imagine if someone had been like hey bette hey mary uhm if you say “that wifely tone do you count his cigarettes too” people are going to hear an implication that one, Maggie and Sandra’s relationship/circumstances resembled marriage (this point would have perhaps been fine) and two, that Sandra is jealous not of but over Maggie, and three, that it could entail other aspects of marriage such as any sort of feeling or even intimacy, and four, that one or both of them was therefore queer… well I can’t imagine any of these points bar maybe the first one being a part of the conversation and the scene and dialogue and everything staying as is. but it’s very easily readable as that. idk I think the sort of mess and haphazardness of the movie and the fact that like significant parts were added or changed during production by people who were not career studio writers (and were WOMEN and actors and yeah maybe specifically that it was bette and mary but maybe not) and also that it was. kind of just another studio movie. meant that there was maybe less scrutiny and less consideration of each thing. I mean idk how industry non-standard that was actually and also I may just be crazy but it feels like bc no one was looking too closely or thinking too hard or spending too much time on anything, it ended up being something that is more easily read in ways that the studios etc would typically try to avoid. again idk. I neeeeed to actually look into how contemporary audiences interpreted movies before making posts like this. and yet!!

@hotvintagepoll

can’t believe I have to do this fun if somewhat long/arduous task that I created for myself… fucked up!!

my sons ranked from most to least hard to love