Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told You. From how Supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, and Caroline. Before we go any farther,
Speaker 1: I just want to say something to you. Thank you
Speaker 1: for being a friend. Are we going to travel down
Speaker 1: the road and back again? Indeed, we are, Caroline, and
Speaker 1: that road road starts in September, it does. This is
Speaker 1: a Golden Girls road. By the way, right, this is
Speaker 1: a Golden Girls road. In September is when this fabulous
Speaker 1: piece of our pop culture history debut on NBC. And
Speaker 1: it's so fabulous that when I randomly emailed Caroline and
Speaker 1: I think, subject line, is this crazy? Should we do
Speaker 1: an episode? This wasn't all in the subject subject lind
Speaker 1: is this crazy email? What what? Should we do an
Speaker 1: episode just on the Golden Girls? And you quickly emailed
Speaker 1: back yes, And so I quickly got on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Mom's Stuff podcast and tweeted that we were going to
Speaker 1: do an episode on the Golden Girls. And people were pumped.
Speaker 1: People are so pumped. I'm pretty sure some comments included
Speaker 1: like oh god, yes. Someone even had tweeted us a
Speaker 1: photo of their Golden Girls T shirt. Stay Golden that
Speaker 1: they said that they would wear when this episode comes out,
Speaker 1: So you know who you are, and I hope you're
Speaker 1: wearing that T shirt and I want that T shirt.
Speaker 1: Like to imagine our listeners tailgating for this episode, just
Speaker 1: eating a bunch of cheesecakes, so much cheesecake, wearing their
Speaker 1: Golden Girl T shirts. I don't know, Lanai, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay. Golden Girls amazing TV show about four amazing women.
Speaker 1: But it was also created in part by an amazing
Speaker 1: woman herself, Susan Harris. She also wrote the famous abortion
Speaker 1: episode for the show Maud, which also starred be Arthur,
Speaker 1: and Harris created the show alongside her husband Paul Younger
Speaker 1: Wit and tone Eat Thomas. Now, Golden Girls aired between
Speaker 1: two other women's centric shows, Too to Seven and The
Speaker 1: Facts of Life, and kind of surprisingly, both at the
Speaker 1: time and now looking back, the whole block was actually
Speaker 1: really successful among young viewers. Yeah. Initially NBC thought that
Speaker 1: Golden Girls, since it was about for older women, would
Speaker 1: really bring in the older viewers. Then they were like, ohho,
Speaker 1: younger people are Younger people are interested in the lives
Speaker 1: of older women who knew uh, And it was kind
Speaker 1: of a risk for them because they were having a
Speaker 1: real hard time with flagging Saturday night ratings. But Golden
Speaker 1: Girls came out of the gate swinging. It premiered at
Speaker 1: number one with an estimated forty four million viewers and
Speaker 1: lasted one hundred eight episodes, really only because the Arthur
Speaker 1: was finally like, guys, I gotta go see you later.
Speaker 1: And it earned fifteen Emmy nominations in six, lived in
Speaker 1: the top ten for six consecutive seasons, ended up earning
Speaker 1: throughout its run ten Emmy's, and then it finally ended
Speaker 1: its run in May, although there was a short lived
Speaker 1: spin off show, The Golden Palace, that lasted for but
Speaker 1: a year. Yeah, and it was on a whole separate channel,
Speaker 1: like NBC pulled the plug. Golden Palace opened up over
Speaker 1: on CBS. I think, and it just didn't It just
Speaker 1: didn't last. But I think it was Betty White. I
Speaker 1: think it was Betty White who was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been successful if even if b Arthur
Speaker 1: had stayed and one of us had left, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have worked because of our chemistry because they needed all
Speaker 1: four of them. You needed all four and were like
Speaker 1: Captain Planet, you need all the forces combined with their
Speaker 1: powers combined, they are for women of a certain age
Speaker 1: in Miami. And so let's give you the rundown. Because
Speaker 1: these are four women, three of whom are widows and
Speaker 1: one of divorcee living together in a house in Miami.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the most awesome real World season ever.
Speaker 1: But the house belonged to Blanche Devereaux, who was played
Speaker 1: by Rue McClanahan. And of course this does not come
Speaker 1: as news to anyone who ever watched the show, but
Speaker 1: Blanche was the saucy Southern Bell and come to find out,
Speaker 1: she literally, I mean directly served as the inspiration for Gabrielle,
Speaker 1: who is Eva Longoria's Desperate Housewives character, because Mark Cherry,
Speaker 1: the writer for Desperate Housewives, also worked on Golden Girls.
Speaker 1: And fun fact about Rue McClanahan and Blanche's signature lingerie
Speaker 1: esque costumes, she kept a lot of them. There was
Speaker 1: a clause in her contract that she could take home
Speaker 1: Blanche's wardrobe, which I love. I love that too. God,
Speaker 1: imagine how many nightgowns that woman have. You could just
Speaker 1: live in nightgowns, which when I get to the age
Speaker 1: and I'm a golden girl. I will be living in
Speaker 1: a nightgown. Yeah, but but a sexy nightgown, a blanche nightgown. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, and let's move on to Rose n Island
Speaker 1: played by the beloved be A White. Rose was a
Speaker 1: transplant to Miami from her beloved Saint Olaf, Minnesota, and
Speaker 1: she is the air heavy one. Not to be confused
Speaker 1: with a dumb person. She is certainly not dumb. She
Speaker 1: if she is, if anything, just naive. She truly believed
Speaker 1: everyone had the best intentions. She also took everything very literally,
Speaker 1: so she came off a lot of times. Is just
Speaker 1: very spacey. And it's also notable that she only had
Speaker 1: sex with her husband and believe that they had sex
Speaker 1: for the first time on their wedding night, and Rose
Speaker 1: was very confused when it was happening. But then we
Speaker 1: get to Sophia Petrillo played by a spell Getty, who
Speaker 1: was the shop tongue Sicilian mother. She lived with the
Speaker 1: women in according to this show, because of a stroke
Speaker 1: that broke the quote unquote tect region of her brain,
Speaker 1: which is why Sophia always says exactly what's on her mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she always definitely has a zinger, but she also served
Speaker 1: I mean, they all were kind of the heart of
Speaker 1: the show. There was no single heart of the show,
Speaker 1: but Sophia was really the character that stuck up for
Speaker 1: the underdog a lot of times. So not only would
Speaker 1: she send a zinger your way, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the time on the show, as we'll get into more,
Speaker 1: she defended a lot of the gay characters who were
Speaker 1: either talked about or who appeared. Um. And then of
Speaker 1: course we have to talk about be Arthur, who played
Speaker 1: Dorothy's borne neck. She was Sophia's daughter, although you guys,
Speaker 1: be Arthur was actually one year older than a spell Getty,
Speaker 1: but they put a ton of makeup on all a
Speaker 1: stell to make her appear very elderly. Yeah, and Dorothy's
Speaker 1: backstory is that she was a teen mom who married
Speaker 1: the baby's father and divorced him thirty eight years later.
Speaker 1: She was very bitter, very world weary, and also afraid
Speaker 1: of dying alone. Yeah, and spoiler. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you can call something a spoiler when it happens decades later,
Speaker 1: but uh so Worthy is afraid of dying alone. And
Speaker 1: when the show ended, it basically ended with her kind
Speaker 1: of riding off into the sunset with her new bow,
Speaker 1: her new husband, and a lot of people criticize that
Speaker 1: because they're like, what made the show so amazing and
Speaker 1: so groundbreaking and so feminist and appealing to so many
Speaker 1: people was that the show was all about these four
Speaker 1: women who just loved each other and cared about each
Speaker 1: other and supported each other and didn't need men. And
Speaker 1: so the fact that be Arthur's character, who's so strong
Speaker 1: and also has her own arsenal of singers that she
Speaker 1: would throw up people, the fact that she was the
Speaker 1: one who wrote off into the Sunset with a man
Speaker 1: sort of rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Speaker 1: But one more backstory, fun fact that Golden Girls fans
Speaker 1: will get a kick out of. Originally Betty White and
Speaker 1: Rue mcclanahan's roles were switched. Betty was intended to play
Speaker 1: Blanche and vice versa with Ru and Rose. But Betty
Speaker 1: really made her big break on The Mary Tyler More
Speaker 1: Our Show playing the very sexual neighbor, and so she
Speaker 1: really didn't want to do Blanche. She was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get type cast, why don't I
Speaker 1: try out for Rows? And of course it ended up
Speaker 1: working perfectly. It worked perfectly, And now, of course those
Speaker 1: women are remembered for those roles that they played on
Speaker 1: Golden Girls. But this isn't just gonna be Kristen and
Speaker 1: me talking about our crushes on these amazing actresses and
Speaker 1: the characters they played and how awesome the show was,
Speaker 1: although it certainly was. But this show is so beloved
Speaker 1: and stands the test of time because it hit on
Speaker 1: so many important topics and really was able to talk
Speaker 1: about kind of controversial things for the era because it
Speaker 1: was all couched in comedy and really just like warm,
Speaker 1: fuzzy feelings. And I wonder too if it has to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that it was coming out of
Speaker 1: the mouths of women. Yes, but these older women harmless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is these harmless women hanging out eating cheesecake talking
Speaker 1: about things like aid's, Alzheimer's mental illness, chronic fatigue, syndrome,
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, women's sexuality, feminism, abortion, divorce, and domestic violence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even behind the scenes there was a lot of
Speaker 1: There were a lot of interesting conversations going on, and
Speaker 1: I thought that this story in particular illustrated the issue
Speaker 1: of double standards. Really well, this is coming from the
Speaker 1: Fascinating Entertainment Weekly oral history of the show, and they
Speaker 1: talked to Garth Antsier, who was an NBC vice president
Speaker 1: during the nineties when the show got underway, and he
Speaker 1: was talking about an episode in which Rose brings a
Speaker 1: guy home and sleeps with him and he ends up
Speaker 1: dying in her bed, and the department wrote the show
Speaker 1: back and said that this episode is unacceptable to air,
Speaker 1: and they had issues with a line in the script
Speaker 1: about noise, sexual noise coming from Rose's bedroom. They basically
Speaker 1: told the show runners that it was okay for men
Speaker 1: to express themselves sexually in that way, but not women,
Speaker 1: And so Antier says, I'll never forget Susan Harris sitting
Speaker 1: across from them in a meeting on the set in
Speaker 1: her sunglasses saying, let me get this straight. It's NBC's
Speaker 1: corporate position that women are not allowed to express themselves
Speaker 1: during an orgasm, but men are. It was very tense
Speaker 1: watch out, su Yeah. So, even even behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: you have Susan Harris really kind of stirring the pot
Speaker 1: and trying to push topics that are important. Women's sexuality
Speaker 1: is important pushing them on TV well and important too
Speaker 1: for the fact that these are women sometimes addressing sexuality,
Speaker 1: but they're also older women. Age obviously played a very
Speaker 1: prominent role in this. But what was so refreshing and
Speaker 1: still is so refreshing about the show is how these
Speaker 1: older women aren't portrayed as just quiet, grandmotherly types who
Speaker 1: can't get around. But they're vivacious, their employed, they're doing things. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: They're portrayed as pupil and The New York Times wrote
Speaker 1: about how the stars were frequently praised for portraying the
Speaker 1: lives of older women as lively but also uncertain and
Speaker 1: dramatic and passion filled, and just as much so as
Speaker 1: those of any college sorority sister. And this is something
Speaker 1: that Christine Braseni wrote about in the Journal Americana, the
Speaker 1: journal of American Popular culture in two thousand ten, and
Speaker 1: she points out how Golden Girls was not the only
Speaker 1: or the first show to focus on women of a
Speaker 1: certain age, but it was unique in its dialogue and
Speaker 1: character driven plot that wasn't just focused on action or detection,
Speaker 1: such as Angela Lansbury and Murder, she wrote, or Cagney
Speaker 1: and Lacy, in which I also watched with mother. I
Speaker 1: watched all of these shows with my mother, Yeah, all
Speaker 1: of them. Murder, she wrote, was on every every time
Speaker 1: it was on. Every time it was on, it was
Speaker 1: on those typewriter sounds click, big old glasses that you
Speaker 1: can now buy an American apparel. Yeah. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was definitely focused on these internal lives and struggles
Speaker 1: and victories of these women. It wasn't just about solving
Speaker 1: a whodunic case um and not to mention, She also
Speaker 1: points out that the characters contradict a lot of the
Speaker 1: stereotypes that we have and the binaries that we have
Speaker 1: in mind when we think about old versus young things,
Speaker 1: like able bodied versus physically declining, ambitious versus resigned, sexually
Speaker 1: active versus impotent, optimistic versus pessimistic, you know, just stereotypically.
Speaker 1: You know, in our society, we view old people as like,
Speaker 1: all right, get out of the way. You've hit a
Speaker 1: certain age. You're no longer relevant, you're no longer young.
Speaker 1: We don't care about what you're saying anymore. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: even when they did talk about aging, I mean, we
Speaker 1: mentioned how b Arthur's character has a fear of dying.
Speaker 1: That's a very serious kind of issue, But they are
Speaker 1: able to approach it obviously through humor. Now, granted, as
Speaker 1: the paper points out, these are stories focused on white,
Speaker 1: conventionally attractive, sexually active women. I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: rather limited view, but nonetheless it still says something that
Speaker 1: it has remained so popular for so long. I mean,
Speaker 1: it started in syndication I think when it was in
Speaker 1: maybe it's third season, and it's still racking up ratings
Speaker 1: on Lifetime. But yeah, but it's not just racking up
Speaker 1: ratings thanks to our boomer parents and grandparents. It's also
Speaker 1: still drawing in younger viewers and present. He was looking
Speaker 1: at like, Okay, why what is the appeal? And she
Speaker 1: talks about how the show really provided an alternative for
Speaker 1: our sort of overall fear of losing our nuclear family
Speaker 1: members who are going to be left to live alone
Speaker 1: and institutionalized settings, and how the relation ships of these
Speaker 1: women and their stories really serves to quell fans fears
Speaker 1: of aging both young and old, by offering hope that
Speaker 1: you can still remain socially active, you can still throw
Speaker 1: szingers like Sophia does, and that the prime of life
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily just when you're thirty two although the character
Speaker 1: of Blanch does definitely reflect that. Just as you can
Speaker 1: have the same passions and uh successes as an older
Speaker 1: person as you can when you're a younger person, you
Speaker 1: can also have issues with your body image, with issues
Speaker 1: of losing a perceived attractiveness, And Blanche has this sort
Speaker 1: of recurring reluctance to accept her changing status as a
Speaker 1: woman who's getting older, And so the audience ends up
Speaker 1: getting a representation of many women's panic over becoming devalued
Speaker 1: in our society for this whole thing she can't help,
Speaker 1: which is just living life as an older, aging woman. Well,
Speaker 1: and what's also fascinating too about the fact that these
Speaker 1: are stories focused on the lives of older, aging women
Speaker 1: is that, especially in recent years, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: more conversation and focused on how gay men in particular
Speaker 1: love the Golden Girls. And it's really I feel like
Speaker 1: started um around the time of b Arthur's death, when
Speaker 1: everybody one was really reflecting on Golden Girls, and you
Speaker 1: have all of these columns and articles about its appeal
Speaker 1: to gay men. Now, obviously there were lots of gay
Speaker 1: references and jokes in the show, a lot of which
Speaker 1: was thanks to the fact that there were openly gay
Speaker 1: writers and producers on staff, including Mark Cherry, who would
Speaker 1: go on to write Desperate Housewives. Yeah, and Michael Musto
Speaker 1: over at out dot Com says that, and he's writing
Speaker 1: about this very affectionately, and he says that it was
Speaker 1: the gay show to watch, and his theory behind that,
Speaker 1: he says, was that basically, the Golden Girls were gay
Speaker 1: men dresses at a time when there were very few
Speaker 1: public role models for gay men, and so he sort
Speaker 1: of breaks them down into their different categories, and he
Speaker 1: goes on to say that as the seasons go on
Speaker 1: in the show and the characters become more fleshed out,
Speaker 1: he writes that their leisure activities became gayer and gayer
Speaker 1: as they put on shows, dabbled in the art world,
Speaker 1: and wrote love songs to Miami Beach, all while wearing
Speaker 1: outfits only a gay man or his mother could love well.
Speaker 1: And on a more serious note too, I forget which
Speaker 1: article it was UM specifically that talked about how UM
Speaker 1: and I think it was a gay guy writing about
Speaker 1: his love of the Golden Girls because they were this
Speaker 1: unconventional family unit where you know, they all came from
Speaker 1: like different walks of life. But he really was attracted
Speaker 1: to that idea of forming your own family, which also
Speaker 1: at this time that you know that Michael Michael Musto
Speaker 1: was talking about from out dot com about when there
Speaker 1: were very few public roles for gay men, this was
Speaker 1: also a time when gay men would be forming their
Speaker 1: own families, their own family units, because there weren't a
Speaker 1: lot there wasn't a lot of social acceptance for them,
Speaker 1: perhaps in their own families or in society at large.
Speaker 1: The writer of this post in particular goes on to
Speaker 1: call out for a similar model of communal living with
Speaker 1: new ideas about what family means, because I mean, the
Speaker 1: the girls, the Golden Girls were not all related. Only
Speaker 1: be Arthur and sel Getty's characters were related, but they
Speaker 1: formed their own family and their own support network. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was Lewis Pisman, writing over at BuzzFeed who said, quote,
Speaker 1: it's a show about the construction of a chosen family
Speaker 1: rather than a biological family, a very queer conceit. And
Speaker 1: it's the whole thing of you know, men come and go,
Speaker 1: good looks fade, but it's the friendships. Our friends are
Speaker 1: our family. Yeah, and there's any rights that it's this
Speaker 1: whole spirit of positive aging, basically that having that reside
Speaker 1: intial support ends up being able to replace commonly accepted
Speaker 1: notions of aging as demeaning, lonely, and static modes for existence. Instead,
Speaker 1: when you have this sort of communal support, living situation,
Speaker 1: older age doesn't have to be a dark time of
Speaker 1: depression and loneliness. It's a time of friendship, healing, growth, restoring,
Speaker 1: basically forming your own path. Making your own path. It
Speaker 1: can also be a time of romance and activities that
Speaker 1: reflect alternative notions of what family means. That I can't
Speaker 1: wait to retire and move to Miami. Come on, menopause, Caroline,
Speaker 1: I'm already do it will podcasts from Our Jammies, that's right,
Speaker 1: from our nightgown, From our nightgowns. Well, not only were
Speaker 1: there just general themes of the show that clearly appealed
Speaker 1: to gay audiences, there's also direct recognition of gay people
Speaker 1: in the show, of actual gay characters and plot lines
Speaker 1: involving sexual orientation, and that was pretty groundbreaking as well.
Speaker 1: I mean there there was, for instance, the hilarious episode
Speaker 1: of Goodbye Mr Gordon. When is it? Blanche and Rose
Speaker 1: I believe are mistaken to be a lesbian couple. It's
Speaker 1: Blanche and Dorothy, so even better. Yeah, obviously with Dorothy
Speaker 1: with her very very tall, broad shouldered husky boys Dorothy. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so they end up on this talk show where
Speaker 1: they introduces lesbians and they go along with it because
Speaker 1: they don't they're not trying to prove a point, but
Speaker 1: they're just trying to make sure that Rose, who booked
Speaker 1: them on the show, doesn't lose her job and end
Speaker 1: up being at home all the time as an unemployed person.
Speaker 1: So you end up getting this message of positivity and
Speaker 1: acceptance that is couched in a really funny, ridiculous scenario.
Speaker 1: And fans of the show might not realize that. In
Speaker 1: the pilot episode there was actually a gay I believe
Speaker 1: live in cook named Coco who was supposed to be
Speaker 1: part of a core cast. But when and Sophia came
Speaker 1: on and still Getty, she tested so well in front
Speaker 1: of audiences that the writers realized that they wanted to
Speaker 1: elevate her character and that didn't really leave too much
Speaker 1: room for all Coco. Yeah, and it's not that they
Speaker 1: were giving him bad lines or that he wasn't a
Speaker 1: good character. It was sort of what Michael Muster described
Speaker 1: as an embarrassment of riches, and so leaving Coco on
Speaker 1: the show in addition to the four women would have
Speaker 1: sort of taken away a little bit of the luster
Speaker 1: of these four women relating to each other over cheesecake. Well,
Speaker 1: and not all of the depictions of gay characters were
Speaker 1: all that progressive. I mean, there were the running gags
Speaker 1: about Dorothy's cross dressing brother, um, but then there was
Speaker 1: also a politician character who ended up being a transman.
Speaker 1: And then there was also the depiction of Blanche's brother,
Speaker 1: in which they talked directly about his sexuality and his
Speaker 1: right to marry who he wants. And Sofia even tells
Speaker 1: Blanche at one point that she needs just get over
Speaker 1: being so uncomfortable with the fact that her brother was
Speaker 1: clearly gay. Yeah, because Blanche has something to the effect of,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm okay with homosexuals, but I just don't
Speaker 1: understand why he has to marry a man. And they're like,
Speaker 1: and I think Dorothy to that says you don't really
Speaker 1: understand this gay thing, do you. But Sophia calms blanched
Speaker 1: down and says, hey, why did you marry your husband
Speaker 1: She's like, well, I loved him and I wanted the
Speaker 1: world to know that we were committed to each other,
Speaker 1: and Sophia wise wise zing Zinger. Sophia is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know that's why your brother wants to get married too. Well,
Speaker 1: isn't it kind of ironic to that? Later in another episode,
Speaker 1: when uh Dorothy's I think it was like former college roommate,
Speaker 1: we find out that she was a lesbian and has
Speaker 1: a crush on Rose, and Blanche is just annoyed that
Speaker 1: the lesbians have a crush on her. Oh, Blanch, Blanch.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's another episode where Sophia serves as the
Speaker 1: voice of reason and shrugs the whole thing off and says,
Speaker 1: some people like girls instead of guys. And it's true,
Speaker 1: and it's true. You heard it here, folks on stuff
Speaker 1: I've never told you. Okay, so we've we've addressed a
Speaker 1: lot in a short time about the Golden Girls that
Speaker 1: they've introduced TV audiences to so many important topics, all
Speaker 1: of them couched comfortably in humor. Um. And of course
Speaker 1: we have to talk about how Golden Girls represents but
Speaker 1: also kind of handles issues of feminism, women's issues, and
Speaker 1: female archetypes. This is sort of coming from a paper
Speaker 1: by An Kaylor who wrote about feminine archetypal patterns in
Speaker 1: television Golden Girls in particular in the Journal of Popular Culture,
Speaker 1: and without getting too much into psychology and personality types
Speaker 1: and Carl Young, well, we'll leave a lot of that out,
Speaker 1: but she brings up Carl Young in talking about the
Speaker 1: Golden Girls. It's an intense paper. It's super intense and
Speaker 1: super interesting. Um. But to make this a little more
Speaker 1: digestible for our listeners, will skip ahead to basically where
Speaker 1: she's talking about the development of the situation comedy, the
Speaker 1: sitcom and characters and the fact that if you have
Speaker 1: a thirty minute comedy with a laugh track, it's not
Speaker 1: like you can delve into huge serious issues and have really,
Speaker 1: really well rounded characters. And so we end up getting
Speaker 1: a lot of archetypes, a lot of tropes to help
Speaker 1: audiences quickly digest characters. UM. And she uses the example
Speaker 1: of a show like Mash which is obviously male focused,
Speaker 1: mail driven. It's another show that I watched all the
Speaker 1: time with my parents growing up, but how female characters
Speaker 1: are basically just sort of on the periphery the show
Speaker 1: focuses on male archetypes of you know, the doctor, the priest,
Speaker 1: the naive guy, the funny guy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: as we move forward and both audiences and showrunners start
Speaker 1: to get a little savvier, that's when we start to
Speaker 1: see the development of women's centric shows like Mary Tyler
Speaker 1: Moore and of course Golden Girls, and you start to
Speaker 1: see the development of of archetypal female characters as well.
Speaker 1: And Kaylor breaks down the Golden Girls into goddess archetypes. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just said that, goddess archetypes. So she says that
Speaker 1: Dorothy plays the role of the athena Minerva figure who
Speaker 1: is the warrior the Amazon, and then Rose is the
Speaker 1: virginal Artemis or Diana. And then we have Blanche obviously
Speaker 1: aphrodite slash Venus, who's always seen women as competition. And
Speaker 1: then the fourth four balance, you have Sophia as the
Speaker 1: dual Sibyl heckache figure who is the death dealing mother
Speaker 1: and wise woman. And she says that from episode to episode,
Speaker 1: which is also notable that she's writing his paper while
Speaker 1: Golden Girls is still in the air. Right, She's clearly
Speaker 1: a Golden Girls fan. I would assume from episode of
Speaker 1: episode this triad balanced out by Sophia, the fourth the Sibyl.
Speaker 1: It shifts to allow the June Oh aspect of the
Speaker 1: mother of the Gods to be subsumed, sometimes by Dorothy
Speaker 1: as the strongest person and by Sophia as the wisest.
Speaker 1: So if you didn't think that we could get all academic,
Speaker 1: really intense about the Golden Girls, well we will take
Speaker 1: you this paper and raise you a thesis because there
Speaker 1: was also a thesis written far more recently comparing Golden
Speaker 1: Girls and Sex in the City. Because that is also
Speaker 1: a show that comes up a lot when you talk
Speaker 1: about Golden Girls. Is that it paved the way for
Speaker 1: a show like Sex in the City, which is also
Speaker 1: about four women not living together but brunching together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but also pushing important issues that women already talk about
Speaker 1: in their day to day lives, pushing those to the
Speaker 1: forefront and normalizing it. Yeah, you have visible gay characters
Speaker 1: even more visible through Stanford Blanche on our Stanford Blach
Speaker 1: on Sex in the City. You also have the issues
Speaker 1: of aging, sex, sex a lot dealing with sex, workplace issues,
Speaker 1: and uh, that paper also does its own character comparisons
Speaker 1: of Sex in the City, the Four Sex and the
Speaker 1: City characters versus the Four Golden Girls. And you have
Speaker 1: Dorothy as Miranda Blanche obviously as a Samantha Rose is Charlotte,
Speaker 1: and then surprise, surprise, Sophia is Carrie. But that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the best fit. Yeah, I didn't think that was
Speaker 1: the best fit. But I also thought that would fit
Speaker 1: with Kaylor's hypothesis or you know, positing that Dorothy and
Speaker 1: Sophia are kind of shifting back and forth in terms
Speaker 1: of the power balance, and I think it's the same
Speaker 1: in terms of which character they would fit into on
Speaker 1: Sex in the City well, and seeing of the power balance.
Speaker 1: This is when interesting thing that jumped out to me.
Speaker 1: In Kaylor's paper, she's talking about stage direction in sitcoms,
Speaker 1: and specifically drawing room sitcoms as they're called, like Frasier
Speaker 1: and like Golden Girls, where they take place in living rooms.
Speaker 1: You all see this in the Cosby's a lot, And
Speaker 1: she says that a lot of times in these styles
Speaker 1: of sitcoms, characters always enter the screen from the left
Speaker 1: because it's a less confrontational position to come from. I
Speaker 1: guess because as readers we always move from the left
Speaker 1: of the right and things like that. But in the
Speaker 1: kitchen scenes, Dorothy is usually posted up on the right
Speaker 1: to emphasize her sharp, inviting comments because she is directly confrontational.
Speaker 1: So again, I know this is getting really intense about
Speaker 1: the Golden Girls, but hey, now you can watch it
Speaker 1: on the even deeper levels. You certainly can, and I
Speaker 1: know I can't wait to go home and watch it
Speaker 1: on a deeper level in my nightgown. But um, I
Speaker 1: mean talking about the set specifically, this it sort of
Speaker 1: ties into the way that these women are able to
Speaker 1: discuss certain topics, including sexuality. There's and the people that
Speaker 1: of the people around them. But a lot of the
Speaker 1: show is not only set in their living room, but
Speaker 1: also in that very safe space the kitchen table over cheesecake.
Speaker 1: And it really like it seems silly women sitting around
Speaker 1: a table with cheesecake talking about sex. But it's not silly.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound silly. That sounds great. It sounds great,
Speaker 1: and it's also what we see in Sex in the City.
Speaker 1: But it's that safe space that gives them a platform
Speaker 1: to talk about important issues like the sexuality of older women.
Speaker 1: Until you have the Condoms, Condoms, Condoms episode where this
Speaker 1: is happening in a drug store scene where all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they're talking about this in public. So it
Speaker 1: becomes even more of a comedic violation because they're no
Speaker 1: longer sitting around the kitchen eating cheesecake. They're talking about
Speaker 1: condoms in public. Yeah. Basically, the women are getting ready
Speaker 1: to go on a cruise and they're at the drug
Speaker 1: store and they're like, all right, do we have everything.
Speaker 1: We've got some screen, we've got this in that, and
Speaker 1: Blanche raises the issue of well, uh, we might want
Speaker 1: to buy some protection to take on the trip, and
Speaker 1: of course the comedic nous is that Rose is like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean protection? Were like, men, what do
Speaker 1: we what do you mean? And they Dorothy, trying to
Speaker 1: be subtle, points over to the display where the condoms
Speaker 1: are and is like, it's the thing over there, and
Speaker 1: she's like, what is it? The stockings? And finally, uh,
Speaker 1: Dorothy just loses it and screams condoms, condoms, condoms, and
Speaker 1: this creates a scene and then they have a confrontation
Speaker 1: with the sort of jerky cashierman at the pharmacy, and
Speaker 1: it just served to be an incredible moment for these
Speaker 1: women who, yeah, previously had been in the kitchen talking
Speaker 1: about all of their important topics away from people, away
Speaker 1: from the public, and now here they are screaming about
Speaker 1: condoms and sex while being older women in public. Well.
Speaker 1: And I think it was Thomas J. West at Media
Speaker 1: Commons who talked about how this was an example of women,
Speaker 1: rather than competing sexually between each other, they consistently It's
Speaker 1: another example of them consistently relying on their relationships to
Speaker 1: essentially like navigate their relationships with men and also their sexuality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he writes that it goes against the traditional patriarchal
Speaker 1: norms that attempt to prevent elderly women from expressing still
Speaker 1: less enjoying their bodies, especially in the public sphere. And
Speaker 1: this is part of why Megan Currents, who was writing
Speaker 1: over in Bitch magazine in September, says that Golden Girls
Speaker 1: was ahead of its time. She basically wrote a love
Speaker 1: letter to Golden Girls about this whole sexuality thing and
Speaker 1: how awesome and open these women are. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: it's not so surprising then that a lot of people
Speaker 1: think that the Golden Girl is left behind a feminist
Speaker 1: legacy and Rue McClanahan actually talked about this in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine because she's talking about how all the fan
Speaker 1: mail that she gets and how she believes that shows
Speaker 1: like Maud, which, like you mentioned at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, Caroline had that historic abortion episode and was
Speaker 1: actually how the Arthur came onto Golden Girls. Um, how
Speaker 1: she believes shows like Mad and Golden Girls gave women
Speaker 1: quote unquote permission to be freer. Yeah, she read that
Speaker 1: she was receiving fan mail that basically said, thank you
Speaker 1: for allowing me to act and dress like I feel,
Speaker 1: because I mean, these women and these characters did have
Speaker 1: some fabulous outfits on the show, And she says, this
Speaker 1: is Rue McClanahan talking. She says, because in those days,
Speaker 1: when you were over fifty, you were supposed to be
Speaker 1: wearing certain types of clothes and behaving a certain way,
Speaker 1: and women were writing saying thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for the freedom, for the release, for the permission.
Speaker 1: And when b Arthur died a few years ago, a
Speaker 1: lot of her obituaries and eulogies and just the outpouring
Speaker 1: of love that was written about her focused on her
Speaker 1: being a feminist icon. I think partially because of her
Speaker 1: physicality is being that tall, broad shouldered, husky voiced woman,
Speaker 1: the amazon of the group, and even Rue McClanahan said
Speaker 1: thirty seven years ago, she showed me how to be
Speaker 1: very brave in playing comedy. Although what we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about we won't get into. But apparently be Arthur was
Speaker 1: a touch difficult on the set. Sometimes she was forced
Speaker 1: to be reckoned with as well. She was. She was
Speaker 1: a serious lady. She was a very serious lady. But
Speaker 1: you can tell that and that picture of her from
Speaker 1: World War Two when she was a truck driving marine
Speaker 1: exactly you know, mess with B. Yeah, B was not
Speaker 1: to be reckoned with. And by the way, Bee was
Speaker 1: a name she gave herself after Beatrice because she said
Speaker 1: Beatrice would look better on a marquee than her real
Speaker 1: name Bernice. WHOA Yeah, so B. She actually was called
Speaker 1: B like the letter B, as a nickname for Bernice,
Speaker 1: but she chose Beatrice and shortened it to be e A.
Speaker 1: She did whatever she wanted. That's right, right, and it's
Speaker 1: also been cool. This is a side note as well.
Speaker 1: How I believe Betty White is the only surviving member
Speaker 1: now of the Golden Girls. And she recently has gone
Speaker 1: through her own career resurgence, not that she ever went away.
Speaker 1: I mean, she was been working for forever, even before
Speaker 1: the Golden Girls, but it was a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago that there was the Facebook campaign, successful campaign to
Speaker 1: get her on Saturday Night live hosting, and then she
Speaker 1: started up with Hot in Cleveland, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everybody really loves Betty White. Well, Hot in Cleveland, which
Speaker 1: is another Golden Girl's esque show, not that they're all retired,
Speaker 1: but Betty White basically plays the Sophia role as the
Speaker 1: older matriarch of the group, and you have these middle
Speaker 1: aged women who were going about their lives dealing with
Speaker 1: issues same issues, issues of sexuality, of friendship, on and
Speaker 1: on and on, and so it's it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: that Betty White a sort of come full circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in terms of TV, it was clearly groundbreaking and
Speaker 1: influential in terms of paving the way for other female
Speaker 1: ensemble shows like Sex in the City, which we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: but also shows like Living Single, Girl Friends, Designing Women,
Speaker 1: which came on around the same time, and also Girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Designing Women man one of my favorites. I went back,
Speaker 1: so in in researching for this episode on Golden Girls,
Speaker 1: I of course had to stop and watch all of
Speaker 1: the videos of all of Julia's sugar bakers, like amazing
Speaker 1: tirades that she goes on and just bites people's heads off.
Speaker 1: So great, so amazing. Yeah, she's she's pretty incredible. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to Golden Girls, which I think it's it's incredible
Speaker 1: and it says a lot that it has stood the
Speaker 1: test of time, that it is still syndicated, and that
Speaker 1: it is still an incredibly popular syndicated show, and it's
Speaker 1: groundbreaking just in as simplicity. And can I toss out
Speaker 1: one final fun fact please? Okay, So for Arrested Development
Speaker 1: fans listening, Mitch Herowitz, the creative of Arrested Development, wrote
Speaker 1: for the Golden Girls. And one little detail in Arrested
Speaker 1: Development that's an homage to the Golden Girls is that
Speaker 1: the rehab facility that Lucille has to go to for
Speaker 1: drinking problem is called Shady Pines, which is the retirement facility,
Speaker 1: the much loathed retirement home that they always threatened Sophia
Speaker 1: with if she ever gets too out of line, you'll
Speaker 1: have to go to the Shady pines. So with that,
Speaker 1: do we open it up? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, folks,
Speaker 1: I know that there are Golden Girls fans listening. Let
Speaker 1: us know your thoughts. Who is your favorite Golden Girl?
Speaker 1: Sophia was a fan favorite when the show was on TV.
Speaker 1: I myself, I am partial to Dorothy as a tall
Speaker 1: lady with us sometimes Leski boys. I am a short lady,
Speaker 1: but I love Dorothy, although I love a good Saint
Speaker 1: Olaf story. Let's be honest, So write us all of
Speaker 1: your Golden Girls thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com is where you can send them. We cannot
Speaker 1: wait to read them. And if you don't want to
Speaker 1: write us a letter, you can also tweet us at
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook. And we've got
Speaker 1: a couple of messages to share with you right now.
Speaker 1: So we've got a couple of letters here about our episode.
Speaker 1: Spicy in quotes Latina's and this one comes from a
Speaker 1: young woman who would like to remain anonymous, who says,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you created that last podcast because I
Speaker 1: think this really hits home for me, specifically when it
Speaker 1: comes to identifying as Latina. I have a very Latina
Speaker 1: name in. Growing up in the Midwest was really challenging.
Speaker 1: I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and
Speaker 1: was constantly stereotyped, even by faculty at my public school.
Speaker 1: In second grade, I remember one of the superintendents at
Speaker 1: my elementary school waiting for me in the morning to
Speaker 1: help me translate for a foreign exchange student from Latin America,
Speaker 1: completely assuming that I spoke Spanish, though never stopping to
Speaker 1: ask if I did. These are the same people that
Speaker 1: had my older sibling saying lokucar racha for our school. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think because my mother is from Columbia, everyone assumed
Speaker 1: that I spoke Spanish, when in reality, my mother had
Speaker 1: only just moved to America and was concerned about her
Speaker 1: own assimilation, so she practiced and spoke English seven inside
Speaker 1: and outside of the house. I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: obnoxious it was to constantly correct my Caucasian peers in
Speaker 1: school and tell them in my authentic and natural Midwestern accent, no,
Speaker 1: I don't speak Spanish, I'm not from Columbia, and still
Speaker 1: watch their eyes wander to my test scores in Spanish
Speaker 1: class for comparison, as if I was keeping my fluency
Speaker 1: a vengeful secret or something. Then when I left St.
Speaker 1: Louis for college, and I'll I was critiqued from the
Speaker 1: other end. Most of the time I met a Latino
Speaker 1: Hispanic person, I would be told, quote, you need to
Speaker 1: learn Spanish, It's part of your culture. Or I would
Speaker 1: be told that I'm too whitewashed, and I would think
Speaker 1: to myself, but I'm from St. Louis, I'm an American
Speaker 1: who has been to Columbia only once for two weeks.
Speaker 1: That makes no sense. And the weird thing is if
Speaker 1: I'm dressed up to go out for the night, my
Speaker 1: family or others will say that it's my Latina identity,
Speaker 1: that's why I look so good. And when I stopped
Speaker 1: guys from harassing on the street or don't let them
Speaker 1: get away with spanking me, Yeah, that happened once I
Speaker 1: get told my don't take crap from other people attitude
Speaker 1: is my fiery Latina side. So when you mentioned Jessica
Speaker 1: Alba not wanting to be labeled as Latina, I think
Speaker 1: I can understand why I get tired of being told
Speaker 1: I'm not Latina enough and being asked if I can
Speaker 1: strike up conversation in English or Spanish. With a random
Speaker 1: Columbian person that quote my friend so and so knows,
Speaker 1: and being told that any part of me that that's
Speaker 1: the positive Latina stereotype is attributed to a culture and
Speaker 1: heritage I know very little about. It's quite a conundrum.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast and I can't get enough of it,
Speaker 1: So thank you um already. I have a letter here
Speaker 1: from Gianna. She says your most recent podcast on Spicy
Speaker 1: Latino Women was of particular interest to me. I live
Speaker 1: in New York City, where I helped to run a
Speaker 1: female driven, gender focused shakespeare company, Spicy Witch Productions dot Com,
Speaker 1: run out of a Puerto Rican cultural center on the
Speaker 1: Lower East Side of New York. My mother is Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican and my father is of Italian descent. I have
Speaker 1: a very Italian name, so much so that when I
Speaker 1: began to try to get connected to cultural arts organizations,
Speaker 1: I had to start using my mother's maiden name in
Speaker 1: order to be taken seriously. Additionally, I came out like
Speaker 1: my father and have much lighter coloring than my mother.
Speaker 1: People would often mistake my mother for my nanny. Growing up.
Speaker 1: I don't speak Spanish, as my mother experienced so much
Speaker 1: racism from my father's side of the family. She didn't
Speaker 1: wish for me to be any more different than I
Speaker 1: already was. Sometimes I feel as if I float between cultures.
Speaker 1: Auditioning in New York is very in interesting. I'm considered
Speaker 1: what the industry calls ethnically ambiguous to light for some things,
Speaker 1: too ethnic looking for other things. I'm often called not
Speaker 1: Latina enough to audition for Latina roles, and I've stopped
Speaker 1: trying to audition for these types of roles as I'm
Speaker 1: often made to feel like I'm a fake. What I
Speaker 1: hate even more is, upon hearing of my ethnic background
Speaker 1: is the slew of assumptions made about me with that mix.
Speaker 1: You must have a temper. Wow, what a spicy mix.
Speaker 1: You must be super passionate. Uh Puerto Rican in Italian,
Speaker 1: we better watch out. That must be the Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: in you. I love both my cultures. I love being
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican. I'm tired of having to prove myself and
Speaker 1: fit into this physical preconception of what it is to
Speaker 1: be Puerto Rican, especially by other Puerto Ricans. My own boyfriend,
Speaker 1: who is Puerto Rican, has made comments to me about
Speaker 1: helping me be a real Puerto Rican. All of this
Speaker 1: is highly offensive. I am lucky enough that my mother
Speaker 1: is a fierce role model who has helped me navigate
Speaker 1: all of this. However, I would like to note I
Speaker 1: recognize my own white privilege and all of this. Unlike
Speaker 1: my mother, who has had to deal with blatant racism
Speaker 1: and is in a constant state of self cultural censorship,
Speaker 1: I do not have to do this. I am white,
Speaker 1: and therefore I'm allowed to claim my ethnicity without any real,
Speaker 1: lasting social or economical repercussions. Wow. So thank you for
Speaker 1: your story, Joanna, and thanks to everybody who's written in
Speaker 1: to us. Mom stuff at how stuff work dot com
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