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Works Cited Grace, Kevin Michael. “Mary Tyler Moore: TV Revolutionary and a Feminist Icon--but Passive
Aggressive.” Alberta Report / Newsmagazine, vol. 25, no. 45, Oct. 1998, p. 30. EBSCOhost, proxymu.wrlc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=a9h&AN=1231981&site=ehost-live.
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Section: GALAXY 500
MARY TYLER MOORE: TV REVOLUTIONARY AND A FEMINIST ICON--BUT PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE As fans of The Mary Tyler Moore Show fondly remember, Mary Richards' gruff but lovable boss Lou Grant once snapped at her, "You've got spunk." He paused, and then added, "I hate spunk." He didn't mean it, of course. Who could resist Mary, the girl who could not only turn the world on with her smile, but who could take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Certainly not the public, who made her 1970-1977 sitcom a perennial Top 10 hit, and not the editors of Entertainment Weekly, who, in a new book, have judged Mary Tyler Moore the greatest TV show ever.
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MTM (right): Turned the world on with her smile.
Mary Tyler Moore was intelligent, witty and often laugh-out-loud funny. But the best TV ever? Better than Seinfeld or The Simpsons or The Twilight Zone or I Love Lucy or The Larry Sanders Show? I detect the dread hand of the boomers at work. Mary Tyler Moore is Entertainment Weekly's best show for the same reason Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is Bill and Hillary Clinton's favourite record-'70s nostalgia. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive! Don't stop thinking about tomorrow? The boomers prefer to think about yesterday. Love was all around, and it was still free; no one needed Viagra, and sexual harassment was merely a gleam in Andrea Dworkin's eye. The boomers were going to make the world a better place and have fun doing it. And Mary Richards was a fellow-traveller.
The popular image of Mary Richards as goody two-shoes makes us forget just how revolutionary Mary Tyler Moore was. Single women were rare on TV in 1970; single women who didn't endlessly scheme to land a husband were almost unheard of. Mary needed a man like a fish needs a bicycle-she didn't hate men, but neither did she need them to "validate her self-esteem."
Mary Richards was the first TV career woman who wasn't a caricature-and more important, the first TV woman to enjoy guilt-free fornication. She was the acceptable face of "women's liberation." It's fitting Mary Tyler Moore reruns have become a staple of the feminist Women's Television Network.
If Mary Tyler Moore defined the '70s, then Seinfeld (No. 2 on the Entertainment Weekly list) defines the '90s. It would be easy enough to say that these shows are as alike as chalk and cheese. Mary's pals were "nice"; Jerry's "nasty." But let's face it-were Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer any more loathsome than Mary, Rhoda, Phyllis, Lou, Murray and Ted? I don't think so.
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Consider the evidence. Rhoda: a malicious misanthrope. Phyllis: self-deluded and snide. Lou: a blustering coward. Murray: consumed with envy. Ted: vain and venal. And then there's Mary, who just couldn't stop giving.
That kind of help I don't need. Mary was what psychologists call "passive aggressive." Incapable of true selflessness, she was like the mosquito which inserts its poison after drinking your blood, always making sure her benefactors knew just how inconvenient her charity was. But she was "nice." And so was everyone else on TV in those pre-Seinfeld days-nice by convention.
Until Jerry and his pals redrew the sitcom boundaries television viewers were willing participants in a big con. For decades we were manipulated into believing that the folks who made us laugh every week were, deep down, good people, despite appearances to the contrary.
(Cheers, the No. 4-rated show on the Entertainment Weekly list, is perhaps the last major hit that traded on this nasty niceness. Sam Malone's bar may have been the place "where everyone knows your name," but would you want them to? Honestly, wouldn't you cross the street to avoid any of these jerks?)
Seinfeld's success took everyone by surprise, not least Mr. Seinfeld himself. A No. 1 show in which the characters, even the lead character, were not only wicked but positively revelled in it? Until Seinfeld, the sitcom rule was firm. Wickedness was permitted, so long as good triumphed and the malefactors were punished. But television was behind the curve. Seinfeld was the perfect expression of the zeitgeist. In the relentlessly ironic '90s no one expects good to triumph. If it does, we are likely to sneer.
Seinfeld proved that no matter how awful TV characters are, audiences will embrace them, so long as they're funny. This is yet another proof of Marshall McLuhan's theory that television is a "cool" medium. Jerry, George and Kramer wouldn't last a minute in the movies-they're too ugly (too "hot"). Yet on the small screen, with its low-definition information, they became larger than life- lovable even.
Over the years it became obvious that this lovability factor was infuriating Larry Charles, Seinfeld's co-creator, and George's alter ego. No matter how far he pushed the boundaries of tastelessness, America still clasped Jerry's kids to its bosom. Finally, in an act unparalleled since Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Charles not only killed off his creations, he tried them, found them guilty, and then consigned them to Hell. This savage moralism went all but unnoticed. Critics and viewers alike shook their heads and asked, "Hey! What happened to the jokes?"
Mary Richards wasn't killed off. She was laid off. After seven years of loyal service to WJM-TV, she was left a middle-aged career woman without a job, husbandless, childless, without even a cat for
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company. I guess she never really made it after all.
~~~~~~~~ By Kevin Michael Grace
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