According to Andrea Smith’s article, Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society,
she defines heteropatriarchy as the way our society is fundamentally based on
male dominance. The title, Father Knows Best, is the first clue to
the patriarchal household created in this series.
The father’s character, Jim, is that of a traditional father who offers sage advice that is accepted as fact whenever one or more of his children has a problem. He is the head of the house and he knows best. Although the mother’s character, Margaret, has a reasonable voice, she always submissively defers to Jim. The Andersons are an idealized family, the sort that viewers of the era could relate to and emulate. The series had become ingrained into American pop culture as its idyllic presentation of family life in the 1950’s.
In the episode, Betty,
Girl Engineer, it is interesting to note that when Betty comes home from
school excited to tell her family about her desire to pursue engineering, a male-dominated career choice, not only is she not taken seriously, she is
ignored and interrupted by everyone else who enters the scene. Margaret continues to show Betty a dress she
recently purchased for her while Betty continues to ignore her mother; neither wants to hear the other’s point of
view. Margaret wants her daughter to
fulfill her own expectations of the female binary, while Betty seeks to
override them. Jim and Margaret
desperately try to talk Betty out of her career choice, claiming it is not for
a girl; a girl should be interested in ballet, music and literature.
In The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lober writes, “as a process, gender creates the social differences that define woman and man. In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is expected, act and react in expected ways and thus simultaneously construct and maintain the gender order.” Betty rebels against the standards as she attempts, through a school sponsored work-study program, to pursue her dream of entering the male-dominated profession of engineering. In order to do this, however, she changes her name to BJ and changes her gender expression for the part by dressing like a boy and hopes no one will notice she’s a ‘girl’.
In The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lober writes, “as a process, gender creates the social differences that define woman and man. In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is expected, act and react in expected ways and thus simultaneously construct and maintain the gender order.” Betty rebels against the standards as she attempts, through a school sponsored work-study program, to pursue her dream of entering the male-dominated profession of engineering. In order to do this, however, she changes her name to BJ and changes her gender expression for the part by dressing like a boy and hopes no one will notice she’s a ‘girl’.
As hard as she may try, when the site supervisor, Doyle Hobbs, realizes BJ is a female, he admonishes her, telling her this is no place for a girl and to go home where little girls belong, that a man has his job and a woman has hers.
In the final scene, we find Doyle Hobbs dressed in a
suit, carrying a box of chocolates, and ringing the Anderson’s doorbell in
search of Betty. He offers his opinion
of how he likes someone in a pretty dress and believes a man should come home
after work to a nice pretty wife, something to look forward to after a long day
of work. The next thing we see is Betty
in her new dress, demure and flirtatious, hoping for a Saturday night date with
Hobbs.
Ultimately, gender expectations win and Betty trades her thoughts of becoming an engineer for the
role of girlie girl. Betty was her own
hero until she fell into the boy meets girl trap. It would have been refreshing to see her
follow through on her dreams but that is not how this story ends. It would have pleased feminist ideals if
Betty would have followed her dreams but that was not the way it was back then.
Nicely done! Nice analytic arc. Brava! Maybe you should do a tutorial on 1950s representation and history of women?
ReplyDeleteI saw this episode as a kid, probably around 1970 or so. Even though I didn't care anything about feminism, and knew a 50's show would have old-fashioned attitudes, this episode kind of shocked me. What I couldn't believe was that Betty's own parents wouldn't stick up for her when she was ridiculed, and took the side of the pompous guy (they barely knew!) who expected Betty to conform to his view. I think even for "back then" that was jarring and out of character for this supposedly wonderful mom and dad.
ReplyDeleteI just watched it again; I first saw it back in my teens, which was in the late 80s/early 90s. It burned me up both times. No, she shouldn't have fallen for the cute chauvinist pig and turned back into a Proper Girl (TM). >:( Same thing happened on a different episode: the one in which they convince Kathy to stop being a tomboy if she wants boyfriends, and manipulate boys as well. *sigh*
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ReplyDeleteI only recently saw this episode and it angered the hell out of me. Honestly. Initially, my thought was that this was a surprisingly ground breaking episode for a show everyone passed as Apple-Pie-Sweet. Then, as the episode progressed, it literally became almost nauseating to watch. Betty's brother putting her down was almost to be expected, but then, her parents' nearly vitriolic reactions were hard to stomach.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it when you wrote that Betty was her own hero, and I wish the episode had continued in that vein. The Doyle Hobbs character was fairly sickening enough and was in fact, enough to make me ashamed of my own gender and the lousy trip they put women through (and still do.)
The way I view this, this episode, bad as it ended, was kind of a beginning. At the VERY least, someone must have been taking note that women were starting to grow tired of being told what to do. Unfortunately, maybe this episode was seen as a subtle way of telegraphing to the young female fans of the show that the best way of life was to stay in their so-called place and remain ever-devoted to a male.
Interestingly, an episode of the Sally Field show, "Gidget" followed a similar plot line. Gidget purchases a car and to save money on the upkeep, she takes a class in auto repair at her school. Much like Betty in the "Father Knows Best" episode, Gidget faces nothing but resistance from the males in her class as well as from her father (only with not as much vitriol as Mr. Knows Best). The ending of the episode was nearly identical to the "Father Knows Best" episode, with Gidget trading in her overalls for a formal gown. The difference however is that we find out Gidget's date's car broke down and in a switch, it was the male who was helpless; Gidget knew how to repair the problem thanks to what she learned in auto shop. The ending more or less split the difference: Gidget "remained" the cute, feminine girl everyone told her she should be, but you could see Gidget was going to play the game by her own rules.