Epsiode 5: Good Morning, Angels!

I’ve noticed a real resurgence of an in my living memory – that seems like too early 2000s aesthetic amongst the many times to be totally honest with you. youth lately, and it’s making me a little Sort of like how I’m old enough to have bit concerned. Not because I’m feeling seen three iterations of Spiderman, and uncool or anything. I’m 30 – it would be in each one Uncle Ben died. Like if you’re weird if I cared whether or not the Tik going to keep flogging a dead horse, at Tok teens liked my haircut. Mostly, I’m least pretend you’re using a different concerned about low-rise jeans making riding crop each time. Sorry – I wasn’t a comeback. I’m hoarding high waisted sure how to round out that dead horse pants like some sort of dragon, sitting on metaphor. I went with riding crop, and top of a fabric mountain and hissing any I kind of regret it. And instead of fixing time a pair of pants sits under my belly it, I’m talking about, thereby flogging button. another, separate dead horse. Anyway, there’s too many Angels, was the point This fear was solidified recently when I of all that. re-watched the 2000s reboot of Charlie’s Angels. There are three extremely I’m Alex. This is Pop Culture Boner – the beautiful women in that film and every podcast edition – and today I’m thinking single one of them at some point has on a about Charlie’s Angels. pair of pants that are just the right level of low-rise to be like “this has made So, Charlie’s Angels premiered as a TV show your torso look like that of an alien”. in 1976 on the ABC network, introducing If Lucy Liu, my girl Drew and Cameron D three feisty female investigators who cannot make that look good all the time solve crime and look great doing it, all then I think it’s fair to say we shouldn’t backed by a faceless millionaire. It was be loosing them on impressionable teen an enormous success that ran for five girls who haven’t yet developed a firm seasons and 115 episodes. It was also grip on their self-esteem. pioneered what would come to be known as “jiggle TV”, in which the sex appeal Aside from the jeans, watching the 2000s of its female leads was used as a selling Charlie’s Angels was such a nostalgic point for the show. The “jiggle” referring good time that I decided to re-watch the to the fact that many of the women’s 2019 re-reboot, which was decidedly less costumes were designed to allow some of a good time despite trying its absolute free movement in areas that the good darnedest. Which made me realise that puritan public of the US of A found highly Charlie’s Angels has been rebooted twice immoral. Mysteriously, each episode one or more of the Angels would end up in a iconography, are wildly varied, bikini or something similar. particularly in regards to its original television iteration. On the one hand, After the show ended in 1981, the concept the show is about three independent and lay dormant until year 2000, when Sony successful women working to fight crime. had picked it back up. Word of the project They’re smart, capable and athletic – as got to Drew Barrymore at Flower Films exampled by their undercover work as and they rushed over, determined to be journalists, stunt women, magicians, involved. After presenting the execs with nurses, cheerleaders, knife throwers, a sizzle reel featuring snippets from 200 models, prison inmates, violinists and films explaining how the action should lifeguards, to name but a few. They can take place and why, Sony let her have it. do literally anything, and they don’t even It was a box office smash that resulted in need super powers to make it happen. On a sequel two years later and launched a the other hand, critics were quick to point million gay crushes. out the show’s reliance on sex appeal for ratings – I did mention it was seen as Then in 2019, Elizabeth Banks decided ‘jiggle TV’, which was a term coined by an to revamp the spicy trio once more, NBC executive to criticize ABC’s television expanding the concept so that the production and marketing strategy and Townsend Agency had become a global link it to the moral panic surrounding spy syndicate featuring Kristen Stewart pornography. as gay and sexy. It was much less of a smash hit, unfortunately, and has quietly Even the women who were cast as Angels faded into the worst kind of contemporary have different opinions on what the show obscurity – no sequel. actually achieved. Breakout star Farrah Fawcett said her assumption was that the I think ultimately, I find Charlie’s Angels show’s success was largely based on their interesting because it’s still pretty sex appeal, saying, “When the show was difficult to find female-lead crime or number three, I figured it was our acting. action franchises. Unlike a contemporary When it got to be number one, I decided it of the 2000s reboot, Starsky and Hutch, could only be because none of us wears a which stays set in the 1970s, the Angels bra.” (For what it’s worth, several other get an update every time. And as such, Angels came forward saying that they our fixation on rebooting the Angels did, in fact, wear bras.) shows us something about popular feminism each time we re-work them for In contrast, Cheryl Ladd, who was a new audience. So, I thought today we Fawcett’s replacement after she exited could take a look at what the each of the the show following the first season, said iterations says about women and popular “We were very inspirational to a lot of feminism, what gets updated, what stays young women. Young women would the same, and why it’s still so goddamn write us and say, ‘I want to be like you. hard to find a decent female action hero. I want to be a cop when I grow up and So, people’s opinions on the success of taking chances to be something else Charlie’s Angels as a kind of feminist other than the acceptable school teacher or secretary’.” airwaves, they appear at the tail end of 70s, where second wave feminism Regardless of how you feel about was kind of knocking it out of the park inspiring women to join the police force in terms of achieving goals (in the US at (not good), ultimately, both of these least). You had the passing of laws like women are correct. You can find endless the Women’s Educational Equity Act and written praise from women who were the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the tweens and teens in the late 70s and early outlawing of things like marital rape and 80s who loved what felt like a fresh new the legalisation of no-fault divorce, as way to be a woman on screen. You can well as landmark court cases, like Roe vs. also find a slew of think pieces about how Wade. Obviously, we’re still working on the show’s feminism is so deeply flawed a lot of these things today, but progress that it’s non-existent. Both things can was being made pretty rapidly. be true. Media representation is always going to be flawed, particularly in spaces Folded into that progress you have what like television, which has less ability to some would call more radical elements of cater to niche markets. And when you second wave feminism, which were tied have burgeoning social movements that up with other radical social movements are having a quantifiable social impact, of the 70s and acknowledge intersections reflecting that is a good business move, (some) with race and class, and which even when it scares the establishment. have anti-imperialist bent tied to the Optimistically, you’re walking a line anti- war movement that ran from the late between what you can get away with and 60s up to the end of the Vietnam War in what you can’t. Pessimistically, capitalism 1975. That stuff is a lot scarier and more is the devil and you gotta get the people anti-establishment than saying like, to buy in somehow. “maybe a woman doing the same job as a man should be paid at the same rate” When I was reading up on Charlie’s or “maybe we shouldn’t fire women Angels, I came across an article on Farrah when they get pregnant”. So, what you Fawcett by Chadwick Roberts, which get with a show like Charlie’s Angels is says that “Farrah represented a kind of a kind of enlightened conformity, which enlightened conformity. Farrah showed mutes all of the radical impulses of us that women could drive race cars and feminism and turns them into something wear lip gloss… As one of Charlie’s aspirational. The Angels have great hair, “Angels” Farrah Fawcett embodies the great clothes, and they’re beautiful – fantastic. She is athletic and feminine, their work taking down criminals doesn’t tough but soft, fearless and physically compromise on their femininity. They can flawless, made-up but natural, a cop and kick butt and look great. Plus, they’re a cover-girl.” While it’s talking about still controlled by a male anonymous Farrah Fawcett specifically, the phrase millionaire backer, who they still defer to that really stuck out to me was this even when they’re shown to be exercising idea of an ‘enlightened conformity’ that their autonomy. Don’t worry folks – permeates the show. When you look at these girls have non-traditional jobs, but the time period the Angels were on the they still also have a man in their life to make them feel safe and special. And The film still rests on three separate they can still have normal relationships archetypes for the girl’s characters – one – many of the Angels have a boyfriend is tough, one is smart, one is strong. In at one point or another, which serves to their intro scenes they’re shown winning sooth any anxiety about women being Jeopardy!, flying a space mission with too independent and career-minded to NASA, or punching out a drill sergeant. reproduce and play housewife. However, these girls exist in a post-Sex and the City world. Sex and the City Essentially, the show is imperfect, as are premiered in 1998, and while you can all things. While a lot of women came away debate forever (literally ‘til the end of from it with an idea of empowerment, time) about whether the show constitutes it also did a lot to reinforce traditional feminism, anti-feminism, post-feminism, feminine roles, even when reflecting or some other adjacent feminist disaster updates ideas of what women could zone, it did put a very specific type of do. By the time the 80s rolled around, woman on our screens – a girl who is viewership numbers were starting to trying to have it all – dream job, dream dwindle, which was in line with the man, dream wardrobe – and figuring it changing face of feminism at the time. out with a little help from her friends. Powerful women were no longer private While the Angels are a little campier and investigators who’d finished the police more fun than Carrie and co., I think you academy and worked in fun and fruitful can see echoes of the Sex and the City harmony with their friends. They were women in the updates made to the Angels. aggressive individualists taking over They’re dealing with the practicalities of corporate America. The cultural moment “girls can do anything/ women can have that birthed the Angels had passed. it all” feminism – namely the age-old question of how to manage the juggling For twenty years Charlie’s Angels was act of actually having it all. the stuff of day-time reruns, until Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu If the first iteration of the Angels took took over in the year 2000. Now look, place against the backdrop of 1970s I’m a little bit biased to this iteration of second wave feminism, Charlie’s Angels the Angels, and I’m more than happy to 2000 took place against the backwash. admit it. It has an exceptional cast, which In their book Manifesta: Young Women, includes Sam Rockwell, Crispin Glover, Bill Feminism and the Future, Jennifer Murray and John Forsythe reprising his Baumgardner and Amy Richards say that role as Charlie. It’s perfectly paced, the feminism post-second wave was taken action is great and it heavily references for granted, calling in fluoride in the stylistic choices of some of my favourite water – unnoticed but omnipresent. But action films. It’s perfect camp and I love it was abundantly clear to anyone who it with all my heart. The sequel, which wasn’t straight, white and middle class arrived in 2003, is definitely not as good, that the achievements of the second wave but it’s still a pretty fun time. But that didn’t actually benefit everyone. The doesn’t mean that we can’t pick it apart radical elements that I mentioned earlier – so what changed from 1981 to 2000? – those that focused on race, class and anti-imperialist narratives – were often dating an actor who thinks she’s a bikini driven by women of colour, particularly waxer and is dealing with the pressures black women, whose struggles continued of being a good girlfriend. She’s shown even after people had started coining hacking computers, rewiring explosives the term post-feminism because some and working on race cars, but the domestic (white) women were now allowed in task of baking edible blueberry muffins boardrooms. I’m being flippant and it’s somehow escapes her. Natalie, played by obviously more complicated than I can Cameron Diaz, is trying to set up a date compress into the roughly 20 minutes of over the phone while engaging in hand- this podcast, but ultimately, third wave to -hand combat. She even yells “Do feminism meant that throughout the 90s you know how hard it is to find a good and 00s, we were seeing more nuanced man in Los Angeles?!” when the leather discussions around intersectionality, clad villain smashes her phone. Dylan gender identity and sex positivity. We is dealing with the fact that she slept were also seeing a rise in personal story- with the villain and a guy who refers to telling to further those causes. himself in the third person. That last one is a little less relatable and a little more But you don’t really get any of that in super-spy specific, but otherwise these Charlie’s Angels. Lucy Liu’s presence are all very campy, dialled up versions makes the film a little less white than its of trying to balance a personal life and predecessor and Dylan, played by Drew a career, while still looking great. Plus, Barrymore, has casual sex with two they’re still under the thumb of Charlie, men over the course of the film, both of who directs them from afar, and while which could be seen as reflecting some they do ultimately work to save him in of the social shifts happening around this film, it’s still condescendingly framed representation in media and sex positivity as the Angels having ‘daddy issues’ (yet (if you squint). But there’s no teeth – like another affliction of the 00s woman). its predecessor, the movie conceptually absorbs all of the more radical politics Which brings us to the final iteration of happening around it and mutes the hard Charlie’s Angels in 2019. Having asked parts (especially around race – onscreen, ‘just how can women have it all?’ over Lucy Liu’s race is a punchline on one and over again from 1990 to 2010, we occasion, and offscreen she was paid $15 finally came up with ‘I dunno, man. With million less than Cameron Diaz). Or the great difficulty probably” and moved girls are actively punished for subversive on to something new. In this iteration behaviour. One of the men Dylan sleeps of the Angels, they’re chasing a mole with tries to kill her multiple times in the globally expanded Townsend afterward as punishment for her bad Agency. I wanted to like this film so judgment. Once again, we needn’t worry much, but it just wasn’t very good. One that these women are too independent or of the big missteps it made was that the intelligent to conform to the standards of women weren’t friends at the beginning socially acceptable women – they’re just of the movie. They’re adversarial until modern gals, trying desperately to juggle eventually Sabina (played by Kristen having it all. Alex, played by Lucy Liu, is Stewart) almost dies – and even then, she says “I wasn’t sure you liked me, I’m But what does that mean for movies? like… really annoying”. A huge part of The Angels get a 2019 update that feels the appeal of the show and the first film to me a lot like those heavily curated was that it’s often surprisingly hard to ‘feminism’ Instagram accounts that are find movies that just show women who secretly run by men to make money like each other and are friends. And even (I’m talking @feminist, in case you harder again in the action genre. The were wondering) – you know the ones Angels are never shown getting to know I mean. It’s like a friendly intro plate each other – they’re just women who about that says like “Everything you are best friends and also fight crime. need to know about period poverty” This iteration of the Angels took a very and then 10 pastel follow up cards that traditional action movie approach to the miss all the important parts of the issue film, which is like “two really strong and give you no external links to help. tough guys quietly develop respect for The movie feels like a pastel Instagram each other via surviving a series of infographic, is what I’m saying – all explosions, and also protect a weaker style, no substance. The intro has K-Stew guy”. Which, is not a dynamic I hate, but talking about how girls can do anything it’s not the Angels. to a billionaire who keeps cutting her off until she starts listing stats about In the 20 years since the last iteration how he doesn’t find her to be a threat of the Angels, it probably won’t surprise because women are so underestimated you when I say that we’re still treading in the world before punching him in the over a lot of the same ground we were face and arresting him. It could be sort previously with regards to addressing the of satisfying it wasn’t a set up for even various inequalities plaguing our society. more heavy-handed monologuing about Racism, homophobia, transphobia, workplace sexism and being told to smile income inequality, gendered violence throughout the film. In an attempt to and slut shaming all run varying degrees appear enlightened, the 2019 Angels of rampant. However, one of the key missed the chance to have the kind of fun differences is that in the last two decades, the previous film allowed for, or to make feminism has gone digital. Social small but meaningful updates (like fight networks and sharing mean that there choreography that catered to their needs is unprecedented access to information as women consistently coming up against from diverse perspectives, and a power 8-foot-tall musclebound henchmen). to share experiences. Movements like I mentioned previously the concept of #MeToo have successfully highlighted enlightened conformity particularly as it the pervasive nature of sexual violence relates to the movie industry. Namely, in a variety of industries, and sparked that if we’re being optimistic, you can important public conversations about only get away with so much on film, but gendered violence. Perhaps most that pessimistically, whoever is making importantly, the new digital frontier money off the film wants to say enough encourages continuous learning – of the right things that it’s a hit. And cracking open your skull and viewing the this version felt too much like they were world from another perspective. trying for a hit – they made an Angel gay, they showed Charlie as woman This episode premiered on 3rd March (using a man’s voice modulator for some 2021. reason), they had an all-girl soundtrack. It just didn’t go deep enough and was Episode written by Alex Johnson and too disorganised to actually feel like a produced by Wes Fahey. genuine attempt. Theme tune by Wes Fahey. (Soundcloud: Now, obviously, none of these films are lee snipes) ever going to manage to be all things to all women all the time. And if you Visit us: got something out of the 2019 Charlie’s Angels then I’m happy for you. But we Web: www.popcultureboner.com don’t get a lot of opportunities for fun, female-lead action films, I think at least Twitter: @popcultureboner in part because film-makers are stuck on the idea of Angels – fun, flirty, feminine, Instagram: @popcultureboner but still kicking your ass. And we can’t keep doing that over and over again. The last film proves that as audiences we’ve moved on.

Well, turns out I had more to say on Charlie’s Angels than I thought. And I didn’t even touch on soundtracks, racism or fight choreography, which were things that I had written like three pages of notes on. Ah, the great tragedy of having too any opinions and not a big enough soapbox. Anyway, I do genuinely love the 2000s iteration of the Angels and I think about their 900 wardrobe changes at least once a week. So, if you too think about Drew Barrymore in that raceway jumpsuit when your head hits the pillow at night, talk to me about it next time you see me at the pub. Peace!