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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Canadian writer reviews Army Wives |
| 2007-08-10 |
| Elizabeth Nickson . . . the shows launched in the summers in the States are a major signifier for where the zeitgeist will heave next. The only series Canadians will never see is the runaway best. Army Wives is a surprise hit on Lifetime Television for Women. Not only that: With four million viewers and climbing, it is the top ratings success for that channel. Ever. No one has mentioned the irony. Lifetime, like our own women's channel, was launched in the '80s, as a fellow traveler for feminism. Its bread and butter, the Woman-in-peril-from-evil-men genre, has kept it afloat for more than 20 years. But the hit that has pushed it into direct competition with HBO and Showtime is something that harks back to the '50s, where men were men, and women kept the campfires burning. Of course, some of these wives work, but still, on an army base, gender roles are drawn with thick dark pencil lines. There is a female colonel in Army Wives; she is black, and her husband is a psychiatrist who hangs out with the wives and is "there" for everyone. But the bonding is the polar opposite to that of Desperate Housewives. The troubles and fears on the base are real, not inflicted through the narcissism, lust, or greed of Wisteria Lane, but by the willing sacrifice of life, limb, and sanity by their mates and the women themselves. Army Wives models something new for extra-pampered modernists, which is to say the lives, feelings, and motivations of people who actually stand ready to protect the rest of us. Despite the anti-war, blame Bush and the Americans sentiment in the media, we are all secretly in awe of soldiers because, for the first time in decades, we suspect there's a chance that we are going to need them. We are curious, we want to know who they are. We can hardly believe that there are people who will, despite our scorn, lay down their lives for us. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 But with the proliferation of digital TV and the internet, it is getting very hard for the "keepers of the zeitgeist" to stop tiny little things from slipping through and becoming really big hits. |
| Posted by: Skunky Glins5285 2007-08-10 13:34 |
| #1 And do you suppose that the entertainment media "keepers of the zeitgeist" will notice and make adjustments accordingly, and give us more of this kind of programming? Naaa, me neither. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-08-10 09:32 |