Welcome back Chaise Lounge readers and an especially warm welcome to our newest subscribers! You all are the ones who keep this newsletter going, and for that, I thank you. This week we will turn our gaze to the big screen. As more and more women are creating, writing, and producing television and movies, the presentation of women is changing. One particular genre that fascinates me is the revenge story. We will take a look at the new series on AMC Kevin Can F*** Himself which puts a new spin on the sitcom genre. Before we get to that subject, let’s take a spin around the globe for some news.
Global Updates
Mary Simon is appointed Canada’s 30th governor general
Ms. Simon is an advocate for Inuit rights and a former ambassador to Denmark. Her appointment follows the revelation of mass graves at former residential schools for indigenous children. While she speaks Inuit and English, she does not speak French which is one of the national languages of Canada. But Ms. Simon points out that she was not afforded instruction in French when she attended a federal day school in Quebec. She is pursuing French studies.
As the Queen's representative in Canada, the governor general carries out many duties in her absence. She has the power to give a throne speech and suspend parliament, give royal assent to legislation and swear in the prime minister, and is the commander-in-chief of the Canadian Armed Forces.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on her farewell tour to the U.S.
Chancellor Merkel is visiting the United States as she winds down her sixteen years of service as Chancellor of Germany. Merkel has been a stalwart leader of Germany through four American presidential terms of office. Her continued focus on climate change proved to be a disappointment for her as the U.S. did not show as much interest in the issue, but otherwise, the two countries have maintained a positive relationship. On her last trip to the U.S. as chancellor, she will be looking for “results-oriented diplomacy” that will last beyond her tenure.
National Updates
The U.S. Navy has developed a maternity flight suit for pregnant pilots
While women have been in the Navy for 47 years, this is the first time that a uniform has been designed for pregnant members of the branch. The flight suits have adjustable side panels that expand as the pregnancy advances. Previously, pregnant service persons wore gradually larger and larger flight suits that introduced safety hazards.
BoardReady report shows that board diversification has positive economic impacts
A July report from BoardReady illustrates the positive effects of gender, age, and racial diversity on boards. Companies with over 30% of board seats held by women outperformed their less gender-diverse counterparts in 11 out of the top 15 S&P 500 sectors. Companies whose median board age was 55 years experienced 10.1% growth during the pandemic vs. those whose median age was 65+ who lost 7.7% in revenue. Companies with at least 30 percent of their board seats held by non-white directors saw 54% year-over-year revenue growth.
Zaila Avant Garde wins the 2021 Scripps Spelling Bee
If you haven’t already heard or read about thirteen-year-old Zaila Avant Garde’s win of the Scripps Spelling Bee, make sure to watch this video where she tells us all about it. This girl is going places. She holds Guinness World Records in basketball dribbling and has her sites set on Harvard followed by a career in neuroscience, gene editing or basketball coaching. Keeping an eye on this one!
Are Female Revenge Stories the Genre of the Future?
Have women finally had enough of the absurd ways in which they are portrayed by Hollywood that the revenge story will become the new plotline of our time? It’s hard to say, but after watching the first few episodes of Kevin Can F*** Himself and Promising Young Woman earlier this year, the revenge genre is breaking new ground and definitely challenging worn-out narratives. By allowing the female characters to acknowledge their anger and claim some power, the creators are establishing a new approach to writing for female characters.
In Kevin Can F*** Himself (created by Valerie Armstrong), we meet Allison McRoberts (played by Annie Murphy), a thirty-something liquor store clerk who is married to Kevin (played by Eric Petersen), living in Worcester, Massachusetts. What we initially see, looks like every other sitcom with the attractive wife married to the shlubby infantile guy who rules the roost, loud laugh track included. Think Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens or even The Honeymooners and you get the idea. The wife is always having to clean up the husband’s messes, both literally a figuratively. Early in the first episode, Allison is rudely dismissed from the living room by Kevin and his friends. Allison returns to the kitchen where the bright lights of the studio and the canned laughter disappear. Allison is in the kitchen as it actually looks, only lit by the light coming in from the small window. She is full of anger and despair, so much so that she breaks a glass and cuts her hand. The kitchen is bleak just like Allison’s life.
The show moves back and forth between the sitcom set where Kevin is always coming up with kooky ideas to make money or exact revenge on a neighbor and the scenes where we learn about Allison’s internal life. While it makes for a jarring effect, the viewer understands that, unlike other sitcoms they have seen, this show is about the wife.
We learn that Allison has dreams to move on with her life. In spite of being married to Kevin for ten years, she does not really understand how unhappy she is. She has been a passerby in her own life without realizing it. In fact, another character refers to her as “wallpaper”. When she discovers that Kevin has spent all of the money she thought they had been saving to purchase a new home, she realizes that her life has been a fantasy. We even get to see that fantasy where she is fully made up, wearing a June Cleaveresque dress and pouring Kevin a beer in their dreamy new kitchen. This is where the story turns from a sitcom to darkness.
Allison decides that she is going to kill Kevin. While it may be a shocking and cruel reaction to his buffoonery, we begin to understand how he has isolated her from her friends and family. He mocks her in front of his friends for “never finishing anything” like school. But then we learn that he spent the money from her student loans on himself. When she had a great job that she loved at a law firm, Kevin wanted her all to himself and made her life miserable until she left the job. Each time she wanted something for herself, Kevin’s needs were more important. Upon finding out about the treachery behind the savings account, Allison is going rogue.
Allison is angry, but she does not know what to do with that anger other than coming up with the unoriginal idea of killing her husband. She has passively gone along with all of his wishes chipping away at her sense of self. The other women in the show tell her that nothing is ever going to change and that she is lucky to be married to a guy as great as Kevin. As the episodes continue, Allison behaves impulsively as she experiments with her newfound mental freedom. She knows that she is on the precipice of making big changes in her life, but she is not sure exactly how to implement them.
The show’s focus on revenge naturally made me think back to last year’s Oscar-nominated movie Promising Young Woman (written by Emerald Fennell) where the main female character while not murderous, attempts to exact revenge on those who caused her friend serious harm. So why are we suddenly seeing women on the screen having such dark and vengeful thoughts? Perhaps it is because these shows/movies are written and created by women. Because women were kept out of the creative leadership roles in Hollywood for decade upon decade, we only saw the tired tropes of the naggy wife on sitcoms. It took female writers and creators to look at the way that women are portrayed in film and television and turn it on its head.
Valerie Armstrong, the creator of Kevin Can F*** Himself, recalled that in 2017 during the height of the #MeToo era and discussions around gender issues, she heard a podcast where two actresses were complaining that the only roles for women in sitcoms involved setting up jokes for the male lead. She imagined what would happen if the audience followed that wife out of the room to understand something about her as a person. The idea for Kevin Can F*** Himself was born.
Fennell’s purpose was to challenge the normalized misogyny of having sex with incapacitated women. “Because this was such a culturally, so normalized, this kind of behavior when I was growing up. There's just nothing in this movie that wasn't the butt of a joke in a Hollywood movie or a TV series.”
The production of these movies and shows calling out the treatment of women as disposable objects is both new and exciting. When women complain about how patriarchy and misogyny are baked into our culture, they are often shut down with comments about how far we have come. But we are just beginning to see some media that gets at the crux of many misogynistic attitudes that are pushed onto our screens every day. And while the revenge genre may be extreme, it is moving us toward better representation.
The series is not complete yet, and we will have to see how Allison develops as she gains more personal confidence. I am not sure where the creators are going with the show, but I am along for the ride. Buckle up!
Kevin Can F*** Himself is available on AMC and AMC+.
Some really interesting insights here. I've been meaning to watch Promising Young Woman. It sounds like Kevin Can F*** Himself is also really worth the time to read. With regards to female revenge films, there certainly seems to be a lot more awareness of them although there have been quite a few over the years. I recently saw A Simple Favour for the first time which one could argue was a female driven revenge film of sorts. There's a French film from the early 2000s which is definitely one.
But I definitely think there's value in seeing these types of films become more visible though as it's an untapped opportunity.