Undoubtedly you all remember my seminal article from last year positing that most of what sucks about America comes from busybody schoolmarms. And I stand by that. But I want to elaborate a bit more on this and discuss how this relates to the arts and entertainment in the USA.

Namely, I want to discuss how a good many of America’s cultural heroes are men specifically standing against the “soft tyranny” of women in authority. This trend has existed since the country’s inception but only became really noticeable in America’s high point as a nation (which is to say from 1920 to about 1980). Thus, when you strike against womanly tyranny you are the latest in a long chain of masculine American men doing their duty against stuffy HR broads.

We can go down the list of American cultural heroes that have struck back against womanhood. While this is by no means an exhaustive list:

Starting from the 19th century, we have, of course, Mark Twain—remind me, who was it that filled Huckleberry Finn’s head with the notion of “sivilization”, that he’d go to hell if he didn’t return an escaped slave to its owner? His school teachers and other (mostly) female authority figures! And in the end, what does young Huck do? Turn his back on “civilization” and head out into the wild frontier:

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

(Of course, this is probably a reflection of the greater trend in America to make outlaws and loners heroes, see Last of the Mohicans, but one could argue that that also represents the anti-schoolmarm conflict, if “schoolmarm” can be taken to symbolize “civilization on the whole”).

And what of light periodicals and satire? Harold Ross and James Thurber, in describing their New Yorker as being “not for old ladies in Dubuque”, would seem to be guys rebelling against endless schoolmarming as well. Look at the way Thurber describes wives and mothers in law in his work, whether it be in his seminal The Secret Life of Walter Mitty or in his comic strips featuring gigantic shrewish women domineering over their downtrodden husband. For that matter, look at how society’s views have changed so much in making the 2013 adaptation of Walter Mitty not mention the wife at all?

Comedic films also noticed this—how many Marx Brothers or 3 Stooges films involved the boys going up against Margaret Dumont, Simona Boniface, or some other burly battleaxe of a Grande Dame representing “polite society”?

And of course, that most quintessential of American genres (er, besides the Western that is), the film noir (and for that matter their source material which is to say the pulp novels of Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, and Dashiel Hammet), is rife with scheming and villainous villainesses!

For is there a more unique female villain in America than the femme fatale? For what was that character if not a reaction to the evils that women do, or at least are perceived as doing? Hyper-sexualized and harsh, occasionally feigning helplessness and purity but always wrapping the patsy hero around her little finger and never letting loose the reins of control, couldn’t one argue that this is a bit of a schoolmarm as well? A sexy schoolmarm to be sure, but a schoolmarm nonetheless. She has to be sexy because, well, nobody is going to be snookered by some thick-necked battleaxe of a schoolmarm, certainly not Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade.

It’s worth pointing out that most of these examples came immediately after World War 1, in what has been conceived by many to be a backlash against women’s suffrage and Prohibition—and as I mentioned previously, those two things go hand in hand. While women did have some legitimate reasons for the temperance crusade, men across the nation didn’t take having their local suddenly stripped from them very well (to say nothing of how American alcohol became a laughing stock after Prohibition that has only VERY recently begun to be respected). It’s hardly an illogical leap to see women and preachers (eternally seen as effete mollycoddled types) working together an elaborate plot to send American men over seas and then pass prohibition  behind their backs.

Note that there really aren’t any great villainesses at all nowadays in film, because so few men notice this “schoolmarm” phenomenon, there are even less of them to fight against it; certainly not anybody who’s making blockbuster films at least—representative of the omnipresence of the feminist narrative. Well, that and the fact that most movies nowadays are made for adolescent boys with little-to-no experience with women rather than mature men

So you see, I am not the only one who recognizes the damage that busybody schoolmarms have done to America. Others (much smarter men than me) recognize it too, and have made art accordingly.. The only question is: Why? Why have a sizable minority of American women always been these nasty ballbreaking harridans? THAT question will require a lot more analysis, and will require its own article another day.