Martha, My Dear... my Feelings About "Gaslit"

 

In some ways, I think Martha Mitchell died of being under-appreciated, whatever obscure cancer might have been the actual diagnosis.  Of course, the part of me that got all those A’s and always did her summer reading that left her brimming with questions is still in here to insist that maybe what Martha needed was for the corridors of power to be pink enough that she could be Attorney General, too, loopy candor or no.  I’m older now, though, and in my own way, sort of filling in the ranks of my generation’s underappreciated, albeit without the same hostess expectations or quick hand with a rouge puff. All the same, even if I’d hit every mark with full-on Girls-Can-Be-Anything-Energy, there can only be one Attorney General, anyway. Mitchell, at least as played by Julia Roberts in “Gaslit”, was something of a marvel of self-invention, something my own grandmothers both aimed for with more limited success.   Now I wish we could live in a culture where being something of a party girl with an eye for a good story might end up enough for some people, especially since  the point of being at the top of one’s profession means there can be only one. I feel like jobs in this country are too consuming, both the actual working and as a way of ranking one’s acquaintances—indeed, we’d be in a better place if  John Mitchell had been more of a washout.

I think America needs to decide if we really want people to be able to do that or not. Sometimes it seems like another thing we have built up a legend about, like the classless society.  In practice, I think a lot of people end up in a slot quite early.

It’s weird that I’ve had time enough to be a Watergate geek that Martha went from seeming really, really old(The First First Lady’s name didn’t help her much here in my imagination) to someone that one of my generation’s “America’s Sweetheart” actresses could play. Have to wonder if that compelled a stronger performance from  Ms.  Roberts, who has seen the bright and dark in that ride by now.) Not sure whether our generation does the late forties and fifties differently---a couple of years ago, I was the same age as Maude at the beginning of her show, but we could not be more different--or whether that is a reflection of  my status as sort of an antisocialite.