Bobbie Jo is enthralled with a new book she is reading called "The Feminine Mistake" which has the basic premise that women are being denied their humanity by men by being forced into domest... Read allBobbie Jo is enthralled with a new book she is reading called "The Feminine Mistake" which has the basic premise that women are being denied their humanity by men by being forced into domestic lives rather than real careers. After speaking to Janet who she believes is a fully rea... Read allBobbie Jo is enthralled with a new book she is reading called "The Feminine Mistake" which has the basic premise that women are being denied their humanity by men by being forced into domestic lives rather than real careers. After speaking to Janet who she believes is a fully realized woman, Bobbie Jo decides to look for a job so that she can gain an identity through ... Read all
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Did you know
- TriviaTitle is based upon the book 'The Feminine Mystique' written by Betty Friedan.
- SoundtracksPetticoat Junction
(uncredited)
Written by Curt Massey & Paul Henning
Performed by Curt Massey
[Series theme song played during the opening titles and credits]
Bobbie Jo has been engrossed in the feminist tract "The Feminine Mistake," an obvious reference to Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" and a clever one too since the thesis of Bobbie Jo's tome is that women make the mistake of believing that their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers will make them feel thoroughly fulfilled; therefore, they don't need to aspire to anything else. In fact, Friedan's landmark 1963 book challenged this belief and thus becomes the target of Lee's (or Stewart's) unrelenting smackdown that begins even before Bobbie Jo arrives at the breakfast table as Billie Jo and Janet chide Uncle Joe for his eating and (lack of) exercise habits. His reply? "The whole trouble started when they gave women the vote."
Then, with the fervor of the newly awoken, Bobbie Jo decries the vacuity of women's lives, wasting their time catering to husbands, babies, and home "just to get out of becoming a real person." Janet's quietly mocking rejoinder relates how she now must see a poor female patient with "a wonderful husband" and "four fat, healthy, beautiful babies" who is unaware that she is wasting her time. And when Billie Jo asks Bobbie Jo to clear the table because she must get ready to leave for her out-of-town singing engagements, Bobbie Jo applauds her independence until Billie Jo laments that she is just "a struggling singer rapidly becoming an old maid."
With that hardly subtle tone established, Bobbie Jo sallies forth to claim her identity by trying her hand at various jobs including hairdressing and demonstrating kitchen products at a department store, all abject failures that somehow manage to victimize Selma Plout (Elvia Allman), before she convinces Sam Drucker to hire her as a reporter for his newspaper.
Her first piece is an interview with Janet, filling in for vacationing Doc Stewart while trying to establish her own practice, but Bobbie Jo takes liberties interpreting Janet's quotes, and despite Sam's reluctance to print her interview because it's a "little strong" and he's worried that Janet seems to be "talking down" to the residents of Hooterville Valley, he runs it anyway. Not surprisingly, the backlash becomes so heated that Bobbie Jo finds herself trying to slink out of town in the middle of the night.
Squarely in the spotlight, Lori Saunders exudes flowery melodrama that exaggerates Bobbie Jo's youthful angst and determination while making an overall earnest effort that sells the narrative conceit. Pat Woodell's original portrayal of the Bradley middle sister established her as the brainy one and thus, according to the "Petticoat Junction" calculus, the one least attractive to boys despite the fact that the shapely brunette was hardly chopped liver. But once Saunders inherited the role, Bobbie Jo became progressively bird-brained, an empty vessel to be filled by whoever or whatever could influence the impressionable young woman, and Saunders's performance reflects that naïveté, impetuousness, and stridency that must be systematically struck down by the closing credits.
Delivering the coup de grâce is Janet, a single career woman ostensibly reflecting the tenor of the changing times. Indeed, when Bobbie Jo praises her for "deciding against the mundane boredom of an ordinary marriage in favor of a stimulating, challenging career," Janet qualifies that with "well, not exactly, it was a matter of first things first." And when Bobbie Jo asks her what she thinks about the Hooterville Valley, Janet replies that she loves it, adding, "there aren't many places like it left in the country today," a virtual dog whistle calling to preserve traditional values in a country undergoing fundamental--and contentious--changes in those values.
It is Janet who convinces Bobbie Jo to return to the fold by using reverse psychology, describing them both as "big-city girls" while disparaging Hooterville, which prompts Bobbie Jo to defend her hometown and to acknowledge that renouncing her traditional feminine qualities was her real mistake. Now all that's left is to get her barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. After all, Lee's "The Feminine Mistake" makes no concession to the feminist movement as it touts the sanctity of the traditional nuclear family in which a woman's domesticity is cherished above all.
Moreover, under Stewart's stewardship, "Petticoat Junction" would adopt the same approach in Season Seven when it's Billie Jo's turn to become radicalized by female empowerment in "Susan B. Anthony, I Love You," co-written by Stewart, with Billie Jo even more obnoxious than Bobbie Jo is here.
The real value of watching television shows from bygone eras is to see how the times in which these programs were made are reflected not just in the overt topic that informs each episode but in the environment in which it transpires. "Petticoat Junction" was part of "rural craze" of the 1960s that, as the decade unfolded, became progressively dated as its "timeless" format became increasingly out of step compared to contemporary society.
Thus, the inherent conservatism of "Petticoat Junction" required it to confront new challenges to "the way things were" such as feminism as a threat to be neutralized so order can be restored. By using flighty Bobbie Jo as the vehicle to exemplify feminism while never acknowledging any of its merits, "The Feminine Mistake" sets up a straw woman who is easily smacked down and domesticated, as is Bobbie Jo in the end.
POINT TO PONDER: Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept only facts and opinions you agree with. It is extremely difficult to avoid. Are reviews "helpful" only if they validate your confirmation bias? Are they "not helpful" if they contradict it? Thus, a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down seems only to indicate agreement or disagreement with respect to confirmation bias and not whether a review is or isn't "helpful."
- darryl-tahirali
- Sep 8, 2024
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