Weekend telly went from the ridiculous to the sublime from trashy X Factor to Jane Tennison bowing out from our screens after 7 series of Prime Suspect. Where to begin? Venice I think. It all began with Bond, James Bond.
More than a few things this weekend made me reflect on the way women are portrayed on screen. Flicking through the channels between the X Factor I caught the opening few minutes of From Russia with Love with Shir Sean Connery. I would love to hear a Camile Paglia analysis of this film, it’s a riot. East meets West. Now this was one of the earliest Bonds but all the trademark title sequence is a blast. You know the drill. Some scantily clad women gyrate in various “arty” shapes in the background while the title credits are superimposed. This one’s maybe more entertaining than most because the said gyrator happens to be a belly dancer. I couldn’t help laughing. But I had to think, what was it that was making me laugh? Maybe the first thought was “this is the kind of thing that radical feminists protest against, women potrayed as sex objects”. Literally pieces of a women displayed, portion at a time, bit o belly here, bit of thigh there - like joints of meat at the butchers. But there’s something about luminous neon lettering hovering over the belly button of a belly dancer in motion that is nothing short of a joy to behold. No one would know who was being credited in the film your attention is entirely behind what’s on front of the screen, quite mesmerising. Who’s got the power?
Again later in the film we are introduced to the deliciously villaneous and wacky Rosa Klebb played by Lotte Lenye - she’s the one that goes on to attempt the hilarious spikey shoes assassination. The women in the film are either toys or they’re organisers. Klebb clearly has a great deal of power allocating agents to different tasks. It’s difficult to remember that this was the early sixties, women by and large didn’t have jobs telling other people what to do. This would be a function of the Russian connection with the communist gender equality placing Rosa where there’d normally be a man in a Western scenario. She tells her spy in no uncertain terms to use her feminine charms to seduce Bond. Back at Bond HQ, what about poor Miss Moneypenny, played by the delightful Lois Maxwell? All that flirting and what’s she got to show for it? Bond can jet set anywhere in the world but he canny go anywhere until Moneypenny sorts out his plane tickets for him. Who’s got the power?
The ‘toy’ women are almost biblical in the way they’re portrayed as the seductive Eve’s luring the hapless males into temptation. The men can never resist them. There are some supporting characters in sultry Turkey. In one scene we’re treated to that staple of film analysis “The Male Gaze” but in an interesting spin by Terrence Young the director it’s a three-way gaze. A woman is sprawled seductively over a bed, fully clothed, the camera and us are looking at her, she in turn is looking longingly towards her partner, her partner is ignoring this vision of loveliness and is in a chair working, if it was a contemporary film he’d probably be tapping away on a laptop, she again the Eve tempts him away from work and into her arms. Then of course a bomb goes off, as it does 
Bond is lounging with yet another lovely in a punt. Bond gets the phone call to leave. Lovely, (can you spot a pattern here), persuades Bond to stay longer for more canoodling, he can’t resist. Who’s got the power? Anyway what about today?
Some cheap, quasi-hokum of a paranormal drama called “afterlife” was on after X-Factor I wasn’t really watching it but midway A young couple tear each others clothes off, no preamble, no seduction. Not to put too fine a point we (The Male Gaze) again are given bare bum and breasts - her only of course, this is only a few minutes past the notional “watershed” for adult content and is scheduled right next to one of the most popular shows with lots of kids watching. Completely gratuitous and unneccessary. Over forty years after Bond film ’sexism’ and this is what we have to show for it? Nubile young actresses are still getting their bits out for the boys on screen, only difference now is it’s explicit. It’s not “suggestive” it’s “in your face”. Is this progress?
Leaving this crass nonsense behind. I have to say that I thought the last episode of Prime Suspect was quite simply one of the best pieces of television I’ve ever seen. Best part of four hours but not a single wasted moment, not one line of script that didn’t speak beyond mere words. Pure Class and a top notch production. AA Gill nailed it in the Sunday Times when he wrote “As a collection, it’s been brilliantly sustained, and this is mostly down to Helen Mirren’s performance. Her heroic decline into the bottle and loneliness is Shakespearian, except that Shakespeare never wrote parts this meatily tragic for women.”. There was an important role too for Scot Katy Murphy (Miss Toner - Tutti Frutti) and screen husband as the distraught parents of a murdered child. Such great support acting all round including the youngsters. I wont spoil the plot for anyone still to watch but the focus is very much back on Jane herself as much as the case she is running. Although the script was great there was so much that wasn’t spoken but conveyed in looks, in panning round empty rooms where in previous series Jane would have been having flings with colleagues, now emptiness all around and her struggles to reach out and sustain any kind of a human relationship with all the bridges she’s burnt over the years as a hard-boiled copper. Has it been worth it? The forfeiting of kids for a career are conveyed tenderly but painfully and oh so very powerfully. This is pure majesterial televisual power.
We should rightly celebrate Helen Mirren who seems to be cornering the market in senior women in power and is starting to usurp the blessed Dame Judy Dench as the nation’s favourite Dame. Now you have to acknowledge the arc of her career. Royal Shakespeare Company but thirty years ago in TV/Film she would just as likely have been the fleshy presence in that ghastly afterlife show. She wasn’t shy of stripping off even the last episode had a shower scene but decency prevailed. The art films of Peter Greenaway, the haunting and tender “Cal” where she has a relationship with her husband’s murderer. The two Elizabeths in quick succession and seven stages of Jane Tennison spread across several years. Tennison is what would be the equivalent of King Lear on the stage for a man. Will we see her likes again? With Prime Suspect we also shouldn’t neglect to acknowledge Linda La Plante, Jane was her creation, the original script writer who helped give the first series such an impact when it hit our screens. Again all those years ago it was a novelty for a woman boss and in the tough, macho world of the police force. Helen gave Tennison life, flesh and blood. In a sense I’m glad Prime Suspect has finished when it is at the pinacle of all that’s best in TV, where there’s so much trash, this was the best of all possible worlds. Don’t miss it.
Technorati Tags: Helen Mirren, Prime Suspect, James Bond, Male gaze, women, feminism, Camille Paglia
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