“Tits Up”
Mrs. Maisel, Susie and the Power of Symbiotic Relationships
If Mrs. Maisel is a pearl it’s because Susie Meyerson is the sand. We should all be so lucky to have someone who challenges us and complements us. Someone who helps you leverage your assets without exploiting them. And, it has to be said, someone who believes in you and pushes you when you don’t believe in yourself. From Virgil and Dante to buddy cop comedies, trust matters.
Amazon Prime’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel could be nutshelled as a series in which Jerry Seinfeld is alternately cast as Baby in a Dirty Dancing remake. But it’s so much more than that. It’s only one show but it does comedy, coming of age and drama as deftly as any show dedicated to only one of those genres.
And it aces the Bechdel-Wallace Test without preaching it in 1950s New York. Although the impetus for the storyline is a sordid breakup, the main characters are female, and they champion each other through everything — not just the men in their lives.
Ideally, we would all be that kind of complement to each other. All of our relationships are Venn diagrams — our families, friendships, intimate relationships and business partnerships.
As an Upper West Side housewife evolves into a foul-mouthed downtown standup comedian, Far Rockaway Susie is there to literally bail the doe-eyed ingénue out of jail and help her navigate the courts with the same tough love she will use throughout the show to help Midge thrive in the real world.
“I’mnotyourfriendI’myourmanager,” Susie often chastises the eponymous main character like it’s one swear word. But she’s never managed anyone before. And educated empowered Midge is helping Susie become more Susie — more confident and more competent as a show biz manager, while they build the brand and business of “Mrs. Maisel”.
But Midge knows it’s still a man’s world. And sometimes you have to call your ex-husband to punch a nightclub owner in the face when he won’t pay you for performing — even if your manager, though locked in a mop closet, is certain you ladies could’ve handled it on your own.
Their growing professional relationship is as symbiotic as their budding friendship even when Susie denies it. They’re falling up the learning curve together.
Stories about women created and written by women have depth, character arcs, try/fail cycles, reflection, growth and nuance throughout. And the texture is almost always in the dialogue.
The Shonda Rhimes trilogy is network TV’s longest-running contribution to humanizing female characters, mainstreaming them from the damsel in distress and centering them from behind every good man.
Genji Kohen repeated her Weeds’ fish-out-of-water formula with Orange is the New Black. And it was even more successful the second time around.
As producer and studio exec Reese Witherspoon said, “Films with women at the center are not a public service project, they are a big-time, bottom-line-enhancing, money-making commodity.”¹
The growing commercial success of female lead characters is a powerful driver in creating and increasing momentum. But they also model a changing reality for us. People are just as complex as their lives.
Women creators, producers and writers let their characters share the spotlight. Their female leads aren’t the only ones navigating tragedies, triumphs and tedium. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Mrs. Maisel isn’t the only one given a character arc. The show creates enough space for her father, mother, brother, and several friends to have concurrent storylines develop. In shows written by women, character-driven plots become relationship-driven plots. As characters evolve so too do their relationships with each other. Intimacy creates intricacy. These details create a more substantial plot.
A Gentile wife longs to please her Jewish mother-in-law and struggles with infertility. A tenured professor wrestles with the implications of private-sector research. A father learns his son’s greatest secret. An aging housewife tries to redefine herself later in life outside of her roles as a wife and a mother to grown children. The tensile strength of family traditions and expectations is tested. Friends have needs. Everyone gets spoken parts. Even when dramatized that kind of authenticity resonates. Because life is hard. And beautiful.
“Tits up” becomes Midge and Susie’s 1950s tongue-in-cheek way to say “shoulders back” before Midge takes a stage. When these two women say it to each other they are reclaiming a sexualizing directive as their own cheer. And they use it to rally each other to do their absolute best.
When a 70-year-old friend of mine, an old white man, called me an ‘uppity broad’ over a raucous night of drinks with raucous drinkers he smiled with an actual Santa Claus twinkle. I could almost hear it sparkle. He said it with mock disdain but that twinkle gave his intentions away. He knew he could mock the legacy of sexism by giving me two insults-cum-compliments: opinionated and a woman. We laughed. It was a good night. And I am an uppity broad.
Tits up, my friends.
