Mrs America (2020) - Hulu/BBC

this was good indeed. this could’ve easily suffered from biopic syndrome, where a long and complex life is reduced to some key moments, but it avoided it, imo, by focusing on the interpersonal relationships between the feminists and by animating the conflict between their ideals and expectations of society.

favorite eps: shirley, bella, the one where alice got lost in the houston convention

that last one was a special episode of television, particularly how it animated how it must’ve felt being a fly on the wall for the convergence of all these disparate women’s movements—and for the last gasps of the hippie movement in general.

My wife watched it with one of my daughters, and they both liked it a lot.

Thought this was really good, educational too for me. From what I've read it's pretty accurate to events - when you're making a historical drama about intellectuals and activists, you have the advantage that they all wrote a lot down. There was criticism from Steinem and others that it overplayed Schlafly's importance - STOP ERA didn't kill the ERA, men did - but idk it was clear we were only seeing a slice of events, e.g. the president and his staff was clearly doing a lot of other stuff in the 364+ days each year they weren't on screen engaging with the women's movement.

Loved spending time with all those amazing people - Flo Kennedy should have had her own episode too.

Also found this contemporary account from the NYT interesting, even if it hits a weird snarky tone in parts: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/25/archives/that-week-in-houston-it-was-said-that-the-womens-movement-was-in-a.html

Schlafly definitely overplayed but women visible at the forefront of regressive movements always help in increasing their visibility and credibility.