The Talkies / Kramer vs. Kramer
Podhoretz, John
"The Talkies / Kramer vs. Kramer" close to Kennedy's right and slightly behind him is a slim, balding gentleman named Ken Feinberg, the special counsel to the Judiciary Committee. His role proves to be that of interpreter....
...rather, it's because Ted, who has lost his job as a result of the lengths to which he has gone to replace Joanna as Billy's mother, is a good parent...
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...It would permit wives to charge their husbands with rape...
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...This excuse is conveniently provided by the Sisterhood, which, in its advocacy of "self-fulfillment" above all else, has managed to make the reprehensible act of deserting a child (an even more egregious moral offense when committed by a mother) acceptable and even laudable...
...If it weren't, wouldn't she have taken Billy with her...
...Then we wait to hear the court's conclusion, knowing that the child's well.being depends upon the right decision...
...He can, and for good measure Bayh adds that "the First Amendment doesn't give anyone the right to go into my backyard or into nuclear power plants...
...Kramer is an indictment of her behavior and a subtle and chilling indictment of the pervasive effects of the women's liberation movement...
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...He must keep Billy's spirits up and strive to keep the child in a functioning state...
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...Then, after a while, the urge becomes irresistible and they openly sit in the chairs...
...This rings completely false on two accounts: first, because we witness nothing to convince us that Ted "opl:ressed" his wife...
...He is opposed by Senator Orrin Hatch, who has been sitting through the proceedings with a faint air of long-suffering rectitude...
...These movies all applaud, or cry for, their heroines as they, either successfully or unsuccessfully but always courageously, try to strip themselves of the yoke of millennia-old slavery...
...I wish the Justice Department might be able to help," says Kennedy, who is playing with his gavel...
...Finally she calls Ted and they meet...
...Thrilling, is it not...
...So Ted must become a mother to the kid to whom he is already an affectionate father...
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...He resembles nothing so much as the easygoing headmaster who lets the boys rag the faculty...
...I believe in freedom of the press, but was taught that it implied responsibility--a responsibility to inform readers accurately...
...On the stand, Joanna speaks of her qualities as a mother and of her newfound strengths...
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...Bloomington, Indiana THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 39 Recently, Denver's Rocky Mountain News published an article on women's liberation by The American Spectator's editor, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...while Joanna, who has gone to California to get her head together, is a lousy mother, despite her newfound feminist strength and the fact that she gave birth to Billy...
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...and we realize that this is the kind of challenge to the heroine that the other movies simply lied about or hid from...
...Bayh has a peculiar amendment he wishes to insert...
...One day Ted comes home from the office, full of news about his latest success, and Joanna nervously hands him her front-door key, his laundry (continued on page 39) 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 MISCELLANEOUS TREASURE HUNT CLUES...
...The masterful and wrenching way in which it is told, as well as the astonishing performances of Hoffman, Streep, and particularly Henry, serve to make it a disquieting and memorable experieace...
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...And so it becomes possible for Joanna to walk out the door in search of "self," and in the process to leave her child behind...
...Despite Benton's unwillingness to go all the way in his portrayal of Joanna, as a whole Kramer vs...
...We know that Joanna is a cop-out artist who has failed to hack it in what is perhaps the most taxing and important job there is...
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...Hand your child the first clue...
...You can't have him," Ted tells her...
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...But no one is against the First Amendment...
...To this end, he has Joanna and Ted talk about Joanna's difficulties and the tolls these took upon her sensitive character...
...91209 THE TALKIES (continued from page 6) and dry-cleaning tickets, and walks out the door...
...Then a gentleman begins to speak in a loud, clear voice from the audience, several paces away from the senatorial table...
...She cries prettily as she dwells on her shortcomings anJ ,ells of the tribulations of being Ted's wife...
...we see her watching Billy through store windows and from around street corners...
...Senator Thad Cochran, a young and eager-to-please Republican from Mississippi, says something to Kennedy about a proposed amendmenr, and as he speaks Kennedy has his head turned to the right, listening not to Cochran but to Feinberg, who whispers continuously into Kennedy's ear...
...It is the only recent work of popular entertainment (excepting the novel on which it is based) to question the flight of privileged American women from their natural responsibility...
...Then the roaming athletic director returns, this time holding his coat over his shoulder, Camelotstyle...
...Kramer, matters are not so simple...
...The senator from Utah "is right about 99 percent of the time," Thurmond suspects, but this is not one of them...
...The right decision is, of course, to let Billy stay with Ted...
...into seeing her husband as he "really is," and goes against all she has beet told in order to free herseffof her lord and master and run her own life...
...From across the table, it looks like a curtsy...
...The reaction was so amusing that several of our Denver readers wrote us about the letters to the editor, the picketing of the News, and the follow-up story...
...In his back-and-forth with Hatch, Bayh is now advised by Jessica Joseplason, who is tall and is wearing a calf-length tweedy skirt and matching jacket...
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...Marcia Morrison Willcoxon "May I suggest that he 'liberate' himself from such an artificial restriction of his personhood...
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...hind with her busba,~, Ted...
...He takes his chair, and the two aides standing behind get down into the approved "crouch" position, ready to start their whisPering...
...He stands by the door for a while, looking out over the assembled company, continuing to chew, as if to say: I'm just going to stand here and chew gum for the time being, and anyone who doesn't like it can join me outside...
...Joanna (Meryl Streep) stays at home and minds their son, Billy (Justin Henry...
...he inquires at one point...
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...KRAMER Ever since the rapid suffusion of the attitudes and rhetoric of the women's tiheration movement into every aspect of American life, movies have been made about the explosive issues of male domination and female subjugation, sexual bondage, and "societal brainwashing...
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...At another moment, he openly seeks the advice and consent of the man from the American Civil Liberties Union...
...There is some obscure talk, started by Senator Simpson of Wyoming (a lean-faced country-lawyer type), about First Amendment rights in connection with protestors occupying nuclear power plants...
...After all, The American Spectator's editor revels in treating venerable world leaders and trendy "movements" with puckish irreverence...
...Rather, it is about Joanna Kramer's decision to go off and "fred herself" and the effects that decision by John Podhoretz has on the little boy she leaves be...
...It's all a part of the new Puritanism, apparently...
...Save the hostages and save the hostage takers...
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...Can you comment on that kind of concern, er, aon...
...If Kennedy is the gregarious headmaster, Bayh is the athletic director who knows a thing or two about keeping order...
...What kind of courage does it take to walk out on your kid...
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...Schwartz is from Ohio, but he gives his reaction...
...Instead, she executes a quick little knee bend to lower herself to Bayh's height...
...So as a public service to our non-Denver readers, we offer excerpts of the published letters to the Rocky Mountain News chastising our gentle editor...
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...He defers to Gainer throughout the proceedings...
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...Please don't make me go back in there," she pleads, and escapes to the elevator, leaving Ted and Billy behind...
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...But before too long Bayh gets up and leaves the room...
...Carrie Richerson Such thoughtful comments suggest that The American Spectator is unlikely to become required reading for the sensitive and idealistic of the Republic...
...These movies--among them Alice Doesn't Lave Here Anymore, Coming Home, and An Unmarried I~oman--all follow a standard case history: A woman, thinking she has been a happy wife and mother, is suddenly shocked John Pod/Joretz is a student at the University of Chicago...
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...In a series of profoundly moving and evocative scenes, father and son forge their unhappy but necessary alliance...
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...Kramer stands as an extraordinary dissenting statement from pious and fellow-traveling Hollywood...
...Kennedy puts on his jacket, and an appropriate amount of hand-grasping, nodding and smiling, murmuring and plotting is carried on around him...
...She tells him she has been to California and has entered analysis--has, she says, "gotten my head together"--and wants Billy...
...Although Billy keenly misses his mother, hiding her picture away in a drawer and taping what few letters she writes to him over his bed, and although he is often somewhat unkempt, he learns to get by...
...There is a respectful hush among the senators as he explains what the law is and how it is about to be changed...
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...Hatch withdraws his objection, Miss Josephson gives one last curtsy, and the athletic director has a moment of glory...
...Schwartz, what's your reaction on this...
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...The senators put their elbows on the table but aides do not as a rule...
...and second, because everything Joanna did points to the fact that it was Bdly that made her leave...
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...1 am both sad and angry that the News would print 'Women of the Fevered Brow' by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr . . . . blatant and ugly sexism . . . . " Megan B. McClard Asst...
...Finally his entourage gathers itself together and sweeps him out of the room, out into the slipstream of presidential campaigning...
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...The eager young assistants are beginning to creep up closer to the senators' chairs, many of which are still empty...
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...Why, we thought, should our Denver readers have all the fun...
...Schwartz, who wears heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, is sitting with an air of great dignity and comfort in the chair of Senator Metzenbaum of Ohio...
...Kennedy looks down at his cigar and peels off a few more flakes...
...When someone tells Ted that " k took a lot of courage for Joanna m do what she did," he responds with "Yeah...
...of Women's Studies Metropolitan State College " . . . a name-calling smear of the women's movement and its dedicated leaders . . . . Does not a newspaper have the obligation to point out to its readers that an article is unfactual and, in fact, badly written and offensive...
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...Benton thus waffles at the moment he could have taken a truly courageous stand...
...He welcomes any comments...
...Save four billion people by scrapping winnerless wars, fixed wages, unemployment, and atheism...
...After all, they already get to enjoy the mountain air, the beautiful scenery, and Coors beer at the source...
...We're not trying to run a whizzer so that we crush First Amendment rights," someone reassures...
...Ted, in his turn, talks about his equal right to his child...
...Sometimes they will push protocol m its limits and put one elbow on the table...
...In whispering to Bayh, she won't assume the crouch position Probably it would be too undignified...
...He attempts to make Joanna something more than just a villain by ascribing to her a purity of motive and a kindness that her actions do not demonstrate...
...Kennedy does not mind a bit...
...This has nothing to do with his "equal right" to keep the child...
...Unfortunately, we know this better than writer-director Robert Benton, who could not find it in his heart to tell the merciless truth about the pitiably weak and self-serving Joanna...
...Benton even has Ted explain to his guiltwracked son that Joanna left not because of Billy but because of her marriage: "I tried to make her into a certain kind of wife," Ted says...
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...She becomes very upset when Ted, unable to believe what she is doing, tries to drag her back into their apartment...
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...For while Joanna is conversant with the women's liberation lingo, she is not a feminist, but simply someone who needed an excuse to abandon the responsibilities of motherhood...
...And they enter the legal battle that gives the film its title...
...But if you hold to complicated views of the world that bustles beyond your nose, if you delight in forming your own opinions, and if you want to know what some of the best writers in America are saying to discomfit some of the most preposterous lightweights, read The American Spectator...
...In response, she gives another curtsy, and Bayh speaks back...
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...Unbeknownst to both Ted and Billy, Joanna has reappeared...
...When Hatch speaks, she gives him an aggrieved look, as though he were insulting her...
...There appears not to be an authoritarian bone in his body...
...It is not clear whether Mr...
...Ted (Dustin Hoffman) is an advertising executive whose career is beginning to blossom...
...The movie is not really concerned with the marital difficulties of its title characters...
...The Krarners are an affluent, chic couple living on Manhattan's Upper East Side...
...Hatch worries that the Bayh amendment will undermine the family...
...All good things must come to an end, and before much more progress is made Kennedy picks up his gavel and announces that the committee will reconvene for further deliberations on the criminal code the following Tuesday morning...
...Now Senator Birch Bayh makes an entry, chewing gum...
...Hatch eventually gives up the battle when Senator Thurrriond makes it clear that he is not offering any support...
...And while the movie fails to come away with a completely satisfactory answer to the question it poses, it treats its subject with a delicacy and accuracy that have been missing from the other movies about women, going - to - find - out - who- they - really-are...
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...grey areas . . . . " Kennedy concludes...
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...His aides stand up again...
...I foresaw all this," she says, and vows to take the matter to court...
...As he listens, he peels off pieces of the outer leaf of his cigar...
Vol. 13 • January 1980 • No. 1
