SUMMIT, N.J. - A New Jersey feminist group, American League of Ladies in Power, is protesting a media giant over its broadcast of an I Love Lucy episode that hinders the power and equality of women, objectifying females and enforcing roles upon them.
The episode, which features a classically entertaining plot of gender reversal in which Ricky and Fred tend to the housework and Lucy and Ethel go out into the phallo-dominated "working world" of the 1950s, aired on TVLand at 10:30 am on September 28, 2008.
The iconic episode, entitled 'Lucy and Ethel Get Jobs', includes the timeless scene where Lucy and Ethel stuff chocolates in their mouths to keep the assembly line manager from realizing that they are not up to par to the task of wrapping chocolates - and ends with the girls receiving the ironic, but hilarious, gift of chocolates from Ricky and Fred as a truce.
"The episode in which Ricky and Fred call housework 'easy' and the implication that entering the working world is 'just for men' is a repugnant, chauvinistic approach to the complexity of womanhood," ALLY founder and president, Eileen Norvitz, said.
ALLY, whose members have already drafted a dozen protest letters to the network and plan to stage a rally against the Viacom faction on Monday, have echoed similar sentiments about that first episode of "Bewitched" where Darrin Stephens orders Samantha not to use her witchcraft.
"Just because he's a man, he should have power over her?" Norvitz complained about the highly entertaining fictional 1960s sitcom featuring fictional characters with fictional superpowers. "I would've twitched my nose and sent him back to the Dark Ages where he belongs. I'm not even going to mention Gladys Kravitz, who exemplifies the ill-conceived notion that housewives are mindless and gossipy fools."
Critics of the movement, like everyone who is not a feminist, had a differing point of view. Norman Fisher, a 38 year-old technology consultant, had doubts about ALLY's movement.
"Besides, everyone knows TVLand doesn't even have good shows on anymore, and it's the same shit everybody else has in syndication. If I were the group, I'd be more concerned about protesting their new programming direction," says Peterson. "I mean, what happened to iconic classics like 'Taxi' and 'Mary Tyler Moore'? I've already seen every horrible 'Just Shoot Me' episode - on NBC, because the show just fucking ended," Fisher said.
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