Required
- Steel Magnolias Movie.
- Robert Harling interview
- Robert
Harling 30th anniversary interview.
- Robert
Harling interview with Garden & Gun. (I guess
because they started with guns in the garden).
So I've been trying to line up an interview with Robert
Harling, but haven't succeeded yet. But these interviews cover a
lot of the ground I would.
One thing that fascinates me about the story is the strength of
Southern women living in the patriarchy. One source of that
strength is social cohesion among women. The women in the movie
have their own subculture separate from the men in their lives,
a matriarchy that exists withing a formal patriarchy. At one
point, the mystified husband of Truvy Jones (Dolly Parton) asks
her what the wax in the beauty shop part of their house is for.
"It's to make women pretty," she says. And that's as far as he
gets into the mysterious world of women. Formally, the wax is
there in service of the patriarchy — to make women more pleasing
to their men. What patriarch could object to that? But the
curtain is firmly drawn across the details of these rituals and
ceremonies. And within group of women, it's the patriarchy
itself which somehow seems epiphenomenal. Harling says that men
aren't in the play at all, and in the movie, they are lumped in
with children and dogs as somewhat unruly forces that must be
managed by the women. Even Shelby's ultimately fatal pregnancy
seems to be more her idea than her husband's.