Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Rest In Peace, Penny

Actor and director Penny Marshall has died, at age 75.

In addition to starring in Laverne & Shirley, she directed a number of classic films, including one of my all-time faves, A League of Their Own.  As I tweeted yesterday, I first saw the movie at a slumber party circa 1993. We liked it so much, we immediately rewound the VHS tape and rewatched it.

For me, and I suspect the other girls at the party, it was the first time I remember a film entirely about girls and women. While baseball flick The Sandlot was released around the same time as League, and is probably also considered a classic by many, the ultimate insult that the boys in Sandlot hurled at each other was to play ball "like a girl." At the time, I laughed along with the movie theater audience at that crack, most likely internalizing the misogyny in the "joke" even though I was a girl athlete myself. I was better than most of the boys in my neighborhood ballgames and thought, somehow, that made me an Exceptional Girl, even as I learned over the years, repeatedly, that it didn't mean that at all and, in some cases, only made boys and men hate me more.

A League of Their Own, on the other hand, centered the women ballplayers, portraying their detractors ("girls can't play ball") and scolds ("A lady reveals nothing!") as ridiculous, inviting us to empathize with the athletes. The film takes them seriously as athletes, at least as seriously as they take themselves as athletes, and over the course of that first season shows people across the country doing so, as well.

I have always wished Marshall could have portrayed queer relationships in the movie, as these most certainly existed in reality among some of the women, but I understand why she didn't or felt that she couldn't, even in the early 1990s. (Although, it's obvious that Mae and Doris were together).

I will be forever grateful to Penny Marshall for her gifts to the TV/film industry, most especially for A League of Their Own.

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