A Fantastic Yet Puzzling Film

Kenny was at work last night and it was Friday, my favorite of all nights, so I indulged myself with renting a film I thought he wouldn't miss seeing - "The Iron Lady," with Meryl Streep, about the indomitable Margaret Thatcher.  I enjoyed every moment of the great politician's rise to prominence as the Western world's first female political leader and was entranced by yet another masterful performance by Meryl Streep.  Michael Scott from "The Office" was not wrong about idolizing her - she could portray a rotting, putrid zombie and make the character incredible and worth watching.



Granted, my first exposure to Margaret Thatcher came in 1997, and it was far from flattering.  Can anyone recall a terrifically hilarious[ly inappropriate] movie called "Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery"?

Austin, deep in Dr. Evil's secret lair, has stumbled onto Frau Farbissina's ultimate weapon - the Fembots:

Baseball. Cold Showers. Margaret Thatcher Naked on a Cold Day



While I can see why Austin's tactic helped him ultimately derail the Fembots' train of destruction - or was it his own train of thought? - and escape their clutches, it wasn't exactly a tasteful joke.  Nonetheless, Margaret Thatcher was forever on my radar and I was thrilled to finally see this movie.  What a powerhouse this woman was while in office, and what incredible changes she muscled through during some of the greatest upheavals in recent history.  I guiltily admit that, like the casual ignorance that annoyed Billy Joel into penning the iconic song "We Didn't Start The Fire" in 1989, Americans tend only to recognize the noisiest moments of history and let other crucial bits slip by.  I was born in 1982 during Mrs. Thatcher's height of awesomeness and don't even remember the fall of the Berlin Wall (though, ironically, I vividly remember several "Ghostbuster" cartoons that played on TV at that same time), and so I never knew just what she had accomplished.  But like the careless comments by Generation X-ers, whose ignorance exasperated Billy Joel into writing his history-laden song, too many of us aren't aware of what happened to our nation after all the soldiers came home from the Pacific and European theaters.  Sure, we heard conflicting reports about the mire of Vietnam and everyone "knows" about Woodstock (a less important widely-recognized event couldn't be found today except perhaps a Kardashian wedding), but what do we really know about the conditions of the world at the time we were born?  I have always been hopelessly unaware, but after watching "The Iron Lady," I want to know more - especially because I see those same things poised to happen again.  And I am especially piqued about the things this film didn't mention, things Margaret Thatcher was famous for, and why those events got swept under the proverbial rug.

To me, the most fascinating aspect of Margaret Thatcher was her utter uncompromising stance - she was, as the Soviets nicknamed her, the "Iron Lady."  There were no apologies for her conservative policies or stances, and some of them came across as draconian in a society that was much more liberal than the United States.  However, the nation was on the brink of financial collapse when she became the Prime Minister in 1979, and the principles of self-government, frugality, and home economy learned under her grocer father were as applicable to a nation as they were to her house and community in Grantham, England growing up in World War II.  She faced off with unsustainable labor demands, stared them down without blinking, and refused to cower to the rioting mobs who balked under her firm spending cuts and unflinching fight against outrageous inflation.  Her Secretary of Employment, Norman Tebbit, responded to criticism that the riots were a result of her handling of the high unemployment situation: "I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father," Tebbit said. "He did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it."  That sentiment echoed the determination Thatcher's own father showed and which she demonstrated as well.  As she wryly put it not long after taking office, the English needed to reevaluate their love-affair with the government: ""We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral."  This harrows up in my mind the specter of Julia, the fictitious model American girl the Obama Administration would like us to embrace. The government shadows Julia from Head Start in kindergarten through educational reforms in high school to make sure she graduates with ease; from college subsidized by the federal government to contraception paid for through Obamacare; behind her through employment and pregnancy, and finally on to middle age as she collects Medicare and social security so that she can pursue such appropriate activities as labor in a community garden.  Interestingly, this quintessential American girl Julia, who shares a name with Karl Marx's daughter and the doomed female character of George Orwell's "1984," manages to live a lifetime under the presidency of Barack Obama.  Really, she does - above each of the milestones of her life is the phrase "Under President Obama...".  I thought U.S. presidents were only able to serve a total of 8 years in office, but maybe in Julia's world, the constitution has changed.


But I digress.


I remember hearing about the Falklands War growing up, but only as an echo bouncing around in the back of my mind.  Now I won't forget it.  Led by the dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine troops invaded the British colony of the Falkland Islands 200 miles off the coast of Argentina, despite the desire of the English-speaking colonists to remain under the flag of Britain.  Prime Minister Thatcher was discouraged to act militarily, as the tiny islands were so remote and the cost would be enormous, but she forged ahead to reclaim land and people that were rightfully Britain's.  In two months, the Falklands were retaken and the Union Jack was raised again on the little islands in the middle of the South Atlantic, restoring national pride and international significance to the small island country that had once ruled the globe.  Nobody could be quite believe that Maggie had done what no one dared to do, but that was her specialty.  No longer would Britain be shuffled about and ignored in a corner of the room when it came to international policy - she was here to stay as a major Western player, and so was Margaret Thatcher.  She won her third term in office in a landslide, the first Prime Minister to serve a third consecutive term in over 160 years.


Two of Margaret Thatcher's biggest and most famous (or infamous) moves were not ever featured or even touched upon by Hollywood, and their omission is particularly puzzling to me.  Or maybe it isn't.  Her first triumph was a shared one, and honor in that partnership goes to a man I really wish I'd known better:

Ronald Reagan, darling of the conservative party and enemy to communists everywhere.  

Along with President Reagan, Margaret Thatcher rejected the 1970s-era "detente" approach towards the Soviets in favor of the tactic she used with the Argentine fleet in the Falklands: "Sink 'em."  And it worked.  By 1989 the rending of the Iron Curtain was due in enormous part to the "Teflon President" and the "Iron Lady," neither of whom would equivocate their belief that communism was the great evil of the age.  

I was puzzled that almost never in the film was Mrs. Thatcher's epic battle against communism lauded, praised, portrayed, alluded to, or even mentioned in passing.  One would begin to suspect that Hollywood was ashamed of her success.  Forbid the thought!

One reason that Margaret Thatcher could not win a fourth term as Prime Minister was her utter refusal to cede British sovereignty to the European Union.  She viewed the idea of a union with continental Europe in the most dismal terms: "(A unified) 'Europe' is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt."  While the 1990s ushered in an infatuation with all things "global," her insistence on remaining supremely British reminded the voting population of the more stodgy aspects of conservative politics and she was seen as too fiercely independent in an increasingly progressive, cooperative atmosphere.  While she won the first ballot toward her fourth term, Margaret Thatcher ultimately stepped down as Prime Minister in November 1990.  I was bemused to see the abandonment of her colleagues and cabinet staff portrayed more as a question of her hard-driving and uncompromising personality and far less as a result of her refusal to sell British sovereignty to a European Union.

Which of course calls to my mind similar trends today.  Like Britain of the 1970s and 1980s, today's U.S. and European climate is on unsteady footing.  Unemployment is high, prices are rising faster than wages, terrorism hits closer and closer to home (Margaret Thatcher's hotel was bombed, while we have faced attacks and attempted attacks on U.S. soil), riots and protests have succeeded austerity measures, and banks and Wall Street are crumbling.  The U.S. government and local governments are being held hostage by union demands that cannot be met, while private companies are vilified.  Everyone seems to be on the dole.  But rather than face down the rage that is boiling just beneath the surface and erupting in public parks, universities, and on city streets, we are told that we simply haven't given leadership enough time, and that anyone offering a different plan will only make the wealthy richer and the poor more destitute.  Why in the world do we Americans think that what happened to Britain - riots, bombings, bloodshed, hunger strikes, labor strikes, and foreign aggression - isn't going to happen to us?

I think we need to take a lesson from the Iron Lady, put on our best pair of high heels, a dapper hat and handbag, and get into this fight the way she would do it.

A copy of secret weapon, version 2.0 might also help: