Bye, Bye, Ally McBeal
Television’s Ally McBeal has been consigned to reruns. Grenville Kent, a student of the hip culture, looks at what she may have been teaching us.
Poor old Ally has copped so many nasty reviews she should probably call a lawyer.
Too skinny, flighty, neurotic, man-hungry, whiny, “a depression artist, a poster girl for Prozac,” ruled by her emotions and fantasies.
The New York Times hissed, “Take this woman off television. Please.” And now Fox has announced this series is her last. Ally’s off to re-run land.
the real Ally?
Clinical psychologist Patricia Dalton says she often sees women just like Ally trying to sort out their emotional lives.
She describes one attractive, intelligent young woman who came in worried that she couldn’t seem to get a relationship to work, despite trying “everything”— which meant new clothes, haircuts and regular gym sessions. She felt she was running out of time and maybe something was wrong with her.
She was a fine girl who had just “picked up all the wrong messages from our culture,” says Dalton. “The sexual revolution of four decades ago was meant to liberate women.” Instead many are “flailing around with a faulty blueprint for life.” Dalton listens to “women’s lamentations about sex and cynical complaints that men are jerks,” but also says many of the women who come for therapy “have an almost breathtaking lack of awareness of the price they stand to pay for casual sex.”
what price?
Dalton says “the emotional costs of breaking up over and over . . . are hard to calculate.” And “break-ups are much harder when unmarried couples have had sex to bring them closer. That’s what sex is supposed to do, after all . . . promote pair bonding and thereby provide a secure environment for raising offspring.” Dalton cites research 1 suggesting that people who live together, are much more likely to cheat than married couples. They also have a much higher divorce rate if they do eventually marry and they’re more likely to suffer physical abuse.
Remember the dancing baby, the symbol of Ally’s fear of childlessness? Many women end up alone and unwillingly childless after wasting a vital decade in low-commitment relationships. The sexual revolution assumed women should not be limited by their biology and were basically the same as men, yet the facts are that as women age, their chances of healthy childbearing decrease decades sooner than men’s do.
There’s also the global social reality that men generally date and marry younger women—even Calista Flockhart herself is dating the ancient Harrison Ford (at least the last time I looked).
And what about the kids? Dalton makes the controversial claim that the children of divorce struggle with “aimlessness and inability to take hold of life.” Too many parents divorce their kids as well, and forget to keep up emotional and financial support. Ironically, children from broken relationships are themselves more likely to divorce, probably due to examples and attitudes they’ve seen.
Obviously this is not a life sentence, as relationship skills can be learned from other places and children of divorce need not feel they bear the mark of Cain. And yes, there are situations (like abuse) when divorce is the best alternative, but let’s not be fooled by the self-serving propaganda that divorce won’t affect kids.
So what does Dalton tell her real-life Allys? “Therapists can help a woman examine her upbringing, her relationships . . . her sense of self. We can help her make decisions. . . . But we can’t magically restore the hope, optimism and innocence that these world-weary women have lost.” Sounds like a need for the old spiritual idea of being born again, starting out fresh with childhood innocence—not ignorance, but innocence. Everyone wants it! We wish we weren’t burned out and jaded and cynical. We see springmorning freshness in detergent ads and tenderness in fabric softener ads—but we need that for our hearts.
postmodernism in a dress
Ally has been slammed for making women look silly, for killing feminism. But hang on; her colleague John Cage is just as neurotic and damaged, with his nosewhistling, Porky Pig voice, phobias and hopeless record in relationships. Richard Fish is a self-absorbed workplace sleaze.
Nobody is saying they represent all men.
Perhaps Ally best represents her generation and its ideas, blurting out what most of us would hide, being so id, so vulnerable. She is Postmodernism in a dress (and quite a skimpy dress), so here’s a skimpy summary of Postmodernism (PM) as lived by Ally:
1 The truth is . . . there is no truth. (Make your own.)
Harvard-educated Ally doesn’t know what to believe. “I saw a piece of cute meat, and I said to myself, You only live once. ” But then she says, “I think I need to believe that it works . . . love, couplehood, partnerships. The idea that when people come together they stay together. I have to take that with me to bed, even if I have to go to bed alone.” One survey found that 72 per cent of Americans under 25 believe “there is no such thing as absolute truth.” 2 Truth is just made up by the powerful in society.
Yet Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 3 You may not know everything with total clarity, but you can have a working knowledge and find truth to live by.
2 This means . . . there is no meaning. (Make your own.)
Ally rarely gets to the end of an episode with an “Aha” moment of understanding the meaning of life. According to PM, you can believe contradictory things, your heart should rule your head anyway, and you are at your best when expressing honest emotions, being sexual and being open to living without straining to organise your life. Ally openly admits: “This mess is my life.” Yet Jesus said life would make sense if you love—love God and love your neighbour.
4 He taught that love was emotionally real and also a strongly logical principal that is kind, even when you don’t feel like it.
3 The rules are . . . there are no rules.
Ally has no overall moral code or ethics to run her life, so she follows conflicting feelings. One day she says, “Men are like gum anyway; after you chew they lose their flavour.” Then she says, “Sometimes I feel like I’m being unfaithful to love itself.” Yet this is confusing: “So here I am the victim of my own choices, and I’m just starting.” Jesus said, “If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.” 5 The Ten Commandments are rock-solid, Godgiven pieces of advice for living—rarely tried, but proven for thousands of years.
4 What happy enings?
Ally told her therapist, “My life has always been about tomorrow. The idea that life is now is horrible.” Hardly positive thinking, but why would she? She doesn’t believe life has any design or purpose or God— just chance.
Yet Jesus taught that a very powerful God is interested in us and our futures.
5 Who are you today?
Ally doesn’t seem to know who she is, trying on identities like clothes. Even her sexual orientation is not fixed—she can chase men or try a fling with Ling.
PM says you don’t have a fixed identity.
You’re just a product of your language and your culture. It’s easy to believe this if you’ve never belonged to a stable family or community. Yet Jesus teaches we are created as individuals— creative, free to make choices and made in God’s image.
6 Get power.
To do what you want, you need power—so get a good lawyer. In almost every culture, law was traditionally based on belief in a divine Law-maker and Judge. 6 Its ideals are justice and “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”—but PM doesn’t believe these exist. Ally’s practice seems to be about emotion and getting what you want, suing for disappointed people who can’t talk anymore.
Yet Jesus taught eternal principles of justice (fairness to the poor and weak, for example), based on God’s justice.
Ally says, “Today is gonna be an, uh, a less bad day, I can feel it. Sometimes I wake up and I just know that everything is going to be . . . less bad.” Hardly a great blueprint for life.
Bye, bye, Ally. Hope you find it.
References:
1. Including (1994), Sex in America.
2. Gene E Veith, Postmodern Times, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 1994, page 16.
3. John 8:32.
4. Matthew 22:37-39.
5. Matthew 19:17.
6. C S Lewis, Miracles , page 109; cited in Veith, page 62.
Sources: www.allymcbeal.tktv.net Carina Chocano, “Bye-bye, dancing baby,” salon.com Patricia Dalton in the Washington Post.
Millard J Erickson, Postmodernizing the Faith , Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1998.
Gene E Veith, Postmodern Times, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 1994.
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