{"id":9235,"date":"2012-01-10T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T09:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=9235"},"modified":"2012-01-10T09:00:49","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T09:00:49","slug":"on-thatcher-icons-and-iron-ladies-rhian-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/01\/10\/on-thatcher-icons-and-iron-ladies-rhian-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"On Thatcher: Icons and Iron Ladies."},"content":{"rendered":"

A spectre is haunting London. My daily commute, never a joyful affair, has recently been lent a further dimension of irritation by adverts on buses, hoving into view with tedious regularity, bearing the image of Meryl Streep<\/strong> dolled up as Mrs Thatcher in The Iron Lady<\/strong><\/a>. Thirty years on from Thatcher’s rise to power, and after a minor rash of small-screen depictions \u2013 Andrea Riseborough in The Long Walk to Finchley<\/strong><\/a>, Lindsay Duncan in Margaret<\/strong><\/a> – Streep will now portray her on the big screen, the prospect of which I could have happily lived without.<\/p>\n

Having as I do firsthand experience<\/a> of the impact of Thatcher\u2019s thirteen years, her government\u2019s break with prevailing consensus and bloody-minded devotion to neoliberal orthodoxies, an objective and rational evaluation of the woman is probably beyond me. That said, her presumably impending death – although I do have a longstanding appointment at a pub in King’s Cross to dutifully raise a glass – is something to which I’ll be largely indifferent. It won’t matter. Thatcher as a person has far less bearing on the current world than what she represents. The damage has been done, the battle lost, and much as I might appreciate a Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the 1980s, Thatcher and her co-conspirators are by now too old and whiskey-soaked<\/a> to be held to any meaningful account.<\/p>\n

Efforts to humanise Thatcher, even when they enlist Meryl Streep, seem discomfiting and deeply bizarre. What she means has transcended what she was, is and will be. The purpose of this post, therefore, apart from being an exercise in detachment for me, is to look briefly at some aspects of Thatcher\u2019s image in political and pop culture, and to consider the effect of her gender on her role as a woman in power. Quick, before the next bus goes past.<\/p>\n

The Icon Lady<\/h3>\n

Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.<\/p>\n

– Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thatcher\u2019s visual staying power in political and pop culture is as great as her impact on oppositional music<\/a>. The face of Thatcher most often called to mind is that of what Angela Carter termed her \u2018balefully iconic\u2019 post-1983 premiership: encased in true-blue power suits, wielding a handbag, her hair lacquered into immobile submission, her earlier style solidified into a heavily stylized femininity bordering on drag. Paul Flynn, in a fairly tortured discussion<\/a> of Thatcher\u2019s status as a gay icon, put it down to her \u2018ability to carry a strong, identifiable, signature look… an intrinsic and steely power to self-transform\u2019, and a \u2018camp, easily cartooned presence\u2019. The startling evocative power of this look, its ability to summon up its host of contemporary social, cultural and political associations, is why I jump when Streep’s replication of it intrudes into my vision. It\u2019s like being repeatedly sideswiped by the 1980s, which is something the last UK election had already made me thoroughly sick of.<\/p>\n

\"Poster<\/a>The iconic capacity of Thatcher’s image has been compared in articles and actual mash-ups with that of Marilyn Monroe<\/a> and Che Guevara<\/a>. The artist Alison Jackson observes<\/a> that all three ‘had what it takes to become a modern icon: big hair, high foreheads and a face that would allow you to project your own fears and desires on to it.’ Conversely, subsequent political leaders – including both Blair<\/a> and Cameron<\/a> – have had their own faces conflated with Thatcher\u2019s, usually as part of left-wing critiques meant to signify the closeness of their policies to hers. Thatcher\u2019s image is here used as an instantly recognisable political signifier, communicating a set of ideological ideas in a single package, as well as a self-contained political warning sign.<\/p>\n

Although the kind of passive objectification associated with Monroe might seem at odds with the idea of Thatcher as a great historical actor with narrative agency in her own right, the images of both women are used in a cultural tradition in which the female figure in particular becomes a canvas for the expression of abstract ideas (think justice, liberty, victory). The abstract embodiment of multiple meanings, and the strategic performance of traditional ideas of femininity, constitute sources of power which Thatcher and her political and media allies exploited to the hilt in their harnessing of support for the policies she promoted.<\/p>\n

Iron Maidens<\/h3>\n

Thatcher\u2019s image, rather than appealing solely to a particular aspect of femininity, was a tense mixture of conflicting and mutually reinforcing\u00a0signifiers. Angela Carter identified<\/a> it as a composite of feminine archetypes, including Dynasty<\/strong>\u2019s Alexis Carrington, Elizabeth I as Gloriana, Countess Dracula, and one of PG Wodehouse\u2019s aunts \u2013 tropes sharing a certain type of burlesqued and grotesque dragon-femininity. The 1981 Falklands conflict allowed the discourse around Thatcher to reference the precedents of both Queen Victoria and Churchill, and she was photographed on a tank in an image<\/a> that the Daily Telegraph<\/strong> described as \u2018a cross between Isadora Duncan and Lawrence of Arabia\u2019.<\/p>\n

Justine Picardie, in a grimly fascinating read<\/a>, roots Thatcher\u2019s style in the rigid grooming of well-turned-out 1950s femininity in general and her sartorially plain Methodist upbringing in particular:<\/p>\n

Interviewed by Dr Miriam Stoppard for Yorkshire Television in 1985, she gave a glimpse of a childhood desire for the luxury of colour, and shop-bought extravagance, whether a new dress or sofa cover: ‘that was a great expenditure and a great event. So you went out to choose them, and you chose something that looked really rather lovely, something light with flowers on it. My mother: “That’s not serviceable.” And how I longed for the time when I could buy things that were not serviceable.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even at the height of her political power, she chose to retain the \u2018pretty\u2019 and \u2018softening\u2019 effects of her trademark horrible bows<\/a>. Alongside this tendency towards aspirational frivolity, she cultivated connotations of the provincial housewife \u2013 a \u2018Housewife Superstar\u2019 \u2013 wearing an apron while on the campaign trail and being\u00a0shown washing dishes while contesting the party leadership. <\/p>\n

Her \u2018Iron Lady\u2019 speech distinctly echoed the \u2018body of a weak and feeble woman… heart and stomach of a king\u2019 construction associated with Elizabeth I<\/a> in its drawing on the tension between conflicting signifiers:<\/p>\n

I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved, the Iron Lady of the Western World. A cold war warrior, an Amazon philistine, even a Peking plotter. Well, am I any of those things? Yes… Yes, I am an iron lady, after all it wasn’t a bad thing to be an iron duke.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not a Man to Match Her?<\/h3>\n

Thatcher’s courting of various feminine roles did not prevent the assigning of masculine attributes to her \u2013 notably in oppositional parodies and satire. Her iconic Spitting Image<\/strong> puppet was shown wearing a suit and tie and smoking a cigar, addressed as ‘Sir’, and given a more or less explicit emasculating effect upon male colleagues and political opponents:<\/p>\n