[The film premieres amid a growing social media trend that
romanticizes tradwives. But in Don’t Worry Darling, being a 1950s
housewife is anything but romantic.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘DON’T WORRY DARLING’ IS THE ANTIDOTE TO TIKTOKERS’ OBSESSION
WITH BEING A TRADWIFE  
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Kylie Cheung
September 23, 2022
Jezebel
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_ The film premieres amid a growing social media trend that
romanticizes tradwives. But in Don’t Worry Darling, being a 1950s
housewife is anything but romantic. _

Florence Pugh as Alice Chambers and Harry Styles as Jack Chambers in
Don’t Worry Darling., Photo: Merrick Morton / Warner Bros.
Entertainment

 

_WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS._

Amid the slew of mixed-to-negative reviews _Don’t Worry
Darling_ has faced so far, I’ll give it this: Olivia Wilde’s
erotic thriller is, to Harry Styles’ point, a movie that feels like
a movie
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As an exposition-heavy film that initially presents as a glowing
tribute to the orgasmic joys
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1950s domestic bliss for women, it’s very well-timed,
as _DWD_ premieres in the midst of a viral social media trend
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women romanticizing tradwifery in its ‘50s heyday—which feels
vaguely like a horror movie in itself.

This content, primarily on TikTok, capitalizes on Gen-Z’s famed
(and justified) antipathy
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capitalism (think: the popularization of the adage, “I do not dream
of labor.”) These accounts promote the narrative that feminism
scammed women—and that not working outside the home and having a man
provide everything for you is empowering.

As feminist journalist Moira Donegan put it
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can tweet to the effect of “Ugh, I don’t want to go to work
today” and watch your algorithm transform into “an endless stream
of blonde women telling you to give up your life and be a 50s-style
housewife to please husband and the Lord.”

If you weren’t a straight, decently wealthy, white man, the 1950s
weren’t exactly a glamorous time. Throughout much of the 20th
century, a woman couldn’t see a doctor without her husband or father
making an appointment for her. Relevant to the plot of _Darling_,
during this era, a housewife could make a single comment that rubbed
her husband the wrong way and find herself diagnosed with hysteria and
lobotomized, or institutionalized at his request. Gaslighting is a
focal point of _Darling_, to the extent that huge chunks of the
script feel directly pulled from viral Tumblr posts I remember
reblogging in 2013. However cringe this aspect of the movie might be,
its release frankly couldn’t have come at a better time.

When Florence Pugh’s character, a prototypical, all-American
housewife named Alice, realizes something is afoot within the confines
of the Victory Project (the picturesque desert commune in which she
and Styles’ Jack live), we watch how the slightest protest from a
tradwife can unravel her life. She’s called “crazy” by everyone
around her, including the people who know she’s right. Eventually,
her memory gets wiped in a procedure harkening back to a good ol’,
‘50s-era lobotomy._ _The role of the commune’s creepy doctor,
played by _Veep_’s Timothy Simons, is to gaslight any housewife
who starts asking too many questions until she shuts up or disappears.
It’s a pretty pointed reminder that this wasn’t exactly a period
in history that merits new-wave feminist glorification.

Then, of course, there’s the movie’s ultimate, deeply weird twist:
We learn all of this is actually taking place in the modern day, and
the world of the Victory Project is a VR simulation. If Jack and
Alice’s story is the norm, which isn’t fully clear, it seems in
the real world, many of the “husbands” kidnapped or quite
literally forced a woman into the simulation—where their memories
are wiped and they’re wired to believe their sole purpose is to
slavishly wait on their husband and live out a perpetual 1950s
domestic fantasy.

And speaking of _Darling_’s real-life timeliness, modern-world Jack
appears to be yet another young man experiencing emasculating
“economic anxiety” from losing a job; he’s consequently
radicalized into incel-dom by the viral, online teachings of Chris
Pine’s “Frank,” who created the Victory Project, and is
not-so-loosely based on the far-right, red-meat-guzzling
professor Jordan Peterson
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Jack is ultimately ~inspired~ to force his
(then-girlfriend) Alice into the Victory Project with him when one
night, she comes home from a late shift at the hospital and rejects
his sexual advances—an allusion to how the core of incel ideology is
entitlement to sex, and the belief that women who don’t readily
provide it deserve punishment.

To that end, _Darling_ is loaded—arguably _overloaded_—with
warnings: of the enduring perils of ‘50s-era tradwifery; online
misogynist radicalization; and perhaps even ever-evolving
technologies like, say, the Metaverse
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which inevitably come
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ways for women to be abused
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entrapped. Much of these messages are woefully underdeveloped, and the
movie’s feminist imagery—including copious, glorious
cunnilingus—feel a little odd once we realize these depictions of
female pleasure are all taking place within a context of captivity.

Despite its shortcomings, _Darling_ elicits plenty of feminist
foreboding, and again, certainly benefits from its timing. Its release
comes at a moment in which young women are increasingly being
socialized to embrace anti-feminist beliefs—who can forget how many
of Johnny Depp’s most vocal supporters during his defamation
trial were, indeed, young women
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The movie also comes amid a culmination of years of political
gaslighting: Prior to the recent overturning of _Roe v. Wade_, women
who warned about this outcome were told we were “crazy” and
“hysterical.”
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undeniable catharsis in watching cheesy art that holds up a sexy,
unsettling mirror to all of it.

* don't worry darling
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* Feminism
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* patriarchy
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* misogyny
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