Image copyright Hanna-Barbera
What red-blooded baby-boomer can forget The Jetsons! But if you have, or if you are from another demographic, The Jetsons was an animated sit com that ran in prime time for one season (1962 – 1963) before it went into Saturday morning syndication. Its producer, Hanna-Barbera, plopped the white, upper-middle-class American 1960s into the future where it formed the bookend to their show The Flintstones, which had plopped that same society into the Stone Age. There were, of course, no Black characters on either show. Nothing by white people.
But…good news! The Jetsons passes the Bechdel test. Multiple named women who talk about things other than men, yeah yeah. And despite this let us examine the intro. The famous theme song is playing: ♫“Meet George Jetson / His boy Elroy/ Daughter Judy/Jane, his wife.”♫ George is driving the car. To the swell of strings, George drops Elroy off at Little Dipper School. Then, sultry jazz horns overlay the theme as Judy gets dropped off at Orbit High School. Next George drops Jane off at the “Shopping Center.” Now we’re listening to “Chopsticks” over the Jetsons song. He opens his wallet and takes out a bill for her. Jane spurns the bill and takes the wallet instead. Finally, George arrives at work. He smiles, puts his feet up and goes to sleep. So is it funny because Hanna-Barbera has just called women money-grubbers and men idiots?
The lessons we learn about women from Jane Jetson are distinct from what the New York Times’ co-chief film critic, Manohla Dargis says she learned about women from “the movies,” by which she means shows like Gone with the Wind, Alien, Thelma and Louise, and Concussion. Here’s Dargis’s list:
Lesson 1: Women Are There to Be Kissed
Lesson 2: Women Need a Spanking
Lesson 3: Women Live to Support Men
Lesson 4: Women Can Transcend Stereotypes
Lesson 5: Women Can Be Heroes
Lesson 6: Women Can Be Dangerous
Lesson 7: Women Can Be Complicit
Lesson 8: Women Can Speak Out
Jane Jetson’s fan page describes her as “obsessed with fashion and new gadgetry, and a shopaholic. She is a dutiful wife and tries to make life as pleasant as possible for her family.” A Jane Jetson style woman used to have its appeal, even to women. And if Dargis had been watching The Jetsons instead of A Star is Born, her list might have been more like this:
Lesson 1: Women Love to Shop
Lesson 2: Women Need to Constantly Curate Their Looks
Lesson 3: Women Support Their Husbands
Lesson 4: Women Care For Their Families
In “The Space Car,” an episode I recently bought from Amazon, George and Jane go shopping for a new car. The entire episode lasts 22 minutes and includes 24 women-driver jokes, but only if you count each separate put-down as a joke. Here’s a representative sample:
Jane: [after driving through some windows] Why must husbands always make fun of their wives’ driving?
George: It helps to hold down the panic.
Funny? Let’s not forget that The Jetsons debuted in prime time and was aimed at adults. This sort of marital banter has its roots in Henny-Youngman schtick “Take my wife, please.” How long did it take for all us former 7-year olds to actually purge ourselves of these erasures? Shudder.
The best thing about the Jetsons, of course, is the videophone. When offices started getting big screens and video conferencing at the turn of the century, everybody’s first thought was, “Just like the Jetsons.” Anyway, early in “The Space Car,” before she started testing the driving gods, Jane had just gotten up. Her eyes were baggy and her hair was a mess, but her friend Gloria is calling. On The Videophone. Jane can’t let Gloria see her au naturel! So she pulls out a mask that is the exact copy of her regular cartoon face, adjusts until it pops into place, and voilà! She looks great again!
Question: When all is said and done, what’s not to like about a show that features a “million millimeter color blaboscope” and “radar curb feelers”?
Answer: George putting his hand over his wife’s mouth and saying, “Now remember, Jane, let me do the talking.”
Judy Swann is a poet and essayist. Her work includes Fool (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Stickman (John Young, 2019). She lives in Ithaca, NY and is rewriting Boethius's Consolation as a feminist utopia. See her other work at www.jmswann.com.