Battles of the Sexes film

by philg

Tennis fans and children of the 1960s will appreciate the movie Battles of the Sexes. The dialog is anachronistic, with the female tennis players of the day using 2017 gender warrior terminology, but it is still fun to see all of the 1970s cars and styles.

I wonder if the commercial failure of this movie is related to the roughly 50 percent devoted to a same-sex love story between Billie Jean King and hairdresser Marilyn Barnett. Even folks who are passionate advocates of marriage equality on Facebook don’t want to see an hour of two women in love on screen?

We have “Scarlett Johansson Withdraws From Transgender Role After Backlash” (nytimes). A cisgender actor is not allowed to play a transgender character. But in Battle of the Sexes, without any public protest, two heterosexual cisgender female actors (at least if a quick search for gossip is any guide) play two lesbian characters. Why is that okay? Or is just a difference between 2017 and 2018?

In the dialog and in the roll-out text following the movie, the march of progress in gay rights is celebrated. We learn a lot about the post-1973 lives of the characters with the exception of Ms. Barnett, who had occupied a tremendous amount of on-screen time. Why not follow Ms. Barnett? Wikipedia provides a clue:

King acknowledged the relationship when it became public in a May 1981 “palimony” lawsuit filed by Barnett

The filmmakers apparently did not want to reveal that the sweet lover of the movie turned into a family court predator.

One thing that the movie shows is how much more money our society devotes to spectactor sports in general and tennis in particular. The prize money offered even to the best men at the time was laughable by today’s standards. The nytimes article on the Barnett v. King lawsuit says “Women now compete for about $10 million annually in prize money in tournaments around the world” (compare to $25+ million in women’s prize money for the U.S. Open alone). Is it that we are crazy richer than we were in 1973? That more people spend more time watching TV so that the value of a tennis show is higher? That air travel has gotten cheaper and more comfortable so that the value of a ticket to a live match is higher and therefore there is a lot more revenue from those attending live? What?

The movie is streaming on HBO. I’d be curious to know what readers think of it.

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6 thoughts on “Battles of the Sexes film”

  1. People, at least critics, love same sex romances with a vengeance.

    According to the IMDB
    * Brokeback Mountain won 3 oscars and 138 other film prizes
    * Blue is the Warmest Color (uncensored) won 85 film prizes.
    * Carol was nominated for 6 Oscars and won 76 film prizes
    They also all did well at the box office.
    They’re all between 2 and 3 hours long.
    https://oqipo.dk/watch

    So people will watch these romances for hours and hours and be fullfilled.

    Then there’s the trouble of ” A cisgender actor is not allowed to play a transgender character.”

    I don’t think that’s the difference between 2017 and 2018. I think that was also haram/treif last year.

    I think it has something to do with “transgender” being the holiest of holiest for SJWs. The holy city of some sorts. That which is not be blemished in any way.

    Then again, it probably has gotten worse within a year. As far as I recall, Eddie Redmayne could play a danish male-to-female transsexual in The Danish Girl (he wasn’t either) without much flak from the easily offended mobs.

    Ah, no, I was wrong. Even the mountains were wrong
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Danish_Girl_(film)#Controversy

  2. Battle of the Sexes film

    I thought this post was going to discuss a new movie about the 1973 match between 55 y/o retired tennis champ Bobby Riggs against former no.1 world-ranked, 29 y/o Billie Jean King.

    I can’t find any specifics, but were the rules modified for that match so that King had a wider court to hit into than did Riggs?

  3. Why not follow Ms. Barnett? Wikipedia provides a clue:

    It’s even worse than what you say. Barnett is now a paraplegic because she threw herself off a balcony of King’s beach house (where she had housed Barnett) when King broke up with her.

    King’s current mate is Ilana Kloss, also a tennis player, whom the 23 year old King met when Kloss was 11 years old and groomed as a tennis player (and what else)?

  4. Phil & readers,

    Is the NY Times as a whole problematic for that less than glowing description of homosexuality and near hetero-normative assumptions? We know 37 years passing by is no excuse.

  5. @Deplorable Prole

    In the Battle of the Sexes, both King and Riggs played on the same court. There were other matches where the participants played on different-sized courts, though. This includes the 1992 match between Martina Navratilova and Jimmy Connors.

    @philg

    Did the movie mention that King was married the entire time?

  6. Wildly off-topic, but figured you might enjoy this crazy story of a govt HR department gone mad with sexism and favouritism:

    … described a “toxic” environment in the human resources department under Coleman at FEMA headquarters. Starting in 2015, investigators said, Coleman hired many men who were friends and college fraternity brothers and women he met at bars and on online dating sites. He then promoted some of them to roles throughout the agency without going through proper federal hiring channels. Coleman then transferred some of the women in and out of departments, some to regional offices, so his friends could try to have sexual relationships with them, according to employees’ statements during interviews with investigators.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-fema-official-sexual-misconduct-investigation-20180731-story.html

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