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Chapter 27: An Outing
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Reckoning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Guilt and Legacy
Morality, Survival, and Perspective
Sexuality and Shame
Body Image and Publicity
Indifference vs. Feeling
Summary
Analysis
When the producers of Fast Forward announce a new series of one-hour specials, Magda, Jane Turner, and Gina band together to write sketches, working for hours around one another’s kitchen tables. With the male voice historically dominating comedy, the three try to tap into a genuine female voice, parodying stereotypical notions of femininity and female issues. Although great female comedy exists today, at this time, a male prejudice prevails that women aren’t funny. Through their sketches, Magda and her friends try to let men into the world of women.
Magda, Gina, and Jane combat the public’s prejudiced view that comedy is a male strength. To do this, the three do not try to reach an exclusively female audience. Instead, they try to get men to take the female voice seriously. Magda and her friends make two changes: they add the female perspective to comedy, and thus make comedy less exclusive generally. They believe that humor is a language all people can speak to one another.
Themes
When Steve—one of the producers—gives Magda, Jane Turner, and Gina their own special, which they call Big Girl’s Blouse, the three women have the freedom to create characters of many personalities and write sketches exploring gay themes. When Gina creates a sketch based on “bridezillas,” Magda, inspired by her old tennis frustrations, creates her beloved character, Sharon Strzelecki, who believes in sports rather than romance. Big Girl’s Blouse is promoted to a series, but, due to poor programming, it doesn’t do well: their largest demographic is men aged 18-39. Though the show fizzles, it gives its creators confidence that female comedy can work; moreover, the characters they created for the show—the dysfunctional triangle of Kath, Kim, and Sharon—endure as harbingers of modern society.
Sharon Strzelecki becomes the public’s most beloved of Magda’s characters. As an anti-romantic tomboy, Sharon is a transgressive character, going against stereotypes both for women and for love in general. Sharon’s success suggests that the character creates real change in society. During a time when women were expected to be feminine and to choose male partners, Sharon’s choice of a very different life opens possibilities for her viewers. That the show had mainly male viewers further proves that Sharon appealed in such a way that male prejudices surrounding women could be changed.
Themes
