TONIGHT'S PREP: Watch chapter 9 and 10 - see below
CLASSWORK today
You watched The Avengers chapters 3 & 4 for prep yesterday, ready to discuss today. We look at our text books (pages 31, 32, 33) to support our understanding.
The Avengers series began in 1961. The narrative is built around Steed and Peele travelling to Little Bazeley to investigate the disappearance of four British agents.
In Monday's class we set the scene with clips about the Berlin Wall (1961), JFK's visit to Berlin, the trend in spy thrillers like The Saint (1962), The Man From UNCLE (1965) and the Bond franchise - Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964). We watched some of Went The Day Well? (1944) in which sinister foreigners pretend to be British and take over a small English village.
THE COLD WAR
The Cold War was at its height in 1965, with Britain a member of NATO and anxieties about the threat of nuclear warBoth sides used espionage - spying - as we read in The Observer (October 1966) about George Blake and the Cambridge FiveIn the sixties, with WW2 not that long past, audiences knew about films that dealt with war themes, such as The Dam Busters (1955) and would have recognised the scene in which Emma Peel explains the planned invasion of Britain - an intertextual referenceThe audience sees how Little Bazeley (and therefore the whole of Britain) is under threat from fifth columnists as part of the invasion (the enemy within), with imposters using disguise and impersonationThe Avengers reassures audiences. It has quirky comedy that makes audiences laugh and which lessens the level of threat (like the tea party on board the train, Piggy Warren, the jokes between Steed and Emma). In the smithy scene, they joke about Emma being tied up. Piggy Warren is played by a well-known comic actor, whose his handlebar moustache and rollicking laugh makes him seem less threatening.Steed recalls his own war service as he walks around the deserted airfield and salutes into a cracked mirror: the audience is reminded of all those who served and who supported Britain, leading towards the triumphant conclusion of the warThe audience needs to believe that Steed and Peel are capable of keeping Britain safe.CHANGING ATTITUDES TO GENDER
- The representation of Emma Peel as a new breed of intelligent, tough woman
- However, she is still represented as a sex object, too
- We pick this theme up next lesson
We have seen Barbara Castle mentioned in one of the front covers of The Observer (our text). Do you remember seeing her when we watched The Crown - Aberfan when she advises the Prime Minister Harold Wilson? She is the only female politician mentioned on all three front, pages of The Observer, where in the front cover for October 1968 she argues for less unequal pay for women. This reflects the patriarchal social / cultural context of the 1960s in which it was accepted that women were paid less than men for doing the same job.
