Editorial from Women and Guns January 01, 1997
Hurray for 'Cybill'
by Peggy Tartaro
Executive Editor
An episode of the CBS situation comedy "Cybill" has come under
fire from a Los Angeles-based group for its depiction of firearms
ownership among women.
Susan Shaw, executive director of Women Against Gun Violence in
Los Angeles, wrote a recent commentary for the entertainment section of
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, calling the Oct. 14 program "son one-sided it
could have been written by the gun lobby..."
The episode, about a woman, played by Cybill Sheperd, who is an
actress with two grown daughters and a grandchild, had the title
character responding to a burglary, as well as her unease with one of her
daughters' move to an apartment in a bad neighborhood.
during the course of the program, Cybill reacts to a variety of
dangers, which culminate in her acquisition of a handgun. While viewers
familiar with reality an California law might quibble with the shortened
time-frame, the show did do a competent job of showing the reaction to
the threat continuum: uncomfortable with her daughter's living
arrangement, Cybill buys a "safety product" (an inflatable man); her own
burglary raises her concerns further, she has a home security system
installed; she takes a self-defense class, and, finally, her concerns
unallayed by these steps, she purchases a handgun. To be sure, the
program did play all of the situations for laughs, and I was
uncomfortable with the friend's, (Maryann) attitude toward firearms,
since regular viewers of the show would charitably characterize her
personality as "unstable."
Even so, I found the show refreshing, in that it dealt with a
responsible woman character making a decision without a lot of
hand-wringing, not unlike the way real women would. In an imperfect,
sometimes threatening world, a woman with concerns about her safety, the
safety of family members not under her immediate care and the security of
her home, might reasonable conclude that the firearm was a useful tool.
The final scene had Cybill and Maryann return to Cybill's house
only to be confronted with a man in the living room's shadows.
Had this been either one of the popular "Women-in-Jeopardy" (the
official Hollywood term for movies in which women are stalked, tortured,
kidnapped, raped, etc.) genre of television movies or a less thoughtfully
written comedy, the consequences of the women's return would have been
quite different: in the former, the character would have shot first only
to find out the she had wounded or killed one of her ex-husbands; in the
latter, the "man" would have been an ex-husband, Cybill would have
ineptly turned her gun him and everyone would have learned one of those
fatuous "morals" television comedies have become so fond of. Instead,
the "man" was the inflatable dummy, returned by the daughter to
"frighten" her mother. Exit laughing, no moral, no dire consequences. We
are left with the impression that Cybill is intelligent enought to assess
a threat, perceived or real, and deal with it competently. We are not
told, but surmise, that the character will retain her handgun.
Despite flaws in the storyline, particularly the telescoping of the
time in which it would take an actual resident of Los Angeles Count ot
acquire a handgun (the state has a 15-day waiting period and the county
has a woeful record of granting carry permits to ordinary citizens), the
program surprised me with its matter-of-fact treatment of the subject matter.
It should be noted that Shepherd, who is executive producer of
the show, is an on-the-record gunowner. Her supportive "blurb" appeared
on Paxton Quigley's first dust jacket, and she has mentioned guns in a
number of interviews.
Shaw's commentary, of course, takes a completely different view
of the program. "Have we become so inured to gun violence that handguns
have become a mere sitcom plot device or the lure of our kids movie-going
dollars?" she wonders. "As too many women who have lost children to gun
violence can attest, there's noting funny, smart, glamorous or powerful
about these weapons," Shaw writes. She then recounts the standard,
unsupported statistics about suicides, family injury and domestic
violence that "prove" that a gun in the home is a grave danger to the owner.
Because of the characters says that "a lot of my women friends
have guns," Shaw calls the show "unbalanced," and egregiously massages a
University of Chicago study on ownership of firearms among American
women. (see From the Editor, June, 1995). that study merely says that
ownership among women has remained fairly constant at between 4.5 and 8%
of the population (a not inconsiderable number), not, as she suggests
that "women have resisted gun manufacturers' sales pitches."
"For shame," says Shaw, because the same character quotes
suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "women will continue to be the
victims of men until they learn how to use the weapons of men," calling
the use of the quote "misleading." Her assertion that Stanton was
talking about the right ot vote, not guns, does a disservice to pioneer
feminist' how could disenfranchised women use the "vote" as a "weapon if
they didn't have the right?
A caption that accompanies Shaw's commentary said her sentiments
were echoed by "several letters" to Shepherd and her producers, but did
not mention how many were "several" nor reveal if any viewers praised the
episode.
Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor
