It took me a while before I could weigh in on the movie Bombshell. I needed several days to let what I had seen and heard sink in, fester and digest. The movie focuses on three high-profiled anchorwomen at a major news station. They each harbor horrific secrets about how they climbed the corporate ladder and one has the wherewithal to breakaway and file a lawsuit.
The pace of Bombshell is fast with rapid movement, so it takes the viewer a while to truly realize the depth of what is going on in these women’s lives. Two of the women are mothers and the breadwinners for their families. It is up to them to keep up their current lifestyles.
These women are forced to dress in sensuous, short dresses so that the viewers can see their legs. They are never allowed to wear pants on the stage sets. They may be called from their work desks at any given time of the day to go and service some troll in upper management. One even had a private elevator for the women to be transported into his office.
The movie is tastefully done, and we are shielded from the actual acts that these women had to perform to keep their jobs. This could neither be about the need of the libido nor some regular sexual desire during a regular workday. It was about the abuse of power and a way denigrate vulnerable women who had few options.
It is interesting how these men that have been called out during the Me Too Movement hold their heads down in shame. What could provoke such heinous acts toward women? Was there a hatred for the mother figures in their lives? Is there some type of Oedipus complex operating in their psyches? Would they want some corporate powerhouse to do the same things to the college-educated women in their families who were trying to build a career?
These questions are endless but as the saying goes, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord John Dalberg-Acton). Again, people hang their heads in disgrace when their hideous deeds are unearthed. And I say people because in one instance from the movie, one of the women was being sexually abused by the head honcho upstairs and by a female coworker after late nights of heavy drinking.
I cannot think of any sane, well-balanced person that needs sex throughout the workday. It is simply a way to deny these women the right to feel whole and in control of their own lives and bodies. Bombshell was about women, but chances are there are some stories brewing about what some men have had to do to keep their incomes as well. How sad!
The major actors were outstanding and obviously Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow and Kate McKinnon made their roles quite believable. They gave me insight into a disturbing world and the movie Bombshell still has me thinking!
Lynn M.
December 31, 2019
As we get ready to roll into not only a new year but a new decade, it would behoove us to take a quick peek over our shoulders and see what we have accomplished. We too readily recall our shortcomings, but we need to lean in and look at what indeed went right in our worlds.
When I heard that a musical was being staged about Nat King Cole on a local news station, it immediately piqued my interest. I went on the theatre website and saw that it was ending the next day, so I decided to drive there and get a ticket for the next day. Then, I looked at the time and said, “Hey, why not catch the matinee for today?”
Lynn M's Reflections 
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