As referred to earlier, dear reader:
Review:
“In an unusual outing for The Saint, our hero conspires with the aunt of a spoilt heiress to teach her petulant charge some good manners by forcing her to accompany him on a 10-day trek by foot across Spain. The ostensible reason for this act of altruism on Simon’s part is that the heiress is betrothed to his best friend. The aim, evidently, is to reform the woman-child before she inflicts a lifetime of misery on her husband-to-be.
The heiress is an utterly obnoxious, self-entitled brat, continually throwing tantrums when she doesn’t get her way. She thoroughly deserves everything Simon metes out to her in this latter day Taming of the Shrew.
Inevitably some critics will accuse the scriptwriters of sexism, misogyny, and a host of other gender crimes merely because the brat is a woman and her tormentor a man. I think that’s humbug. If the shoe were on the other foot, and a stern matron was teaching a few home truths to a self-absorbed playboy, the same critics would be chortling with glee.
Not a bad episode, but it hardly ranks among the best. To me the biggest puzzle is what could have possessed Simon’s friend to have proposed marriage to such a spoilt, narcissistic bimbo. He must have been hard up for cash or blinded by her feminine charms. In either case, he owes Simon more than he can know.”
My afterthoughts:
Some reviewers objected to the “sexism” … ST would be running great risks, post 1996/7, were he in the English speaking west. Even so, in 1962 Britain, it was maybe OTT even then, who knows? Yet against that, it IS Roger Moore, so a girl might accept it more.
To my mind, the casting of the female is the issue … even when chastened near the end, she’s still quite iffy, not my cup of tea anyway. At the same time today, seeing Steve B’s chart quiz, there was a song You Sexy Thing, reissued in 1996/7, plus there was another version at the same time by T shirt which I can’t sit through. That bratty, kick butt boss-girl wonderwoman thing was coming into its own … hence all the wall-hitting today and “why don’t men want us”.
Lay that squarely at the door of Fabian feminazism. Those two in that song … what self-respecting man would go anywhere near either of em?
And yes, it’s easy to reverse it and target obnoxious, come-on line men … or simps … or mansplainers or the violent, or today’s beta males or troons. To me, clear gender roles involves chivalry. Not sure how a sigma becomes chivalrous but that’s what I see as the summum bonum for men who had fathers during their upbringing.
Ta, AKH, for sending this.
