3-2: “Fear Strikes Back”
There was a phenomenon in the ’80s: The Very Special Episode (VSE). Every show, and particularly sitcoms, would occasionally have a dramatic episode dealing with a serious issue. Examples include the Diff’rent Strokes episode where Kimberly and Arnold are held captive by a sexual predator, and a different Diff’rent Strokes episode where Arnold and his friend Dudley are lured into a sexual predator’s home. Saved by the Bell‘s “I’m so excited! I’m so excited! I’m so…scared” episode falls into the category as well (you know, I’ve known about that episode for a long time but the first time I ever saw the actual footage was just a few minutes ago).
Due to the conversation I had with a friend the other day, I now bring you one of many Facts of Life VSEs. With a nod to my friend, who remembered this one as a great example of the show being progressive in what it shows, not tells, I bring you the one where Natalie is the victim of an attempted sexual assault.
We open in the bedroom, with Tootie asking Natalie why she’s going through so much trouble for a costume contest. It’s because Natalie is hoping to win first prize – two tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert in New York. It appears that she plans to dress as Adolf Hitler.
Blair and Jo come in squabbling about Jo’s having chased off some boy Blair was flirting with. I mention this only because it turns out that this boy is on the rugby team, and my heart flutters. This show really did, in some small way, feature every single thing I loved or would come to love in the future.
We learn that the girls are supposed to dress up as movie stars for this party that features the costume contest. Blair is dressing as Jane Fonda, because “she’s committed, she’s dedicated, and she’s liberated, and besides…someone was already going as Bo Derek.” Jo is annoyed that Blair is going as Jane Fonda, because she’s planning to go as Peter Fonda, because he represents bikes and freedom.
“Go as.” For better or for worse, “go as” is the appropriate phrase to use to refer to dressing up in costume. You can say “dress up as,” but it gets unwieldy if you have to say it frequently. “Go as” is understood and succinct, so as much as it annoys me, it’s really the best thing to use.
As Blair and Jo continue to squabble about their costumes, Mrs. Garrett enters the room, looking solemn. She tells the girls that the headmaster’s secretary, Mrs. King, was raped on the way to her car that evening.
We fade to the cafeteria, where the girls discuss the incident as they work to set up dinner. Jo comments that the street on which Mrs. King was attacked is right in the middle of town, and they all must have walked down it a hundred times. Blair would rather pretend it didn’t happen, but Mrs. Garrett doesn’t think that’s possible. She doesn’t want the girls to panic, though, and she notes that the school has taken every possible precaution to make sure it’s safe on campus. Alarms have been installed (Mrs. Garrett set one off by slamming the refrigerator door this morning), and they’re arranging for closed-circuit television and surrounding gates. Jo scoffs that those sort of “precautions” do more to keep people in then to keep people out. She’s not wrong.
Nothing can ruin Natalie’s excitement, though, and she makes the grand entrance to show off her costume. Oh, not Hitler. Charlie Chaplin.
We then learn that the school is considering cancelling the party because of the assault. Natalie harumphs. She insists that they’ve worked too hard to cancel it now, the party is on campus, and she’s sure the assailant is long gone. She feels like all the warnings and precautions are akin to asking them to stop living.
Tootie comes into the cafeteria, commenting on the notice that’s on the bulletin board. No, not the one for National Succotash Week, the one about the new women’s self-defense course that the school is hosting in the cafeteria. Jo is enthusiastic about it and signs up right away. Blair, too, is excited, because she has the perfect outfit for it, namely the karate outfit she bought right after she saw Shogun. Natalie isn’t interested.
Fast forward to the night of the party. Tootie is already back home in her Diana Ross costume, indignant that there were fourteen Diana Rosses at the party, and two of them were white. Which means there are at least twelve black girls at Eastland, which isn’t bad diversity for a school that small, but which also seems to contradict information we get in other episodes that there are a half dozen girls of color at most at the school.
Jo…
…and Blair…
…return shortly after. Blair thought the party sucked because the dude she was after (the rugby dude, I think), didn’t pay any attention to her. Jo, too, is miffed, as it seems she liked the same dude, but instead he spent the night with the girl who went as Sophia Loren and won first prize. Natalie, who was counting on winning, apparently handled the disappointment well after they pried her hands from the judge’s throat.
What we have here is petty bickering – Tootie is annoyed at having too many other people in the same costume and then having to hop home in her tight dress; Blair is miffed at the boy she likes not liking her; Jo is bugged by Blair’s cock-blocking; speculation is that Natalie is crushed to not win the costume contest. All this is set up to contrast with the feeling when Natalie returns…
I was going to put a screen cap here but I can’t. It just feels wrong to pause the video when Natalie has just come home from being attacked and then take a picture of it. Here, instead, is what she says:
“I was coming home, and I knew it was late so I was hurrying. I wasn’t far, Mrs. Garrett, I was almost home! A man grabbed me, and I tried to scream but he covered my mouth! And he pushed me down, and he was holding me down, and all of a sudden I heard people’s voices. He must’ve heard them too because he got up and left and ran away. Mrs. Garrett, if those people hadn’t passed by…Mrs. Garrett, I was almost home!”
That’s heavy. It was even heavier the first time I saw it. But the fear, the disbelief, the anguish – it really packs a punch. This is where it’s hard to mock the VSE, because it really does hit some important things, and it did it pretty well here.
But on we must go, as half of the episode still remains. We return from commercial to find that the girls are all exhausted. Natalie has, understandably, been having nightmares and they’ve all been up most of the night for the last several days trying to help her. Blair thinks Natalie will feel better once the assailant is caught. Jo thinks there’s zero chance of that happening. Sadly, she’s probably not too far off. Blair and Jo continue to muse about how Natalie is scared of everything now, and she doesn’t seem like Natalie anymore. Mrs. Garrett wisely points out that before the attack, she thought she was in control, and the attack took that away from her.
Natalie and Tootie get to the kitchen, quickly bursting through the door. Tootie comments that the next time Natalie asks her to walk home together, she should wear running shoes. Natalie frets that it was getting dark. Jo is skeptical, since it’s noon.
You see? You see how hard it is to snark on this? Yes, it’s ridiculous that Natalie is afraid of the dark in the middle of the day, but she has been through a traumatic event, and she needs therapy, not derision. All we can do is take Mrs. Garrett’s advice…
…and try to follow it, unlike Jo, who goes on to say that you never know when a total eclipse is going to sneak up on you.
Natalie, sadly, has taken away from this experience that “what it means to be a woman…[is to be] weak and helpless, and you don’t have a chance out there.” Blair comments that Natalie has a point, since they’re all attractive and feminine (insert throwaway Blair/Jo rivalry joke), and Mrs. Garrett points out that attacks like this have nothing to do with attractiveness.
Blair tries to lighten the mood by telling Natalie that she has acquired four tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert on Saturday night, and they’re all going to go together. Natalie is thrilled.
That is, Natalie is thrilled until she realizes that going to the concert means going out at night.
THIS IS SO SAD. I CAN’T MAKE FUN OF THIS EPISODE!
The girls exchange some frustrated words, causing Natalie to run upstairs to their room. Mrs. Garrett goes upstairs to give her a pep talk, and they have a conversation about the nature of fear. Fear, Mrs. Garrett says, needs to be overcome, as Natalie surely doesn’t want to spend her whole life behind a locked door. She tries to encourage Natalie to come to the self-defense class that night, pitching it as something that will help her to not feel powerless. When Natalie still protests, Mrs. Garrett pulls a thing and tells Natalie that she has to go to the self-defense course in order to cover it for the paper. Clever, I guess.
We fade to the self-defense class, We have ourselves a fine specimen of 80s masculinity and a room full of 80s athletic fashions on display.
The instructor estimates that half the women in the room will be the victims of some kind of serious crime some time in their lives, and says they need to pay attention to not looking like a victim when they walk around. He asks Tootie to walk – just walk – across the room, and assesses her walk as “casual [and] relaxed, in other words, lousy.” He says that her walk makes her look like a victim.
This part is frustrating, as it approaches the line of victim-blaming. Now, he’s not saying that they shouldn’t go out at night (an argument that certainly has been historically made to women), he’s only encouraging them to look confident, which isn’t necessarily bad advice. Obviously, “looking like a victim” doesn’t make an assault the victim’s fault, and I don’t believe he’s saying that it is. But the line between encouraging general cautious behavior and victim-blaming is so blurred when it comes to sexual assault that I think it’s best to just stay away from any suggestion of “you’re doing it wrong.” The discussion was definitely much less sophisticated then, though; it would still be a decade before marital rape and date rape were commonly recognized as rape. As such, I have to, once again, defer to the show being a product of its time in some ways, while still helping the conversation to move forward.
Our well-meaning but still patronizing 80s dude instructor asks for someone to walk with grit, and Jo is popularly elected for the role.
The instructor is impressed, and says he’d definitely think twice before approaching her. He uses her for his next demo, which involves her blocking his punch and then laughing at how easy it was, thus losing her focus.
The instructor reminds the room that the goal is to get away, not put the guy away. We learned that in the self defense class I took back around 2000. I forgot it during the demos, and after I’d gotten the instructor down, I stuck around to kick him a couple more times. Then he grabbed my ankle and I had to go through the whole escape process again, so yeah, ’80s instructor’s point is well taken.
Blair volunteers for the next demo, and the instructor puts her in a headlock after asking for directions. Blair is all pearl-clutching and scandalized at the idea of kicking him in the groin, and the instructor reiterates that your goal is to protect yourself and nothing is off limits and to fight back however they can.
Mrs. Garrett, still watching on the sidelines with Natalie, ask Natalie if the story will make interesting reading. “Sure, if you like fiction,” Natalie responds, clearly still not buying into the idea.
Just as Natalie is about to flee upstairs again, a girl who looks kind of like Sue Ann but isn’t Julie Piekarski (the credits reveal her to be Paige Conner, who hasn’t done much other work), summons Mrs. Garrett over to do one of the demos. Mrs. Garrett encourages Natalie to stick around so Mrs. Garrett can make the paper. After making a fool of herself doing over-the-top pseudo-martial arts moves…
…Mrs. Garrett correctly answers the instructor’s question about what to do if approached in a threatening manner (answer: pray-run-scream). The instructor gives the ol’ “yell fire” wisdom. I’ve heard that advice, and I’ve heard critiques of it, and my cursory Google search has revealed nothing conclusive. I prefer “I don’t know you! That’s my purse!” myself. That phrase was also uttered by a Facts of Life alumna.
After finishing her demo, Mrs. Garrett suggests that Natalie give it a shot. She refuses, and says that while it’s all quite entertaining, it just doesn’t happen that way in real life. She’s the only one besides Jo who is willing to get into the instructor’s grill.
Blair points out that the man is an expert, and Natalie rightly says that she’s an expert too. She insists that when it happened to her, none of this would have helped.
And then we can all collectively groan again as Mr. ’80s macho expert asks her about before it happened. He asks her if it was night, if she asked someone to walk with her or if she stuck to a well-lit path or if she used a shortcut or bleargh. This is straight-up victim-blaming and it’s worth no more of my time.
Back on the positive track, he points out that there are a lot of things in a typical purse that can be used as weapons. He demonstrates the classic key technique, does the same thing with a hairbrush, and demonstrates how it can even be done with a lollipop.
Mrs. Garrett takes Natalie aside and asks her what she thinks. Natalie says she guesses she should have gone home with the other girls. I refuse to believe it’s my imagination that Mindy Cohn delivers that line through clenched teeth. She more convincingly recalls that she had her Charlie Chaplin cane and maybe that could have been a good weapon. Natalie feels better, but still afraid, earning a Mrs. Garrett shoulder-pat.
Mrs. Garrett encourages Natalie to remember that there’s a world out there, and instead of being paralyzed by her fear, to use it to be alert, aware, and smart. Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere!
As we draw to a close, Natalie begins to go back to her room, then puts down her notebook and returns to the class. We end with group pseudo-martial arts move, meant to demonstrate the strength and empowerment within us all. Never mind that Natalie is hidden behind the instructor.
No, really, though, the episode meant to make the young women watching it feel empowered and confident. And even though it stumbled in a few places, it still earns my respect for taking on the issue and for doing better with it than most other products of the same era.
