This week, we’re doing an epic survey of American divorce plots, including the literature, film, TV, and cultural attitudes that shaped our understandings of divorce from a young age, teaching us about family, love, and heterosexuality.
That means we’re talking about tough divorcees of the 80s and 90s—including ex-wives who get a new lease on life after their husbands dump them for younger women—and the “chick flicks” of the aughts and 2010s that brought us reconciliation plots and Euro-travel as the ultimate divorce era milestone.
We even stretch back to beliefs held by the Founding Fathers and to literature that featured women throwing themselves into the sea to escape their oppressive marriages, because divorce was not an option, before exploring the gradual evolution of tragicomic stories about marital misery in pop culture.
As we dig into our own personal stories of resisting divorce myths and the stories we inherited about love and marriage, we also look at where divorce plots stand today in the midst of unprecedented authoritarianism, gender and political division, feminist backlash, and an increasing number of straight women choosing to remain single.
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Show highlights…
2:00 In case you forgot, the origins of marriage are in white men’s property rights
3:47 Henry VIII creating a whole new church to get out of his marriage as colonialist pop culture
5:01 Tracy reminds us that The Tudors is a good and hot show
5:55 Rich, connected white men get divorce in England
6:33 Women get poison
8:57 The Founding Fathers saw divorce as an essential freedom… until they realized it was a threat to white patriarchy
11:44 By the 19th century, women are writing about their bad marriages and things… don’t end well
15:39 Edith Wharton’s divorce plot
16:04 Hollywood takes on divorce… and then adopts a Christian censorship code
18:08 The love/hate marriage trope takes off
22:30 The lucky, happy family narrative emerges in the 80s
23:56 And men’s desire is positioned as the only threat to marriage
27:09 Enter: The Babysitters’ Club and The First Wives Club
31:38 The divorcee becomes an aspirational character
35:23 The not-quite-revenge plot
37:23 The most iconic divorcee scene yet
39:21 It’s the aughts—Amanda and Tracy are very much centering men
40:36 Marital misery as the real traumatic inheritance
43:19 Eat, Pray, Love and Get Married
46:03 Amanda is only 40— she doesn’t need a caregiver!
46:39 But social services would be nice!
51:57 Tracy plays divorce movie trivia
54:00 Somehow Ryan Gosling is hot even when he’s toxic??
56:47 The truest divorce plot: a couple caught between social scripts and the reality of their relationship
1:00:00 The “broken family” myth
1:02:05 The rise of the divorce memoir and hetero-exceptionalism
1:11:08 The “women choosing the right guy” myth
1:13:02 Political and religious differences also lead to divorce
1:16:34 Divorce stigma is not a strong enough phrase for what women face when considering divorce
1:17:57 Let’s party