Latest / Revisionist History / The Lady Vanishes

Transcript

The Lady Vanishes · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Bushkin Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British monarchy,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: not open to the public, but you can apply to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and then a man named Desmond shaw Taylor comes and
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Early Middle aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: You know, look at that building now, it's coming missing.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: A page, a nice jumble. Yes, I came here to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: see a painting bought by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Enormous canvasses spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Roll Call, eighteen seventy four.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: The absolute point of the rocal is that it has
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: a single brilliant image idea.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the light directly on the man's face.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: That's a brave young man who manages to stand up brighton.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: And this sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Saint James Pallace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: on white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: defiant but draggled.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: It's real and they are standing in a line, but
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: they're not in a straight line, and they're not anonymous. Yes,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: so it's got one fantastic idea foth.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Glabo. You're listening to the first
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I think too often we make up our minds about
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: something that has happened, and then we move on without
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: you want to see it before you listen to this story,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: you can pause and go to Revisionististory dot com. But
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous, something
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because it's
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: an issue that we deal with all the time today,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: which is what it means to be the first, the
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: in England at that time is controlled by something called
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it a really big deal. First of all, where the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Academy hangs at painting on the wall matters a lot.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: they sky it, that means your painting is considered second class.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: being hung at all. But if they hang at painting
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: where was roll Call hung Gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: line in Gallery.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Two I was reading about it creates an extraordinary sensation. Yes,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: completely in an unusual way, even for that time.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: The day the show opens, the crowds make a bee
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: line for Roll Call.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: The crowds were so great that you had to have
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: basically we employ warden, but they're police to say you know,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: they touch or yeah, move on.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: The only contemporary equivalent I can think of is people
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: camping out in line for two days to buy Beyonce tickets,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: or the kind of frenzy the Beatles faced when they
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: first came to America. Roll Call is the hit of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the Royal Academy show. After that, Roll Call goes in
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: a tour of England. In Newcastle, men walk up and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: down the sidewalks with sandwich boards saying simply, the Role
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Call is coming. In Liverpool, twenty thousand people go to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: see it. In those days, prominent paintings were put on
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: little playing cards, and two hundred and fifty thousand cards
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: are sold with an image of Roll Call. A bidding
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: war breaks out among potential buyers. Only Queen Victoria, one
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: of the greatest art collectors of her day, decides she
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: absolutely has to have it, which is how it comes
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: to hang in Saint James's Palace. Desmond Shaw Taylor must
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: have seen Roll Call a thousand times, but as he
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: shines his flashlight over the artist's brushwork, it's like he's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: seeing it for the first time. He's excited about every
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: That's pretty fabulous, isn't it. It's always so difficult too,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: And if you just get one gray color and just
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: a little bit of unpicturing and just pick out fulls
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: of shoes, just very impressive. H I mean, i I'm
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: enjoying looking at this.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It's a remarkable story, but I've left out the most
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: remarkable fact of all. The artist, an unknown, more importantly woman.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: At a time when the art world was overwhelmingly male,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: British women in the nineteenth century weren't even allowed to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: study fine art. It was a closed world. And suddenly,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: in the middle of that closed world there enters a
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson, raised in Switzerland by
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and she breaks down the door.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I've been fascinated by the story of Elizabeth Thompson for years,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: by roll Call, and more particularly by what happened to
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Thompson after the stunning success of her painting. What
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: fascinates me is how her story is repeated over and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: over again. Once you know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I don't know if you've ever heard
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of Julia Gillard. She was the first woman to become
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Prime Minister of Australia. He served from twenty ten to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, and she had an incredibly tumultuous time in office.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Near the end of her tenure, she gave a famous
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: speech on the floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: part everyone noticed.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: sexist views and who are melogynists are not appropriate for
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: has got a piece of paper and he is writing
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a miro.
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: That's what he needs.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: When I heard Julia Gillard give that speech, I thought
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and Thompson were in the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: same situation. Women dealing with the consequences are breaking down
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the door. I also remember Elizabeth Thompson when I think
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: of Hillary Clinton. Theres an idea that I think helps
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and Julia Gillard. It's
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: called moral licensing. It's a fairly new concept in social psychology.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: It was developed by a number of the best young
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: psychologists in the field, chief among them Daniel Efren, who
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: teaches at the London Business School. Here's the official definition
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: of moral licensing. Past good deeds can liberate individuals to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for fear of feeling
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: or appearing immoral. When we do something good, in other words,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes we then, on occasion, give ourselves permission to do
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: something bad. One of Efron's first experiments in moral licensing
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: was in two thousand and nine. He surveys people who
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: publicly self identify as supporters of Barack Obama for president,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and what he finds is that supporting a black politician
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't always signal that you're a racially open person who
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: is inclined to be progressive in other areas. It can
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: also have the opposite effect. It can free you up
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: to go back to your old racist ways because you've
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: proven to the world what a good person you are.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk of the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely, at
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: I was taken by this finding that people appear to
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: be able to license themselves based on pretty paltry virtues.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I met Efren in his office in London, up in
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: near Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: behavior doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: deeds just lead to more good deeds?
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: So your question is about when does evidence that I'm
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: virtuous lead to more virtuous behavior versus when does evidence
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: a virtue lead to less virtuous behavior? When does doing
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: good lead to doing bad? And when is doing good
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: lead to doing more good? This is the million dollar
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: question in this literature, and it's been a puzzle.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: All we know is that human beings go both ways
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: after a good deed, They sometimes follow a virtuous trajectory
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and sometimes they don't. There's what happens after Jackie Robinson
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: broke the color line in nineteen forty seven becomes the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: first ever black professional baseball player. Within five years there
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: are one hundred and fifty black ball players in the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: major leagues. I think that's what we expect. It fits
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: our romantic notions of progress. The door opens for one person,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and soon it opens for everyone. But what we have
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: to understand is that a lot of times the opposite happens.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: The door opens for one person and they're the only
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: one to slip in those who open the door then
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: feel free to close it again for everybody else. A
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: couple years ago, the Israeli author Almost Ilan wrote a
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: history of the Jews in Germany called The Pity of
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: It All. It's a fascinating book for precisely this reason,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: because what Ilan is interested in is the great paradox
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of Germany's history with the Jews. Here we have a
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: country that committed the greatest historical atrocity against the Jewish people.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yet if you take the long view, as Alan does,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: you see that time and time again, German culture welcomed Jews,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: or at least welcomed some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Many German states had a tradition of what were called
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: court Jews. Most Jews were banned from living in major
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: German cities. There were severe restrictions on what they could do,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: but simultaneously there was a group of protected Jews who
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: were allowed to live and work within the city walls.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: In the seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: by the number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: locusts bringing ruin to Christians, so he banished wish them
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: from Berlin, but not all of them. He kicks out
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: one hundred and forty families, and he keeps one hundred
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: and twenty. That pattern is repeated over and again in
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the German speaking world. In the eighteenth century, the philosopher
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish, was considered one of the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: most brilliant men in Europe. He lives in Berlin, and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: people come from far and wide to visit him. How
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: does he stay in Berlin? The King grants him exceptional status.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: That is to say, and these are Amasalon's words here,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Mendelssohn is the Unjewish jew. The same happens one hundred
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: years later with Bertold Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: most widely read German novelist of his day. He's called
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the German Dickens. This is now at a time of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: virulent antisemitism throughout Germany, but Bertold Auerbach is somehow immune
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: from that prejudice. Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: loves ours and calls him a man rooted in German life.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: One of the brothers grim thanks Auerbach for curing him
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: of prejudice. The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: they love Aerbach. What's going on here? It sounds like
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: a contradiction, it's not. It's just textbook moral licensing. The
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Germans love Berthold Auerbach, and because they think they have
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: demonstrated their open mindedness by loving this one Jew, they
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: feel free to act in the most despicable way to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: other Jews. You open the door to one outsider, and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: that gives you permission to close the door to others.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: After seeing roll Call at Saint James's Palace, I went
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: to the tape and sat on a little bench outside
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the Turner Gallery with Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: historian who has written extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I first learned about Liz with Thompson because they stumbled
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: across an absolutely brilliant article by Usherwood in the Woman's
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Art Journal. It was called Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: of tokenism. Usherwood is wispy and tweedy in the best
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: possible English way. I imagined that after our chat he
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: would go straight home, spend an hour in the garden,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: then go for a brisk walk across a few soggy
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: fields through the dogs. Ushwood argues that in making sense
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson, it's really important to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: understand the role of the Royal Academy. They control the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: art world at this point forty aloof dictatorial white men, as.
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: An institution that was just very very powerful and much
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: resented by people who weren't very very well by it.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: ignored everyone else's art, including an eighteen six tventy four.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: The Irwin roll call went up so.
• 17:11
  Speaker 6: That yeah, there were six thousands paintings which didn't mate
• 17:16
  Speaker 6: the expertise of thousands.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: There's only one art show that matters in England, and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: it's so small that thousands of artists are stuck on
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the outside looking in. There's a revolution brewing. So along
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman, an outsider, with an absolutely
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: brilliant painting, and the Academy hangs it on the line
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: in Gallery two, and everyone thinks this is a sign
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: that the Academy is finally opening its doors to what
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to the Holy Grail membership in the Royal Academy itself.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: It seems destined to happen. One of the most prominent
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: art critics of the day writes in The Daily Telegraph
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: that role call success proves that, and I'm quoting here,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: real genius has no insurmountable obstacles in the English art world.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: In short order, Thompson is nominated for election to the
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Royal Academy. She's one of the most famous artists in England.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: She has a huge public following. Every artist in the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: country is riveted by her candidacy. And what happens. She loses,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: but by just two votes. It doesn't feel At the end,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: everyone says, this is progress. Here we have a young artist,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: still in her twenties, and on her first try she
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: comes within a hair's breadth of acceptance into the old
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: boys club. Everyone thinks that she's going to be a
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: lock for election the next time round. They look at
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: her and they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: submits another painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Quatro Bras, a depiction of the Battle of Waterloo.
• 19:02
  Speaker 6: By that time, she's celebrity and has fantastic assistance from
• 19:05
  Speaker 6: the Niamators, I mean three hundred soldiers point operator, so
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: she could paint that picture.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after Roll
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: calls Triumph. So what happens to Quatrabra?
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: What they do is they stuff it away in an
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: obscure corner. Says quite hard.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Seas Thompson's new work is hung in the lecture room
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: at the back the black hole. And the black hole
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: is where her election to the Royal Academy also goes.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Remember she was within two votes of getting in, and
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: everybody said she's a lock for the next time around,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: but she isn't. There is no next time around. Instead,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the male Academy members have these absurd internal conversations about
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: how it would work if a woman ever got elected.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: What about the etiquette?
• 19:51
  Speaker 6: That's a banquet? How would that they arranged? Who would
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: bring in? Is the thing for the male academician to
• 19:59
  Speaker 6: escort a woman into the bank cred for? How would
• 20:01
  Speaker 6: that work with a woman?
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Academy members passed new regulations to limit the privileges of
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: any women whom might get elected in the future. Because
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: they've proven their bona fides, they hung rall call on
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the line in Gallery two. Who can doubt how open
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: It's a thrilling depiction of a charge of the Scots
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: again to get elected. She can read the writing on
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: six children. Her career took a backseat to her husband's.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: about her, his own wife, one of the most famous
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: artists in England.
• 21:17
  Speaker 6: His autobiography four hundred and fifty five pages, she's not
• 21:21
  Speaker 6: mentioned in the index he mentions that he was married,
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: he mentions that he did have children, and that's it.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: the whole incident with her near election to the Royal
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Academy never happened. Today people would write an entire book
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: about it. But she's been defeated and she knows it.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Here's all she says. As it turned out in eighteen
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: seventy nine, I lost my election by two votes. Only
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: since then, I think the door has been closed. And
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: wisely that's the part that always gets me. And wisely
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: she's given up. Remember how I'm mentioned that when I
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: saw a roll call, the first thing I thought about
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: was Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia. That's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: because it's the same story. Gillard's election was a milestone
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: in Australian history, the same way it would be for
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: any country. Australia had been an independent nation for more
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: than a century, one hundred and ten years of uninterrupted
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: male rule, and that came to an end in twenty
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: ten with this funny whip, smart tough woman. In former
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: British colonies like Australia, the representative of the British crown
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: is called the Governor General, and the Governor General is
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: the person who swears in the new Prime minister. When
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Gillard stands up to take the oath of office, it's
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: a doubly incredible moment.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: What made it loom large for me that day is
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: our governor General at that time was the first woman
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: to ever serve as Governor General.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: This is Julia Gillard telling the story.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: And I could see in her and in her eyes,
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: you know, this incredible shock or delight that she was
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: going to be the person to swear in the first
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: woman prime minister. I Silia Eileen Dillar Clelia firm and
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: declared that I will well and truly said the Commonwealth
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: of Australia. And you know, she subsequently said to me, look,
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: think i'd live to see the day our nation had
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: a female prime minister.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: It's a big deal. And Gillard, like many at the time,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: thinks that Australia has undergone a permanent transformation. And she
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: also thinks that after the novelty of her election passes,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: she'll just be Prime Minister. Gillard, the fact of her
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: gender will become unremarkable, the way the fact of a
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: If you'd asked me then that all would have played
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: sort of the political cycleod go back to normal. And
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: When was the first moment that you realized you were wrong?
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Oh, look, I don't think it was a you know,
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: it wasn't the thud of a penny dropping in my brain.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: But it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: time we were in the government's second year and we
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: were putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: that by the opposition and in the community was getting
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: hotter and shriller. It was in the course of that
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: the gendered stuff really started to show.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Things got ugly.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: You're the people elected this money, soch get right down.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Her opponents would circulate lude sexual cartoons of her. She
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: would be referred to in the newspapers as Julia, as
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: if she was a reality TV star and not the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: head of state. The media would constantly refer to the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: outfit she wore, or how much cleavage she showed, or
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the tone of her voice. The CEO of a major
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Australian company publicly called her an unproductive old cow. One
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: restaurant offered on its menu Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: small brass, huge thighs and a big red box. Was
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: there any particular moment or thing said that that hurts
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: you the most?
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's obviously not a good thing to look
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: out on a scene of protesters and see yourself described
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: as a bitch and a witch and things like that.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: But for me, actually, the worst moment in my prime
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: ministership was not in and of itself a gendered remark,
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: but came from a shock jock.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: She's talking about the Rush Limbar of Australia, a major
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: radio personality who hosts a fundraiser for the Conservative Party,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the other party, not Julia Gillards.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: And I had recently lost my father. My father died
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: while I was Prime Minister. And he said to this
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: audience that my father had died of shame because he
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: was ashamed of me as prime minister. I mean that
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: was the worst.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that's appalling.
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: It is appalling, It is appalling, and you know it's
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: you don't expect to have to do that in your life,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: and you don't expect that, you know, someone like my mother,
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: who's just a lovely woman and a great Australian citizen,
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: should have to tolerate that being said about the husband
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: she's just lost.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Why do you think that intelligent, educated members of a
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: progressive country feel they can get away with such vile
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: behavior because they've just elected a woman, they've proven their
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: progressive bona fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: When the female governor generals swear in the female Prime minister,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillo can't
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: fait back, can't she? Until the very end of your
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: tenure as Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: lip about this.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think I did tell me.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: About that, about your decision of how to handle it.
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: looked upset, then that would be used against me. Personally,
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: but more importantly against women generally, that there would have
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: been people muttering to themselves. You know knew women weren't
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: up for this. You know knew they couldn't take it
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: when they're going got tough.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Then, near the end of Gillard's time in office, a
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: prominent member of her own party, the man she's chosen
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: to be speaker, is found to have sent sexist text messages,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and incredibly, her critics come after her. Gillard. They accuse
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: her of condoning sexism because she's associated with this man.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: She sits in her office in disbelief.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't want to use any bad language
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: to you, but I did have just going through my
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I was thinking
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot believe that
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: after everything I've had to listen to, now I'm somehow
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: going to walk into a parliament and people who have
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: used gendered insults against me are now somehow going to
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: try and give me a lecture on sexism. Like the
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: injustice of this was just boiling in me.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Gillard just starts listening all the things Abbot has said
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and done to her and other women over the years.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: She lets him have it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: I was very offended personally when the Leader of the Opposition,
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: as Minister for Health said, and I quote, abortion is
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: the easy way out. I was very personally offended by
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: those comments. You said that in March two thousand and four.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: I suggest you check the records.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: This is live on the floor of Parliament. If you
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front of her.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: She's dressing him down to his face, and the longer
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: I was also very on behalf of the women of
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: the leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: the misogyny of the leader of the opposition, cat calling
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: across this table at me as I sit here as
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: when the leader of the Opposition all next to a
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: sign that described me as a man's I was offended
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: later of the oppositions, every die in every way, across
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: the time the labor.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: This was twenty twelve, it was practically yesterday. At her
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: last news conference as Prime Minister, Gillard says, what I
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: am absolutely confident of is that it will be easier
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: for the next woman, and for the woman after that
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and the woman after that. And I'm proud of that.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: But forgive me for being a little less optimistic than
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: she was. The difference between Julia Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: is that Thompson never had the chance to give a
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: speech like that on the floor of Parliament. She went
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: away quietly. Gillard got the chance to stand up and
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: to be heard. And I suppose that's progress. But the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: underlying dynamics these two women faced are they all that different?
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: A woman gets accepted into a man's world. She thinks said,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: somehow something has changed, but nothing has changed. The men
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: pat themselves on the back, and then they slammed the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: door shut again. Tony Abbott the man she eviscerated. He
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: later becomes Prime Minister of Australia. By the way, here's
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: a partial list of the countries that have had one
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: and only one female leader. Open the door, pat themselves
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany, Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: helps you can get more information about this and other
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: episodes at revisionististory dot com, or on your favorite podcast
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: app Our show is produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne Scott
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flonon Williams is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka and the Panoply management
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.