Love and anarchy
Why women should watch the series – and men anyway
© LINDAHL BJÖRN / Aftonbladet / TT / imago images / imago images
"Love and Anarchy" is the name of the new Netflix series that is supposed to bring us through gray January days. In fact, she does a lot more for us – especially for women.
Rather unambitiously, I scrolled through my Netflix account for the first few evenings of the first month in 2021. I got stuck with "Love and Anarchy". Poppy lead story, classic love story with a pinch of current affairs – as a nice, casual pastime, I hit "play".
Briefly explained: It's about a middle-aged woman, Sofie, married, mother of two children and the daughter of a demented father, who as a change manager is supposed to get a publishing company going, but above all she starts a game of courage with a young IT specialist. It is the random life story of a woman who breaks out of her everyday life with a little gimmick. Not much is happening – and a lot is happening in the process.
Between masturbation and finding meaning
While the series is now splashing around nicely and casually, it stripped its core in the first few minutes: Pleasant calm. You watch the protagonist work, eat breakfast and go to the bathroom. And how she puts two headphones in her ears and fingers in her pants to quickly watch a porno.
So there is this middle-aged woman sitting on the toilet between family and work, masturbating. The scene is neither particularly erotic nor emancipatory. It acts as a pure act of stress relief between the door and the hinge. Every woman knows them. It passes as quickly as it begins – and gives me exactly the kind of casualness that I wanted, but not expected.
Emancipated calmness
You experience such moments more often in the course of the series. Scenes of masturbation are so naturally lined up with female authors with armpit hair and men with panic attacks. To women who jump into a swimming pool without bikini bottoms and with pubic hair. Toxic masculinity that men face and women withdraw. All of this happens. Just because. Uncommented. Casual.
A pleasant calm is the reason why this simple Netflix series stands out from others. It is neither particularly demanding, nor alternative or even exciting. She is normal. No more and no less. And thus exactly what we urgently need in 2021.
In the last few years we have pounced on women and their bodies, on every dent and hair, every sexuality, form of love and life and every breaking out of the norm. We celebrated, praised, exposed them. We broke taboos. That was necessary and good. But now it's enough. Now it's time for normalcy.
Women are no longer brave when they have armpit hair. Men don't get weak when they show emotion. Don't mistake women for not doing what you want them to do. And it's not a taboo break when they watch porn. And with that: Welcome to 2021.