Since several members of Team Experience are high on Agent Carter, here's Lynn Lee to talk about its new Tinseltown resonance.
Are you enjoying Marvel’s “Agent Carter”? If you're not watching, you should. The show’s really upped its game in its second season, in part because its main characters have found their groove, but in even larger part because of its change of setting.
Dispatched to Los Angeles to assist the West Coast office of the Strategic Science Reserve, Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) quickly finds herself in the heart of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Her old friend Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) is doing his best impression of another famed Howard of the period, dabbling in filmmaking but really most interested in collecting starlets as poolside decorations and “production assistants.” Meanwhile, Peggy and faithful sidekick Jarvis (James d’Arcy) do their own best impression of a platonic Nick and Nora Charles (although they also prefigure original Avengers John Steed and Emma Peel), trading exquisitely polite British quips as they navigate palm trees and movie sets, and they’re a delight to watch.
But it’s not just Howard Stark who draws Peggy into Tinseltown’s orbit. More...
Hedy Lamarr and Whitney Frost
The main villain of the season, Whitney Frost (an excellent Wynn Everett), is a movie star who’s on the cusp of being aged out of leading roles. She’s got an ace in her back pocket, though, and it’s not her generic rich-white politician husband—it’s her mind. Not only a master manipulator of her husband, she’s also the brains behind his company. It was she who discovered its most valuable and dangerous property, a mysterious substance called “zero matter” that seems to operate like a fluid black hole. As we learned over the most recent couple of episodes, she didn’t get there easily, having received no encouragement or recognition of her scientific genius as a young girl. Only with the advent of WWII was she able to put her talents to use by helping the Allies manipulate radio frequencies to send coded messages across enemy lines.
If that back story sounds familiar, that’s because it’s obviously inspired by Hedy Lamarr. No, Whitney Frost isn’t a stand-in for Lamarr, exactly; the show goes out of its way to refer to the real star as existing in the show’s universe. But in a broader sense, Lamarr is the touchstone for this season, as the patron saint of brilliant women valued primarily for their beauty rather than their brains. (It’s probably not a coincidence that while Whitney, a delicate blonde, has the Hedy Lamarr-like pedigree, it’s Peggy, the voluptuous yet classy brunette, who's closer to Lamarr in physical type.)
Whitney Frost’s character arc also reminds us that things sadly haven’t changed all that much for actresses trying to survive Hollywood. There’s a real sting to the scenes in which the thirty-something star deals with the casual sexism and ageism of her industry, as she fields insensitive comments about makeup and more flattering lighting being needed for her as an “older” woman, the studio wanting to replace her with a “fresh face,” and most insulting of all, her director’s squicky attempt to extract a sexual quid pro quo for keeping her in a role. There’s also a powerful symbolism in the ominous black crack that forms at Whitney’s temple as the result of her exposure to zero matter and expands each time she uses it. She’s losing the trait that’s defined her in society’s eyes—her beauty—even as she’s gaining a new strength unleashed by her brain. Although she tries at first to hide the mark and continue playing the part of a famous actress and politician’s wife, she eventually drops the pretense, cancelling an important photo shoot and revealing her new face and powers to her husband. When he, terrified, demands, “What are you?” her response is as thrilling as it is chilling:
Anything that I want to be.”
Of course, Whitney Frost is still the villain, and even as the show adds sympathetic shading to her story, it highlights the alternative path represented by Peggy Carter. While Whitney’s spent her life pretending to submit to the patriarchy while working it behind the scenes, Peggy’s simply refused to let it stand in her way. The contrast between the two was both deepened and complicated by last week’s flashbacks to their pasts, which confirmed that outward circumstances, as much as inborn traits, can swing the balance between a hero and a supervillain. Whereas one was rejected by a university because of her sex and repeatedly told her looks were her only asset, the other was encouraged, in fact pushed (ironically, by a man – her brother) to be true to herself and realize her full potential. Change one detail of either of their lives, their families, their influences, and they could have been allies. As it is, they’re formidable and well-matched adversaries and far more compelling than any of the men who try to control them. Somewhere, in some dimension, the ghost of Hedy Lamarr is smiling at them both.
Agent Carter airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on ABC