The Iron Lady

I came of age in the 1980’s, so Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are iconic figures for me. In 1980, I started high school, and at the time, I was still pretty naïve about politics. I didn’t know where I stood on the issues because I didn’t understand them in depth. And like a lot of young people, I was more concerned with my personal life than the affairs of state. The world, it seemed, had been getting on, for better or worse, without my input for a very long time, so who was I to butt in?  By the middle of the decade, I came to realize that these people weren’t looking out for my best interest. I didn’t come from money, I wasn’t driven to pursue money, and I belonged to a defamed minority group whose members were dropping like flies. Reagan and Thatcher, on the other hand, were rightwing ideologues who championed the privileged and the wealthy. Back when I was young, they seemed invincible.

In this film we see Thatcher, the Iron Lady, reduced to playing the role of a doddering old woman lost in a fog of memories, floating aimlessly back and forth through the decades. Sad. And we know that her American counterpart, Reagan, began his descent into the fog before he even left office. Despite all of their speechifying about how the mighty have earned their right to stand on the backs of the poor and how those who are shut out should be quite and stop being so uppity, they both ended up helpless and at the mercy of others on their way to the bone yard.

I used to think they were strong and formidable. Turns out they were just vain little peacocks headed for the same place we all are, oblivion.