20 thoughts on “LBJ, MLK, and Selma

  1. Yes, I’ve seen Selma. What impressed me most, besides Ms Carter’s ‘right on’ clothes was the sense that I was living the events along with MLK & CSK and the other leaders, women & children.
    Furthermore, seeing how far we’ve come as a family and how far we still need to go. Civil Rights are not history alone, they are on going and must be fought for and never taken for granted.

      1. There’s a tendency to lump the whole of the 1960s into a single fashion profile when there’s a clear dividing line between the earlier and latter halves of the decade. I’d say the watershed year was 1964, with the British Invasion, which included Mod fashion.

        Very often, someone will refer to the ’60s and totally ignore the earlier part of the decade with its knee-length skirts, bouffant hairstyles, and armor-like underpinnings like panty girdles.

        1. Which is one of the many reasons why the costume design on Mad Men is so fabulous – it captured the shift in styles over the years and different social groups so perfectly. Of course this is coming from someone who wasn’t actually there to see it first-hand lol.

          1. Mad Men was spot on. I was born in 1951, so I remember the ’60s well and can assert that the fashions and their evolution were portrayed perfectly.

    1. I think there’s more reverence for mid-century, if not all of the 20th century, and more “we need to get this right,” since it’s such recent history.

    1. Not really. I felt Hairspray—at least the original—nailed 1962 and brought a lot of memories to the surface.

      1. I feel the John Waters original film version (the 1988 one, starring Divine and Ricki Lake) was most authentic to the early 1960s in part because Waters was remembering his own teen years and wanted the costumes and hairstyles accurate to his memories (and Divine’s character, Edna Turnblad’s look is pointedly older until she gets a modern-to-the-’60s makeover) The Broadway show and the subsequent 2007 movie (which was essentially the movie version of the Broadway show) were more over the top as far as costumes, imo, not an easy fete for John Waters fare.

  2. There are only 2 I remember clearly. The Michelle Pfeiffer/John Travolta one & the one with Kristin Chenowith. I don’t really remember the Ricki Lake one.

    1. You must see the original. John Waters got absolutely everything right, and the casting was brilliant. Not only did we get Divine (both in and out of drag) and Ricki Lake, but we were treated to Debbie Harry and Sonny Bono as the snobbish von Tussles and Jerry Stiller as Wilbur Turnblad. We also got a host of real Baltimoreans, adding further authenticity.

      The stage musical was okay, and the movie of the musical was a joke.

  3. Mildly OT, but has Frock Flicks considered covering the show “Underground?” the costumes are meh historical wise, but they fit characterization pretty well.

    1. Yes! I have a review coming up soon — season 2 of Underground starts in early March, & I hope to finish season 1 in time. The costumes are killing me, but the story is worth it.

  4. It might be interesting to compare “Selma” with “Loving,” which took place sometime before the events of Selma.

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