Helen can't sleep; so she's going to write about Emma Peel

I love THE AVENGERS because it is a fun show that has culturally relevant undertones (and in many cases, overtones). Here's a great example in this short discussion about the character Mrs Peel, Steed's second companion during the shows run, played brilliantly by Diana Rigg.

Here's also a web page about Diana Rigg. Now Dame Diana Rigg, she was a Shakespearean stage actress before taking on THE AVENGERS, showing perfectly her versatility as an actress.

An interesting actress playing an interesting, complex character in a time (the 60's) where women were rarely used in television shows as anything more than a second rate character.

Taken from: The Avengers by Toby Miller, 1997. pgs. 75 - 78

As the series was about to commence in the USA, Newsweek had Rigg say of her character that 'the widow part shows that she knows what it's all about.' Publicity made much of 'A Touch of Brimstone,' the Hellfire Club episode that was not shown in the States because of her 'sin queen' attire: a black whalebone corset, laced boots, whip and spiky dog collar. A 38-second sequence... 'even offended the normally permissive British TV officials.' The programme clearly referenced subcultural codes from British porn of the 50s. Perhaps that was why it drew more viewers than any other episode screened there. 'The Danger Makers' has a telling scene in which Mrs Peel approaches Steed from behind. Their physical positioning conditions the dialogue that follows. She draws very close, neck to neck, asking him how to 'play it' with a person she must quiz. Steed turns to look at her, his face close to her breasts: 'Show him your bumps.' The alibi for this remark is that the character in question is interested in phrenology. What reads as sexist is transformed by the banter in their delivery, her approach from his rear, and the set-up of the two-shots.

The sense of changing eras is beautifully captured during 'Escape in Time.' Apparently despatched via time travel back to the eighteenth century, Emma tells the villains, 'I'm thoroughly emancipated.' When the controls are reset to 1570, she is put in the stocks. A brutal man accuses her of being 'a heretic, a bawd, a witch -- designed to drive a man to lust.' Her reply, from this somewhat undignified and powerless place, is to look up, toss back her hair, and offer the following: 'You should see me in four hundred years.' Back in the Twentieth century, and the battle won, she looks at a woman she has just fought with, now in chains: 'Didn't we get the vote?' The stereotype of a woman tied down while evil men taunt her is also overdetermined in 'The Positive Negative Man' by a gaze back at her tormentors. Told she is dealing with 'a superman', Mrs Peel replies: 'His pectoral are far from perfect.' Frustrated, they counter that 100 such men, generated from the force of electricity, will destroy the government and take over society. 'What if there's a power cut?' is her riposte. 'The Cybernauts' episode sees Emma researching the holdings of murdered industrialists in the import-export, automation and electrical businesses. When Steed describes the victims as 'all in the top bracket,' she adds 'where the vultures gather.' This skepticism about the patriarchal domain of capital is shown to be apposite as the story develops. Mrs Peel directly encounters sexism at a karate school where the chief instructor says, 'It is difficult for a woman to compete in such company.' Her counter is good-humoured but with an edge: 'It's the idea of competition that appeals to me.' She defeats an opponent and makes her point. The ironic deployment of strong female sexuality in concert with physical force is exemplified in 'The Gravediggers.' Mrs Peel is on the ground. Steed, standing, holds a villain between her legs. She closes them around the man's head, scissoring him into a nearby pond.

Article on Emma Peel
"FILM; Sorry, Uma, There's Only One Emma"

THE great tragedy in the lives of men of a certain age and outlook is that there is one, and only one, Emma Peel. As embodied, quite literally and quite luminously, by Diana Rigg in the arch 1960's spy-fi show ''The Avengers,'' she was the first and arguably the last woman on television to combine sensuality with ironic intellect. Tall and cool and defiantly self-reliant, Mrs. Peel -- ''the widow of a famous test pilot'' -- was fluent in nine languages (including kung fu), could tie knots in mastermind-bending schemes and shoot the cork off a champagne bottle at 50 paces.

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