Alarm Call

“As with many days, Betty begins her day by cleaning the house. She takes a cigarette break and gets lost in her thoughts.”

Alarm Call started with the book by Betty Friedan “The feminine mystique” written in 1963, describing the assumptions that women would be fulfilled by their housework, marriage, sexual lives, and children. But as we know now, there is no “one size fits all” destiny for women, and Friedan wanted to prove that women were unsatisfied and could not voice their feelings.

The busy phone line represents Betty’s inability to be heard by anyone. This is an alarm call. In this society built by men, she feels helpless and frustrated. The ending could also be seen as a Mary Poppins-like escape, a flight away from reality where nothing else can be done. The despair of not being aligned with who she is and who she wants to be forces her to escape reality in order to bear it.