Pan Am Premieres on ABC to be women’s side of the Mid-Century productions

The ABC televised channel has one of its newest productions airing the pilot episode on Sunday (25) night. ‘Pan Am’, another production which follows the mid-century pattern of context, focused its drama and base line story on the women, a differential when compared to other similar shows, such as ‘Mad Men’, ‘The Playboy Club’ or ‘The Hour’. The main characters cast is composed by Christina Ricci, Kelli Garner, Margot Robbie, Mike Vogel and Karine Vanasse.

Individual Personalities

Each character has its own way of being an opposition to what women at that time were supposed to behave like. Ricci’s character, for instance, named Maggie, is the groundbreaking rules kind of girl and an intellectual who quotes Hegel. By her side, Vanasse plays Colette, who brings the side to women that have affairs and enjoy flirting with men, no matter what society believes to be a good feminine attitude.

Also, the story brings in two new flight attendants who are sisters, Laura and Kate, interpreted by Robbie and Garner respectively. Once Laura got the job at the same company as her sister’s, the beautiful stewardess was photographed for the cover of ‘Life’ magazine. At this point begins the conflicts between the sisters, as Kate feels threatened by her sibling’s beauty and charm in life.

Keeping It Real

At the same time that the characters give the impression that the production is going against the sexism of those times, the scenes are carefully thought over in order to show what it was like to be a flight attendant back then. Before being allowed to board, each of them were weighed, informing that “girls may fly until they marry or turn 32” and inspecting their uniforms and even their underwear.

Former Pan Am stewardesses were interviewed to provide an insight vision of what it was like to work for the company back in the 60’s. According to Sheila Riley, flight attendant for over two decades, the job was “probably the best 22 years of my life. Being a Pan Am stewardess was a lifestyle, not a career. On every famous man’s arm in the 1960′s there was a Pan Am flight attendant.”