Making Frankie Stone: Feminism, Post-Romance and Making Mr. Right

Making Mr. Right is, on its surface, a science-fiction infused romantic comedy that plays with popular 1980s tropes: namely, a human falls in love with an android (or android-like) almost human. Yet Seidelman flips the gendered dynamic via a female publicist, Frankie Stone (Ann Magnuson), falling in love with an android, Ulysses, and teaching him to be her perfect partner. Reviews during film’s release described Frankie Stone as a shady and constantly stressed over-achiever; she embodies the contradictory position between Seidelman’s earlier punk women and the changing landscape of “career women.” Where Desperately Seeking Susan foregrounds the split between Roberta as housewife and Susan as free spirit, Frankie must “do it all” to “have it all.” The feminist politics of Seidelman’s representation of Frankie Stone, particularly her mobility and how her domestic space travels with her via her red convertible, intertwine to create a new concept of home. Frankie’s mobile domestic sphere allows her aimless approach to her job and life to translate into the disjuncture between the promises of feminist freedoms past and the newer terrain of 1980s rom-coms centered on “women’s work.”