This post was written by Hatchet reporter Tatiana Cirisano.
Get ready to feel like you’re in a glass case — or at least, museum — of emotion.
The Newseum opened the new “Anchorman: The Exhibit” this Thursday, featuring iconic props and costumes from the 2004 hit comedy “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”
The exhibit includes over 60 real costumes and props, including character Ron Burgundy’s signature “I’M #1” license plate and legendary mustache brush, as well as character Brian Fantana’s lady-wooing “Sex Panther” cologne — “Sixty percent of the time,” Fantana boasts in the movie, “it works every time.”
Burgundy’s famous — what other color? — burgundy suit, in all its polyester glory, receives its own place of honor in a glass encasement. Visitors can also snap photos at the re-created KVWN-TV anchor desk and take their hand at reporting in front of the camera, part of The Newseum’s interactive experience.
“[The Newseum has] a lot of really important content,” the Newseum’s manager of exhibit development Patty Rhule told The Hatchet. “We have the Berlin wall. We have the 9/11 exhibit. These are all really serious topics about cataclysmic news events. There’s always a place for a little bit of levity. Because who doesn’t need a laugh? We thought this is a great opportunity to tell the story about an era that we really haven’t told the story of.”
But the exhibit is more than a promo for the anticipated sequel, “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” set to hit theaters this December.
In addition to featuring real props from the movie, the exhibit explores the true struggles faced by women in the news industry, especially during the film’s 1970s setting. The film’s plot, which centers around a female news reporter and the antagonism she faces when joining an all-male news team, may be more close to reality than viewers would expect.
Rhule said that only about eleven percent of local TV news anchors of the 1970s were women.
“That number was up to 36% a decade later,” Rhule said. “We have a story to tell here.”
The exhibit also includes profiles on real female news anchors of the 1970s, such as Jean Enerson, who was told to drink whiskey and even smoke to make her voice sound masculine.
Visitors can also learn more about newscasting history by reading ad campaigns of news teams from the period and listening to an interview with the creator of the Eyewitness News format that emerged in the 1970s.
Tickets to The Newseum, which will feature the “Anchorman” exhibit through August 2014, can be purchased on the museum’s website, and cost $17.95 with a college student identification card.
