[For this year’s
April
Fool’s series, I decided to AmericanStudy a handful of classic 1980s comic films. Leading up
to a special weekend post on one of the best comedies, and films, from 2019!]
On one inspiring
and two more frustrating characters in a socially thoughtful dramedy.
First things
first: I’m a big fan of Mike
Nichols’ Working Girl (1988), to
the point where I’ve shown it in a couple Writing
II classes as our shared multimedia text for a unit/paper where students
analyze one of their choice. There are a lot of things that make the film funny
and compelling (including a truly great opening and closing credits 80s ballad from Carly Simon),
but without question the heart and soul is Melanie Griffith’s career-best
performance as protagonist Tess McGill. Griffith delivers the film’s
slapstick moments and comic lines pitch-perfectly, and has truly next-level
chemistry with her romantic lead Harrison Ford (perhaps
not a difficult thing at the height of Ford’s 1980s hotness,
but still a vital element of the film’s success); but she also imbues the
character with so much charisma, heart, vulnerability, and intelligence that we
root for her every step of the way, despite the fact that (and more on this in
a moment) she lies and cheats her way through a great deal of the film. I love
Tess, love Griffith in this film, and would unequivocally highlight this as one
of the decade’s truly great comic and film performances.
We have to be
able to critique the things we love, though, and I would say that the film’s
other two most significant female characters are both in their own ways more
problematic than Tess. That’s more obviously the case for Sigourney Weaver’s Katharine
Parker, Tess’s duplicitous boss and the film’s villain. Weaver’s villainy
hinges entirely on the fact that she steals a great idea of Tess’s and tries to
pass it off as her own (despite her claims to be Tess’s biggest champion), and
that is indeed a really awful thing to do. But it’s also pretty parallel to
much of what Tess does for the remainder of the film once she learns of that
action—with Katharine out of commission after a European skiing accident, Tess
quite literally steals her identity, from her home and office and wardrobe to
her significant other (Ford’s Jack Trainer), lying constantly in order to
maintain these appearances. Because we see where Tess starts and what she’s up
against, and again because of Griffith’s wonderful performance, we root for her
throughout these moments; yet we’re never given any backstory for or really any
contextual information at all about Weaver’s character, which makes it
impossible to know if she has had to fight a similar fight and deserves similar
sympathies. At the very least, that’s not the best contrast to create or
villain to rely on in a film about women’s empowerment.
The film’s third
significant female role, Joan
Cusack’s delightful best friend character Cyn, is a lot less complicated: mostly
a combination of supportive buddy and comic relief, with an occasional moment of conscience
about Tess’s manipulations. Cusack is one of our great comic actors, and she
unsurprisingly knocks that role out of the park and is another key element of
the film’s success. But in terms of the film’s themes, I’d say Cyn presents a
bit of a problem: as the film’s ending [SPOILERS, if not unexpected ones I
imagine] illustrates, she is presented as purely and entirely happy that Tess
has succeeded and gotten the job and life she always wanted; but Cyn and the
rest of their friends remain in the office pool from which Tess emerged, and
while I suppose one could argue that all of them could be inspired by Tess to
follow a similar path, I think it’s more accurate to say that Tess is presented
as unique and that neither Cyn nor any of the others are likely to even try for
the same next steps. Of course there’s no one path to success or happiness, but
this contrast reinforces some overarching class dynamics that are the heart of
conversations about work in America but that this funny and fun film isn’t
quite willing to get into.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other 80s comedies (or other comic films) you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment