80’s movies – Page 2

Women in Science Fiction Week: Is ‘Terminator’s Sarah Connor an Allegory for Single Mothers?

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

This post previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 25, 2012.

Mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. Sadly, society often stigmatizes, vilifies and demonizes single mothers. Single moms are blamed for “breeding more criminals.” Single parenthood is criminalized and “declared child abuse.” On top of that, “almost 70% of people believe single women raising children on their own is bad for society.” WTF? Seriously?? Wow. Way to be misogynistic people.

So it’s no surprise to see broken and dysfunctional single moms reflected on-screen. And don’t get me wrong. I love watching flawed female characters. But what about single mom Sarah Connor, “the mother of destiny?” Often labeled a feminist hero, topping lists for greatest female characters, is she the “ultimate protective single mother?”

Along with Ellen Ripley, Sarah helped pave the way for strong female characters. In Terminator, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is a friendly college student and food server, lacking confidence, who “can’t even balance [her] checkbook.” Targeted by cyborg assassins sent from the future to kill her son, the future resistance leader fighting against domineering machines, she is thrust into a hellish nightmare fighting for her life. The Sarah (Linda Hamilton) of Terminator 2: Judgment Daytransforms into a badass goddess. With her sculpted muscles doing pull-ups and firing guns, she’s a ferocious warrior filled with rage (something women are rarely allowed to exhibit) yet haunted and struggling with mental stability. In the cancelled-way-too-early fantastic TV series Sarah Connor Chronicles, we witness Sarah (Lena Headey) as a brave single mother, passionate, smart, angry and flawed, doing everything she can to not only survive but thrive.

As kickass as she is, Sarah possesses no other identity beyond motherhood. She exists solely to protect her John from assassination or humanity will be wiped out. Every decision, every choice she makes, is to protect her son. In Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron tells Sarah that “Without John, your life has no purpose.” Sarah tells her ex-fiancé that she’s not trying to change her fate but change John’s. Even before she becomes a mother in Terminator, her identity is tied to her uterus and her capacity for motherhood.

[…]

On the surface, it seems like the Terminator franchise revolves around a dude often searching for a father figure rather than appreciating his mother. And problematic depictions of motherhood do emerge. But who’s really the hero? Is it the smart hacker son destined to be a leader? Is it the cyborg that learns humanity? Or is it the brave and fierce single mother who sacrifices everything to protect humanity and doesn’t wait for destiny to unfold but takes matters into her own hands?

Continue reading –>

LGBTQI Week: Sleepaway Camp

This piece by Monthly Guest Contributor Carrie Nelson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 24, 2011.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.

(Everything that follows contains significant spoilers. Read at your discretion.)

The protagonist of Sleepaway Camp is Angela, the lone survivor of a boating accident that killed her father and her brother, Peter. Years after the accident, her aunt Martha, with whom she now lives, sends her to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky. Angela is painfully shy and refuses to go near the water, which leads to the other campers tormenting her incessantly. Ricky’s quick to defend her, but the bullying is relentless. One by one, Angela’s tormenters are murdered in increasingly grotesque ways (the most disturbing involves a curling iron brutally entering a woman’s vagina).

So come the end of the film, when it’s revealed that Angela is the murderer, there’s no particular shock – after all, why wouldn’t she want to seek revenge on her tormentors? But the fact that Angela is the murderer isn’t the point, because when we find out she’s the murderer we see her naked, and it is revealed that she has a penis. We quickly learn through flashbacks that it was, in fact, Peter who survived the boat accident, and Aunt Martha decided to raise him as a girl. The ending is profoundly disturbing, not because Peter is a murderer or because he is a cross-dresser (because his female presentation is against his will, it isn’t accurate to call him transgender), but because he has been abused so deeply by his aunt and his peers that he can’t find a way to cope.

Unlike most slasher movies I’ve seen, I wasn’t horrified by Sleepaway Camp’s body count. Rather, I was horrified by the abuses that catalyze the murders. Peter survived the trauma of watching his father and sister die, only to be emotionally and physically abused by his aunt and forced to live as a woman. At camp, he’s terrified of the water, as it reminds him of the tragic loss of his family, and he’s unable to shower or change his clothes around his female bunkmates, as they might learn his secret. But rather than being understanding and supportive, the other campers harass Peter by forcibly throwing him into the water, verbally taunting him and ruining his chance to be romantically involved with someone who might truly care for him. Not to mention, at the start of camp, he is nearly molested by the lecherous head cook. Peter may be a murderer, but he is hardly villainous – the rest of the characters are the real villains, for allowing the bullying to transpire.

The problem, of course, is that the abuse of Peter isn’t the part that’s supposed to horrify us. The twist ending is set up to shock and disgust the audience, which is deeply transphobic. Tera at Sweet Perdition describes the problem with ending as follows:

But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.

The shock of Sleepaway Camp’s ending relies on the cissexist assumption that one’s biological sex and gender presentation must always match. A person with a mismatched sex and gender presentation is someone to be distrusted and feared. Though the audience has identified with Peter throughout the movie, we are meant to turn on him and fear him at the end, as he’s not only a murderer – he’s a deceiver as well. But, as Tera points out, the only deception is the one in the minds of cisgender viewers who assume that Peter’s sex and gender must align in a specific, proper way. Were this not the point that the filmmakers wanted to make, they would have revealed the twist slightly earlier in the film, allowing time for the viewer to digest the information and realize that Peter is still a human being. (This kind of twist is done effectively in The Crying Game, specifically because the twist is revealed midway through the film, and the audience watches characters cope and come to terms with the reveal in an honest, sensitive way. Such sensitivity is not displayed in Sleepaway Camp.)

And yet, despite its cissexism, Sleepaway Camp has some progressive moments. Most notably, the depiction of Angela and Peter’s parents, a gay male couple, is positive. In the opening scene, the parents appear loving and committed, and there’s even a flashback scene depicting the men engaging in romantic sexual relations. Considering how divisive gay parenting is in the 21st century, the fact that a mainstream film made nearly thirty years ago portrays gay parenting positively (if briefly) is certainly worthy of praise.

Sleepaway Camp is incredibly problematic, but beyond the surface-layer clichés and the shock value of the ending, it’s a fascinating and truly horrifying film. Particularly watching the film today, in an era where bullying is forcing young people to make terrifyingly destructive decisions, the abuses against Peter ring uncomfortably true. Peter encounters cruelty at every turn, emotionally scarring him until he can think of no other way to cope besides murder. Unlike horror movies in which teenagers are murdered as punishment for sexual activity, Sleepaway Camp murders teenagers for the torment they inflict on others. There’s a certain sweet justice in that sort of conclusion, but at the same time, it makes you wish the situations that bring on the murders hadn’t needed to happen at all.

———-

Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Big Screen BFF’s — Cinema’s Greatest Female Friendships

Susan Sarandon (Louise) and Geena Davis (Thelma) in Thelma and Louise

Guest post written by Sophie Standing.

Stock up on tissues and chocolate ice-cream, call your best bud, and reserve a day just for the two of you. For the ultimate feel-good friendship vibes, rent the following from your local store and have a BFF girly movie marathon.

Spoilers ahead.

Beaches

In terms of girly weepies, it doesn’t get much more harrowing than Beaches.

Starring Bette Midler (C.C Bloom) and Barbara Hershey (Hilary), this 1988 classic is all about the endurance of friendship, no matter what else life throws at you.

And life certainly throws a lot at those ladies! In the opening scenes, a cheeky red-head makes friends with a prim brunette at the seaside. They go through life in their own directions, but at the centre of everything is their friendship.

Along the way, there are fall-outs about men and luck comes and goes, but in the end they are together, and there is a rather emotional rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings” (weep!) after the tragic death of Hilary.

Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler in Beaches

Boys on the Side

This classic movie follows three very different ladies (a lounge singer, a pregnant young woman and a sensible real-estate agent) as they take a road trip across the US and end up building a life together.

Made in 1995, the film stars Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Barrymore and Mary-Louise Parker. This film doesn’t shy away from real life, and there is tragedy and heartbreak a-plenty, including domestic abuse and the struggle of living with HIV.

Aside from the strength of formed friendships, the most moving thing about this film is the soundtrack, with a tenderly stripped back version of Orbison’s “You Got It” coaxing out tears in the final scenes.

Whoopi Goldberg, Mary Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore in Boys on the Side

Muriel’s Wedding

This quirky and tragic comedy set in Australia stars Toni Collette (Muriel) and Rachel Griffiths (Rhonda).

Two misfits from a middle-of-nowhere Australian town, Muriel is an Abba, wedding obsessed and socially awkward woman from a troubled family. She fills in a blank cheque from her father and books herself on a cruise, where she meets Rhonda and breaks away from the bitchy friends who have been holding her back.

The two of them start a new life in Sydney and develop a close friendship. When Muriel volunteers to be a bride at a bogus wedding and Rhonda is confined to a wheelchair, it seems that Muriel has forgotten the importance of friendship, but at the end of the film, she comes to her senses and Rhonda and Muriel escape together!

Rachel Griffiths and Toni Collette in Muriel’s Wedding

Thelma and Louise

This has to be the definitive female friendship movie, doesn’t it? Across the world there are countless pairs of Thelma and Louise’s like these ladies. Which one are you?

If you’ve spent your life in a darkened room then there is a small chance that you might not have seen this film. If you haven’t, I command you to go out and rent it!

Geena Davis (Thelma) and Susan Sarandon (Louise) star is this 1991 epic. Whilst on a girly holiday, all goes badly wrong when Louise shoots and kills a man who is trying to rape Thelma. The rest of the film follows the ladies on the run, where nothing is more important than their loyalty to each other, and they are empowered by their freedom and refusal of male domination.

If these ladies aren’t enough to inspire you then I don’t know what will be.

Who have been the best and most loyal friends of your life? If you’ve lost touch, look in the white pages and find an address or phone number. There’s no better time to tell an old or current BFF how much you love them!

Sophie Standing is a film fanatic and writer who currently blogs for White Pages.

Reproduction & Abortion Week: Dirty Dancing

Dirty Dancing

This is a guest post by Meghan Harvey.

I was born in 1977, four years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Though I would see the moral debate play out many times over the course of my life, the legality of a woman’s right to choose was always a non-issue in my mind. It was always just the law. When I say always, I truly mean always. I have absolutely no memory of learning what an abortion was, or why it was so important to have it legal. I just always knew. Mainly because I grew up in the post Roe v. Wade world.

Most women I know around my age (whether liberal or conservative) all agree that despite their personal feelings on abortion, that a woman has the right to choose. Most women all agree, it’s better legal. By better of course, I mean safer.

Part of growing up in this post Roe v. Wade world meant that for us the picture painted of life before Roe v. Wade was different. A world that existed before we were born and it was not a pretty one. No movie or pop culture moment painted that picture clearer than the 80s classic, Dirty Dancing.

For most girls my age it was the first time we saw what “abortion” meant in the days before Roe v. Wade. It was simply “a dirty knife and a folding table.”

For those of you who are not familiar with the legendary movie, here is the main gist of it in a nutshell. Dirty Dancing takes place in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains in 1963. Frances “Baby” Houseman is visiting Kellerman’s summer resort with her family for the summer before starting college in the fall. Baby, a rich privileged girl with a strong sense of right and wrong, meets Johnny the dance instructor from the wrong side of the tracks with the heart of gold.

When Penny, Johnny’s dance partner, finds herself pregnant Baby steps in to take her place on the dance floor while Penny has a back-alley abortion that almost kills her. Not only does Baby cover for Penny, she also gets the money to pay for the abortion from her Dr. father (without telling him what it’s for).

Many of you who have seen the movie a hundred thousand times like I have may very well be reading that description and realizing that the abortion storyline, though not actually the main part of the movie, is the cornerstone of the movie. Without it there is no movie.

Penny, after discovering she’s pregnant

In fact the film’s screenwriter and producer Eleanor Bergstein was asked by a potential national sponsor (an acne cream company) to remove the abortion storyline from the film out of fear of a backlash and protests. Bergstein told them, “Oh, I’d be so happy to, but as it happens, it’s so into the plot that if I took it out, there’s no reason for Baby to learn to dance. There’s no reason for her to dance with Johnny, to dance at the Sheldrake, to fall in love with him, to make love with him, so the whole plot falls apart, so I can’t do it.” The sponsor pulled out and the abortion stayed in.

An abortion to most of us was an icky medical procedure. You went to a doctor and had it done, end of story. I for one was still too young to understand the moral debate or logistics of abortion, just that it was something that happened.

Dirty Dancing opened an entire generation’s eyes to the fact that it had not always been that simple. For the first time we were seeing it described as being done by a man with a “a dirty knife and a folding table.” Penny’s screams are described as being heard all the way down the hall.

Those screams in Dirty Dancing were the first time my generation would hear those screams and understand that the right to choose was not something that had always been ours. It was the first time that we opened our minds to the reality that illegal abortions were deadly, dangerous and horrific. Suddenly to a generation of young girls the protests outside abortion clinics that were so prevalent at the time seemed different. Suddenly it occurred to us, in the simplest way, that these people protesting must not have seen Dirty Dancing.

They must not have seen the Pennys of the world. Women who didn’t have health insurance, support, or a job with maternity leave. Women who didn’t even the money for an abortion, let alone to give birth to a child. Penny was not perfect, but she was not an evil harlot either. She was a woman in a hopeless situation with no choices. Not that different than our aunts, big sisters, or even our moms. In another time, we could have been Penny. But on some level, my generation understood that part of the message of the movie was just that. No, we would never be Penny. Our generation would never have to face the dirty knife and folding table down the hall. We were the lucky ones, and Dirty Dancing ensured our entire generation understood that.

Eventually that first experience of what a back-alley abortion actually was would help us understand later that the debate raging was much more simple than Women’s Rights. Much less official than Roe v. Wade. Dirty Dancing made that first picture of abortion something that had nothing to do with moral or constitutional implications. There is no discussion in Dirty Dancing about when a fetus becomes a life. In fact Baby’s father, the Doctor, never says one word about whether abortions are right or wrong, just that they are illegal.

This debate was about our lives.

A few years after Dirty Dancing came out I entered high school and took a debate class. One of my first debates was debating whether Roe v. Wade should be reversed or not. I stood up in front of my class and described in detail what a back-alley abortion was. I explained how it was the leading cause of death for young women before 1973. I told the story of the real Pennys of the world. I won the debate.

I have a vintage Dirty Dancing shirt that I like to wear. On the back it has the most famous line from the movie, “No one puts Baby in a corner!” Though what that line means to each one of us may differ, as an adult today I can’t help but think that it’s a line symbolic for all women. It sums up the lesson on abortion that is told throughout the movie.

Our lives mean something. Our choices mean something. And we do not deserve to be pushed into a dark corner to sit quietly. Its not just Baby, it’s all of us.

None of us deserves to be put in a corner.

———-

Meghan Harvey is a blogger, New Media Manager, Mom, and 80s movie obsessed women out the Bay Area. She contributes to SheHeroes.org, Life360.com, MOMocrats, and her personal blog Meg’s Idle Chatter. You can find her on Twitter at @Meghan1018.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Gorillas in the Mist

Gorillas in the Mist (1988)

This piece is from Monthly Contributor Carrie Nelson.

This post contains spoilers about the film Gorillas in the Mist.

For nearly 20 years, zoologist Dian Fossey lived and worked among the mountain gorillas in Africa. Her work as a researcher and animal rights activist is responsible for raising awareness about Africa’s gorilla population and the threat of their extinction. Gorillas in the Mist, a film directed by Michael Apted in 1988, follows Dian (Sigourney Weaver, in an Oscar-nominated role) as she works in the Congo and Rwanda to study the behavior of mountain gorillas and protect them from poaching. As the film was produced after Dian’s untimely death (she was murdered in 1985; to this day, the precise circumstances and perpetrators remain unknown), it is impossible to know how she would have responded to the film. However, based on what I understand about Dian’s real life, I believe she would appreciate the film. I believe she would see it as an honest portrayal of her life, and I also believe she would be happy to see that the film avoids common clichés that are typically found in mainstream films about the lives of women.

Over the course of the film, Dian experiences a radical transformation in gender presentation. At the beginning of her travels, she is incredibly conscious of her appearance. When she meets her mentor, Dr. Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) at the start of her mission, he explains that there isn’t room for all of the luggage she’s brought with her, to which she stubbornly replies, “Those cases contain my hairdryer, my makeup, my underwear and my brassieres. If they don’t go, Dr Leakey, I don’t go.” I thought this was a throwaway line, so I was surprised that there were several additional mentions of her interest in make-up, hair products and clothing soon after this exchange. I was frustrated with this focus on materialism, thinking that the writer was using these moments as shorthand to remind the audience that the protagonist is, indeed, a woman; I felt as if the filmmakers were saying, “Well, what woman wouldn’t want to bring her cosmetics to the jungle?”

But as the film goes on, the references to beauty cease, and it becomes clear that these lines are not comments on Dian’s gender identity but on the materialism that she gradually gives up as she becomes committed to living among the mountain gorillas. The lines about clothing and make-up eventually stop, and Dian lets go of the previous signifiers of her femininity. It isn’t that she becomes masculine, as Weaver’s character in the Alien series is often perceived – it’s that she no longer needs these material possessions and outward signifiers to feel comfortable in the world and convey her identity. Dian’s transformation is subtle, but it adds significant depth to her characterization as she becomes comfortable in her new surroundings.

A similar transformation occurs in Dian’s romantic life. When she moves to Africa, she leaves behind her fiancé, David. Over the course of the film, her mentions of him become fewer and fewer, until a passing remark reveals that they have ended their engagement. She does, however, meet photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown). Bob is married, but his and Dian’s shared passion for studying the gorillas leads them to start a passionate love affair. His work as a photographer makes him travel frequently, but he always returns to visit Dian, until he finally reveals to her that he is divorcing his wife to marry her. Initially, Dian is thrilled with this proposal; though she is devoted to her career, she often expresses an interest in wanting a family. But ultimately, she chooses her career over Bob anyway. He is offered a job that would take her away from Africa and the mountain gorillas, and she tells him that if he accepts the job and leaves, he should never write or come back to her. It’s a tragic moment, as the film demonstrates how much Dian and Bob love each other, but it is ultimately a refreshing and honest one. Given how many films feature women sacrificing ambitions and goals in order to preserve romantic relationships, Dian’s lack of compromise is a welcome change of pace.

Fossey represented as maternal

The most fascinating and complex depiction of Dian’s gender identity, however, is her portrayal as a maternal figure. Dian never has children of her own, and her interactions with children in the film are troubling. At one point, she catches a young boy found among gorilla poachers, and in an attempt to uncover information about the poachers, she has his hands tied and dresses as a witch to scare him into talking. Dian is not above torturing children to get what she wants; it would seem, therefore, that she is not particularly maternal. However, this is not entirely accurate or fair. Rather than being maternal in a traditional sense, Dian channels that energy toward the gorillas. At one point, she saves baby Pucker from capture, and she takes care of her in her home until Pucker is healthy and taken away to a zoo. In the moments when she is seen taking care of the gorillas, particularly the young ones, it is clear that there is a certain maternal sensibility to Dian that remains constant throughout all of her other personal transformations. Though it is common to see women presented as mothers and caretakers in cinema, Dian’s role as one is untraditional. It may echo common tropes, but it remains a unique facet of her life and work.

Gorillas in the Mist does not always paint Dian Fossey in a positive light. It does, however, present her in a realistic one. She’s often portrayed as stubborn, unfriendly and even abusive; these traits, however, reflect the reality in which she lived. Dian did not have time to be feminine or nice or accommodating. She was too busy focusing on her work and dedicating her life to ensure the protection and well being of the mountain gorillas. Gorillas in the Mist constantly references the usual clichés of films about women – namely, an overwhelming focus on beauty, romance and children – but rather than reaffirming them, the film counters them. Dian’s characterization proves that there is no single way in which to be a woman and that, often times, it is women who step outside of the boxes of conventional femininity who are able to create the most radical change in the world.

Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She is a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.

Horror Week 2011: Sleepaway Camp

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

(Everything that follows contains significant spoilers. Read at your discretion.)

But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.

Carrie Nelson has previously written about Precious, Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, The Social Network and Mad Men for Bitch Flicks. She is a Founder and Editor of Gender Across Borders and works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit organization in NYC. She thanks her husband, a horror aficionado, for teaching her that not all horror movies are regressive in their gender politics (even if Sleepaway Camp happens to be).

Guest Post: The Connection Between Sex and Money: Lizzie Borden’s WORKING GIRLS

Perhaps it was the unending coverage of Eliot Spitzer’s hooker shenanigans two years ago that reminded me of Lizzie Borden’s 1986 film Working Girls. I must have seen this for the first time in the late 1980s, when I was working in a video store and could rent any title for free. I avoided this one for a long time, as I thought that a film about female prostitutes wouldn’t particularly appeal to me; this was also just before hookers got Disneyfied in the form of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. But when I finally saw it, I was mesmerized. It has stayed in my mind since, though I did not actually see it again until quite recently. I’m happy to report that not only does the film hold up, but it is perhaps better in 2010 than it was in 1986.

Working Girls covers one day, late morning to evening, in a fairly upper-class New York City brothel, and is told largely through the eyes of Molly (played by the excellent Louise Smith), a Yale-educated lesbian whose African-American lover (who has a young daughter) doesn’t know what she’s doing for a living. Molly rides her bike through the streets of Manhattan after a cozy and domestic breakfast with her girlfriend and the child, and after parking her bike in one of the brothel’s rooms, dons a slinky but not slutty blue dress, applies makeup, and readies herself for the day’s work. She interrupts her colleague Gina (Marusia Zach) inserting a diaphragm; when asked why she doesn’t simply use a sponge or the pill, Gina replies, “I’m not screwing up my hormones for two shifts a week.” The work in question is depicted in a routine, definitely un-erotic fashion: the men who pay for Molly’s services are catalogues of ticks and fetishes and fantasies. One insists that Molly pretend to be blind so that he, the “doctor,” can cure her condition by taking her “virginity.” Another likes fairly standard bondage, while another gives her a wrapped package containing a beige shirt that Molly had admired on him the week before—he follows this gift by asking if he can see her “on the outside,” a request which Molly routinely turns down. The film admirably and somewhat bravely shows men with less-than-perfect bodies—in other words, normal men—and women whose breasts are not perky Playboy images, but real breasts: somewhat saggy, somewhat out of shape. The sex scenes sometimes have a startling pathos and poignancy: the men are all rather sad cases, either because they’re smarmy and arrogant, or because they’re painfully shy, inept, or so locked into their fantasies that they dare not reveal them to anyone they can’t pay. Particularly lovely is a moment where Molly coaches a very nervous guy about how to put his arm around his new girlfriend, how to kiss her, and how to know whether or not the time is right for sex. “What if she wants to have sex with me?” the man asks plaintively, and Molly’s kind and compassionate response highlights more than any other moment in the film the skill with which a prostitute makes her customers feel important—I truly can’t tell whether Molly actually likes this man or if it’s part of the act.

Far more interesting than the sex is what goes on between the sex. The brothel’s main room could be just another office: the girls have lunch, gossip, make fun of Lucy, their horrid boss (played with delirious bitchiness by Ellen McElduff), compare notes on the various “RGs” (regulars), talk about what their lives might have been and still could be. One of the girls is a college student, who has to leave her shift early, this being Thursday—she has a night class. The film’s feminist slant—the women are all strong in their own ways and have a competence and control in their work that is remarkably out of keeping with the image of prostitution as a slipshod and scattered profession—was probably something of a novelty for the mid-1980s, a time I remember of appalling backward conservatism. (Not that this time is much better, of course.) Working Girls is a time capsule in another sense: in a scene that is chilling in hindsight, a john refuses to wear a condom, and Gina informs him that this is okay, but that it will cost him extra—those were the early days, when AIDS was still a “gay disease.” But the true glory of the film is the way in which the mundane routines—again, this could be your standard office, and just as boring for its workers—are laid bare for the viewer: the procedures involving the phone, appointments (particularly whether or not the john is a “one”—one hour—or a “half”; he can “go” twice in a “one”), showers, towels, and the exchange of money. The girls are instructed to make sure that the customer is “completely comfortable”: in other words, naked, so that they’ll know he’s not a cop. Borden, who wrote the story and the screenplay, introduces a new employee, Mary (Helen Nicholas), so that Molly can show her around the house and teach her the ropes. There’s the standard pocketing of a little extra cash on the side, the standard faking of appointment lengths in the ledger, the standard smoking of pot when the boss lady’s gone. Lucy, the madam, appears midway through the film and again at the end, and is a gaudy tyrant and former prostitute herself, who is now the mistress of one of her own RGs (all of the other women in the house have slept with him too, declaring him “easy” to work with) and who yammers on incessantly about the panties she purchased that day, the ski trip she’s taking to Gstaad, and, above all, “class” and how the other girls don’t have it—all before getting taken out to be screwed by her former john at the Plaza Hotel. It’s reassuring to know that even a female pimp leaves something to be desired.

The film is very low-budget, and sounds as though it was looped in its entirety. But I find something very appealing in that mid-80s film stock in low-budget pictures—most 80s films feel too slick for my taste, and Working Girls has a tactile feel to it, a texture. It reminds me of the long conversations with my friend Brad in which we would wax rhapsodic about the glories of the graininess of 1970s film stock. Only a few films from the 80s have this feel: Working Girls is one; Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glancesand Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette are others. For want of a better phrase, this graininess, this texture, gives the viewer something to gnaw on, or something to cling to—you could slip and slide easily on most of the glitzy films of the decade. I’d actually hate to see Working Girls remastered, for the visual texture matches the subject matter. It’s a shame that Borden—who was born Linda Borden but changed her name to that of the axe-wielding figure of turn-of-the-century legend—who had directed the intense Born in Flames, about a futuristic socialist America, has vanished from the scene; after Working Girls she directed the flop Love Crimes with Sean Young, and since then has directed only a few episodes of soft-core programs like Red Shoe Diaries. American cinema needs in-your-face talent like Borden’s, at a time when films are more and more homogenized and user-friendly. Working Girls is anything but either.

Some might find the ending of Working Girls a bit predictable, but it gives the film a nice circular shape, and reinforces the film’s latent feminist intent, which is to show that these women are not stupid, not disease-ridden, not perverse. They have fallen into a profession that none of them can claim to enjoy, but one that they stay in from what might best be called a sense of inertia. “The two things I love most in life are sex and money,” says Lucy, in a rare moment of honesty. “I just never knew until much later they were connected.” Working Girls is probably the only film I’ve seen that explores that connection in a witty, sad, poignant, smart, raw, unglamorized, and surprisingly honest way.

Drew Patrick Shannon received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati, and currently teaches 19th and 20th century British literature at the College of Mount St. Joseph. He is at work on a novel and on a non-fiction book examining the diary of Virginia Woolf. A previous version of this post appeared on his blog, atleswoolf.