We so often view films through the Male Gaze with camera shots that are more interested in capturing the way a woman’s body looks under the guise of “sex sells” that it’s become somewhat of the norm. While ‘Working Girl’ is appreciative of the beauty between Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith, it employs a “female gaze” so to speak with Harrison Ford.
In any other film (9/10 times at least) just reading the synopsis of this movie would have greatly aggravated me and, to be frank, still did a little. There aren’t many films about women competing that paint the characters in question as anything more than shrewd, conniving and petty. Working Girl, much to my delight, doesn’t do that. Or, at least, it isn’t the main character’s objective. Hers is to simply find success and prove to herself and others that she has the talents and the skills to be more than what meets the mind.
The she in question is Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), who lands a job as a secretary at a big company with a powerful woman, Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) as her boss. At the start Tess is utterly enamored with Katherine, seeing her as a woman to look up to and admire, someone who has already achieved what she’s seeking and, in another film, I would have loved to see a buddy work comedy between the two, because who doesn’t want to be friends with Weaver? Of course, this isn’t to be because movies don’t like it when women are friends and instead, Katherine steals ones of Tess’s ideas and passes them as her own, leading Tess down a path of claiming her agency as a business woman looking to make a mark in the working world. What’s interesting is to see that despite her mounting disdain towards Katharine, Tess still adopts her mannerisms of how she operated in a work environment from the way she dresses and cuts her hair, playing a part to imbue herself with confidence she’s not sure she has yet. The difference is she’s coming at the role with a sense of selflessness and ambition, opposed to Katharine’s selfish nature.
Part of this is impacted by the actresses performances in the roles. Griffith who had been known for much more flightier characters brings a warm sense of empathy to Tess and a thread of naturalism as she too was undervalued as a performer until this Mike Nichols film gave her a bigger break out chance. Weaver, meanwhile, had at this point already played one of cinema’s greatest badasses in Ridley Scott’s Alien as Ripley, and her screen presence was one that captured attention; Weaver to this day is effortlessly enigmatic and it’s easy to understand why someone — real or fictional — would want to follow in her footsteps.
The contrast is one of the stronger aspects of the film which, to its benefit, never pits the characters against one another due to petty or contrived reasons. Tess is never aiming to purely undermine Katharine or trying to steal her position, but rather using Katharine’s absence to pursue her own career, even if it’s through dubious means.
The added element that solidifies the difference between Working Girl and other workplace dramedies — something that more fully flips the script?
Enter Jack Trainer.
A film that understands Harrison Ford’s beauty (and, frankly, exploits it) and treats it as such is a winner in my book automatically (Raiders of the Lost Ark — hello) and late 80’s Ford was on a roll as it is in taking more challenging work with some of cinema’s greatest talents, Mike Nichols being a wonderful addition to that list. While he certainly isn’t played strictly for eye candy (that would be something) he is, in a way, played a “prize” between the two women while also having his own role to play. We so often view films through the Male Gaze with camera shots that are more interested in capturing the way a woman’s body looks under the guise of “sex sells” that it’s become somewhat of the norm. While Working Girl is appreciative of the beauty between Weaver and Griffith, it employs a “female gaze” so to speak with Ford. So much so that there’s a scene that goes to great lengths to express this as he changes in his office and women looking in through the window catcall and whistle.
Perhaps it’s not enough to turn convention on its head, but it’s a welcome change of pace.
Also a change of pace is the fact that by the end of the film, Katharine and Tess aren’t fighting over Jack. They’re fighting over their place in the working world and, to narrow it down to a single moment, they’re fighting over a great idea that Tess had, one Katharine wishes she could have come up with and resents Tess for.
I wouldn’t call Working Girl a feminist call to arms and this is largely due to how broadly Katherine’s character is painted towards the end of the film. At the start she’s written to be calculated, sure, but not the caricature that she becomes halfway through and if she’s distrustful of other employees there’s sense to that too, considering she’s found herself in a sea of suits, in a position of power that’s so at odds with what society had dictated she be. There’s reason to her hostility even but then, rather than exploring her further to make the dynamics between she and Tess more intriguing, the film takes the rather easier route and lets Katharine remain in the two dimensional realm with Weaver doing everything in her might to make her into something more.
Add to that the lack of diversity and there was definitely room to grow — a lot of room.
Writer Kevin Wade and director Mike Nichols crafted a film that is both celebratory of the female experience while also skewering the system that placed them in gendered boxes in the first place. The biggest success of the film isn’t the romance or the drama, but the implications of what lead the characters to their positions in the first place. Katharine fought for the position she has and Tess fought to catch up and achieve the same goal. It’s imperfect, but ambitious, just like its leading ladies.
The heroic journey of Short Round is the catalyst for both Willie’s and Indy’s own growth and transcendence, as Willie becomes proactive and Indy becomes responsible.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the coolest kids’ movie ever made about severe child abuse. Just as Roald Dahl’s Matilda does for daughters and mothers, so The Temple of Doom affirms that the good father must empower his son, and defends the child’s right to reject and resist abusive behavior. Critics who strive to dismiss the film as the original trilogy’s “weakest” often snark about the allegedly annoying chirpiness of Ke Huy Quan’s heartfelt performance. I suspect they are actually uncomfortable that Spielberg’s film narratively centers Short Round as its protagonist, while casually assuming that an adult audience identify with him. From his hero-worship of Indy to his glee at the film’s thrill rides, Short Round’s emotional responses cue our own, including an assumed desire to break up kissing couples and see squealing girls get giant millipedes down the back of their necks.
The film embodies the sensibility of a twelve-year-old boy, wholeheartedly and without ironic distance. The mighty Indiana Jones himself is regularly “fridged,” disempowered by the mind-controlling Black Blood of Kali Ma (Mother Kali) and voodoo dolls, to further Short Round’s heroic journey. As much as Spielberg’sE.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, his Temple of Doom showcases the director’s extraordinary empathy for a young boy’s worldview, though it conjures a nightmare of parental abuse rather than E.T.‘s fantasy playmate, leading to accusations that the film is “too dark”. Validating a child’s experiences by confronting the terror of abusive parents is apparently less acceptable than Nazi torturers to mainstream (adult) viewers. Just as audiences can only fully appreciate Spielberg’s film by identifying wholeheartedly with Short Round, so Indy must learn to identify with the child’s perspective to grow into the role of good father, from careless and selfish beginnings. His newfound identification is showcased when begged to flee the hellish Thuggee lair. Harrison Ford turns, jaw set in iconic resolution, and growls “right! All of us” before battling for the cathartic liberation of every last one of the film’s abused children. Coolest. Dad. Ever.
“Left Tunnel, Indy!” – good father. Crap navigator.
Because Short Round is positioned as the protagonist of the film in terms of agency, I don’t read it as a conventional White Savior narrative. Indy’s swaggering Fedora the Explorer is repeatedly punished for assuming he knows better than the film’s Asian boys. As Short Round puts it, with a frustration familiar to any child, “I keep telling you, you listen to me more, you live longer!” Interestingly, the Prime Minister of Pangkot explicitly accuses British colonials of viewing Indians as children, while the Thuggee appropriate the village’s power source and indoctrinate their children like nightmare colonizer-fathers (yes, Indians are the film’s primary representatives of Patriarcho-colonialism. “Projection” has many cinematic meanings). The film’s paternalist Brits monitor and stifle, but fail to figure out what’s really going on until it’s too late. Only the holy fire of Short Round’s torch, that awakens Indy as Indy’s fiery wrath awakens the Sankara stones, can defeat the Thuggee menace.
Where British colonizers infantilize adults, Indiana Jones lets children drive (a powerful metaphor, if inadvisable from a vehicular manslaughter standpoint). The supernatural power of the stones confirms that Indiana Jones operates in a syncretic universe, in which the divine can manifest equally as Shiva or Jehovah, marking no culture as inherently superior. However, the failure of The Last Crusadeto even mention Short Round’s fate, in its meditations on the meaning of fatherhood, reinforces the vilest stereotypes of interracial adoptees as disposable rent-a-kids. Indian culture is also caricatured and distorted by the film, even granted the disturbing true history of the Thuggee death cult. Where in Hinduism the god Shiva and goddess Kali are consorts, each representing forces of combined destruction and creation, Spielberg and Lucas create a simplistic opposition between a heroic Shiva and an evil Kali.
The historical Thuggee did kill in Kali’s name, indoctrinating young boys into their cult, but did not target women. The film’s plot, with Indy possessed by his skull-faced mother goddess and compelled to destroy his blonde love interest, therefore resembles a Bollywood reimagining of Hitchcock’s Psycho more than Hinduism. Spielberg’s Thuggee are a cult that brutally enslave children, both boys and girls. The boys are terrified that their puberty will force them to become mindless abusers themselves: “will become like them. Will be alive, but like a nightmare. You drink blood, you not wake up from nightmare”. We see no adult women among the Thuggee which, along with the attempted sacrifice of Willie, forces us to conclude that the enslaved girls have their hearts torn out and are fed to the flames when they hit puberty. The film’s vision of the Thuggee is thus a nightmare caricature of patriarchy: consuming women heart first, enslaving children and turning terrified boys into inevitable replicas of their abusive fathers, for fear of sharing the sacrificial woman’s fate (“projection” has oh so many cinematic meanings). How appropriate, then, that the surrogate family at the film’s heart – Indy, Willie and Short Round – caricature traditional gender roles. Indy is an overtly macho leader who lusts after “fortune and glory”; Willie is a squeamish, passive beauty who seeks to control violent men with sex appeal; Short Round is a colonized kid who models his whole identity on his father-figure. When Indy is forced to drink the Kool-Aid of Kali Ma, this substance abuse terrifyingly alters his personality, becoming a violent and unloving nightmare father. It is up to Short Round to break this cycle and fight back (dun-ta-dun-tah, dun-ta-daaah!)
Kate Capshaw as Willie, facing the fiery pits of patriarchy’s Mommy-goddess issues
Willie is a perfect deconstruction of the myth of female sexual power, and Kate Capshaw plays her with tongue firmly in cheek. She attempts to secure her position in Shanghai by her sexual power over an influential mob boss, but he hardly cares if she dies. She tries to bolster her shaky self-worth by accusing Indy of being unable to take his eyes off her, only to be humiliated as he pointedly pulls his fedora over those eyes and naps. Further outraged as Indy seems more interested in feeling up a statue than in making love to her, the objectified Willie is reduced to being farcically jealous of a literal object. After Indy becomes evil through drinking the Black Blood of Kali Ma (what is it with women and their wicked bleeding, amirite?), Willie attempts to cure him using traditionally female strategies of appeasing, pleading and crying, that are shown to be totally ineffective. The audience is lured into a contemptuous “girls are stoopid” view of Willie, that reflects the typical psychology of children in abusive families, who cope with their own terrifying helplessness by identifying with the seeming strength of the abuser, and redirecting their angry frustration at the apparently weaker, appeasing parent. If you are one of the many feminists who hate Willie, ask why you intensely dislike a woman who struggles to secure her safety nonviolently, and is out of her depth in a situation where we would be likewise. Battling to be more than some man’s Willie, Willie shows great guts, becoming a partner in adventure who courageously fights for Short Round, braving hideous bugs to free him and forcefully stamping on the fingers of the villainous Mola Ram as he climbs to get them. Willie even develops a sense of humor about being hosed by Short Round’s elephant. Coolest. Mom. Ever.
Of course, there are problems with this model. The Indiana Jones trilogy follows the usual pattern of male-authored feminist empowerment, in proposing that women can become equal to men by proving that they can be masculine, with no self-scrutiny or uncomfortable adjustments necessary in the underlying ideology of male domination. Insecurity over female sexuality pervades these representations. If a woman tries to get her way using sexual power, like Kate Capshaw’s Willie, she is ruthlessly mocked. If she succeeds in getting her way using sexual power, like Alison Doody’s Elsa of The Last Crusade, she is dropped screaming into a bottomless abyss. Only Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood, of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a truly Cool Girl, because she can drink more than men, doesn’t dress too sexy and has no problem with violence. By contrast, many Asian philosophies teach that our full humanity is a balance between the forces of shiva and shakti, yin and yang. To impose a rigid gender binary, society must code shiva/yang as exclusively male, and shakti/yin as exclusively female. Each of these exclusions, enforced by strict gender policing, serves to suppress full human potential. Yet, just as Spielberg and Lucas reject the positive potential of shakti in their distortion of Hinduism, so they reject the positive potential of femininity in their distortion of women. Through Cool Girls like Marion Ravenwood, the trilogy accepts that the female is not necessarily feminine, but does nothing to question the demonization of femininity itself.
“Kali Ma Shakti De!” – Mola Ram summons his feminine side
As for the boy-child, Short Round is repeatedly shown humorously mirroring Indy, underlining his hero worship, which is also expressed in his contempt for Willie: “you call him Dr. Jones, doll!” Trapped in the nightmarish Thuggee model, however, in which Indy has become corrupted into a violent Thug, Short Round breaks his identification with him and, with tears in his eyes, symbolically rejects him by burning him, before fighting to save mother-figure Willie from the sacrificial pit. Spielberg’s Temple of Doom resembles a Euro-American vision of hell, that Short Round must escape by braving its fires and learning to wield them himself. The abused child’s empowerment fantasy allows Short Round to locate the voodoo doll that is controlling his parent, and remove the pin, so that Indy can be magically admirable again. Indy’s own fury, at being manipulated into a mindless slave of the wicked Temple of Patriarcho-colonialism, can then awaken Shiva’s righteous flame and destroy Mola Ram’s arch-abuser. Only through such painful awakening, not appeasement, can the cycle be broken and the nightmare escaped.
The heroic journey of Short Round is the catalyst for both Willie’s and Indy’s own growth and transcendence, as Willie becomes proactive and Indy becomes responsible. Ultimately, Indy renounces “fortune and glory” in favor of giving back to the community. A reconciliation with feminine values, after all? Since community values are represented by Shiva’s Penis… perhaps not. By breaking his chains and rejecting the abusive father, it is Short Round who single-handedly turns the film around. If Ke Huy Quan doesn’t break your heart as he croaks “I love you! Wake up, Indy!” before swinging that torch, you may need to check your pulse. Annoying? Bah! Give that kid an Oscar.
Short Round and the Father Figure of Doom
The Indiana Jones trilogy commands a rabid devotion that none of its many imitators can match, because its thrill rides cover a masculine psychological journey of archetypal power. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy must defeat his shadow self in Belloq, and reconcile with his female counterpart in Marion, by embracing humility and accepting his limits. In The Temple of Doom, he must accept the responsibilities of the father and confront his fear of becoming the abusive father. Finally, in The Last Crusade, Indy must forgive his own father, and consciously walk in the footsteps of his father’s teaching. The films have less to offer female audiences: a promise of equality through rejecting femininity, and an opportunity to overidentify with an Asian boy. But societies are defined by the freedom and dignity granted to their most vulnerable members. By unabashedly celebrating the empowerment of children, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom becomes a manifesto for the liberation of Shorties everywhere. Wake the hell up, Indy.
dun-dah-dun-dah, dun-da-daaaaah!
Brigit McCone has a lingering fondness for fedoras, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and pretending The Crystal Skull never happened.
‘Working Girl’ is a product of its time, when feminism meant a white lady achieving all the power and success normally reserved for white men. And what’s worse, the antifeminist backlash of the 1980s is paradoxically woven throughout. See, Tess isn’t like the other women who’ve made it in business, she’s a “real woman.”
Is there a German word for the discomfort of an adult re-watching something they loved as a child and harshly realizing its flaws?
I felt that watching Working Girl last night. This movie was MY JAM in my youth, paving the way for a lifetime of having “Let the River Run” stuck in my head every time I’m called upon to wear “work clothes” (for someone who writes for the Internet and does comedy, this is not often). My husband, who had never seen it, kept saying “I can see why Baby Robin loved this.” I mean, it’s a feminist twist on Pygmalion where the girl not only remolds HERSELF but chooses high-powered businesslady as her new form. A high-powered businesslady who wears pretty dresses. And gets to screw Harrison Ford. Growing up, Working Girl was my fairytale of choice.
But now, as a grown-up with years of feminist training, I see that Working Girl is essentially White Feminism: The Movie. Chantelle Monique’s previous Bitch Flicks piece on Working Girl hits the nail on the head: “Even though Working Girl seems like a harmless romantic drama, its female representation is firmly rooted in classism and sexism.”
Our hero, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith, in one of those hypercharismatic undeniably star-making performances), pulls herself up from her working class Staten Island roots to make it in the “man’s world” of business (ambiguous movie-world business, where words like “mergers and acquisitions” and “arbitrage” are thrown around in front of stock tickers and computer monitors but the actual work being done is never clearly illustrated). Working Girl is a product of its time, when feminism meant a white lady achieving all the power and success normally reserved for white men.
And what’s worse, the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s is paradoxically woven throughout. See, Tess isn’t like the other women who’ve made it in business, she’s a “real woman.” When love interest Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) first spots her at a corporate mixer where she’s decked out in a sparkly black cocktail dress, he tells her, “You’re the only woman I’ve seen at one of these things who dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman.” Uninhibited by valium and tequila, Tess responds, “I have a head for business and a bod for sin.” It isn’t Tess’s particular brand of lipstick feminism that bothers me so much as it is the putting down of other women who’ve eschewed standards of feminine beauty and sex appeal. It’s another aspect of Working Girl claiming progressivism while reinforcing the status quo.
Tess’s makeover into Business Barbie also involves a lot of unfortunate class issues. She chops off her gloriously teased 80s mullet (“If you want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair”), drops her gaudy costume jewelry, and stops wearing sneakers during her commute. Tess’s transformation comes about while she’s Single White Femaling her high class Wellesley grad boss Katherine (Sigourney Weaver), whose job she’s fraudulently taken on while Katherine recuperates from a skiing accident. Tess also borrows the absent Katherine’s clothes, deluxe apartment, and we eventually find out, boyfriend. She even practices imitating Katherine’s upper class accent while listening to her dictation. Madeover Tess is contrasted against her best friend, Cyn (Joan Cusack), and the rest of the secretarial pool, who keep their teased hair and peacock eyeshadow. Once again, we’re meant to admire Tess for not being like the other girls, advancing the sexist trope of the Exceptional Woman.
Tess is also portrayed as superior to her boss, Katherine, who becomes the villain of the piece by passing off one of Tess’s ideas as her own. This deception makes Katherine a cutthroat bitch who will do anything to get ahead. Meanwhile, the ethics of Tess passing off Katherine’s entire LIFE as her own are barely questioned. And Tess’s questionable moves to get ahead (notably, crashing a wedding to get face time with a business prospect) are just spunk and moxie.
So what makes Katherine the bad guy? Is it her privilege? Then why is Tess celebrated for shedding her working class trappings? Is it Katherine’s ego? How does a purportedly feminist movie justify punishing a woman for being proud of what she’s accomplished? Or is it simply that pitting women against each other is more palatable to Hollywood? Katherine first presents herself as a mentor, and wouldn’t that have been a better feminist message? (This compares unfavorably to another one of my favorite lady-frauds-her-way-to-the-top-of-the-corporate-ladder movies, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, where Joanna Cassidy’s Rose supports Christina Applegate’s secretly teenage assistant from start to finish.)
This piece has pained me to write. I can’t quite let go of my love for Working Girl, even though the problems with its purported feminism are now abundantly clear to me. I guess it will just have to be another one of my problematic faves.
Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who would totally wear sneakers on her commute to an office job if she had one (potential employers take note!).
Because Katharine steals Tess’s idea, we automatically pull for Tess, the lower-class underdog; consequently, we are forced to view Katharine, the upper-class princess, as the demonized, selfish boss, determined to achieve success no matter what. Hurt, yet motivated to take control of her career, Tess is now forced to lie in order to have her voice heard. This causes her to be pitted against a boss who has clearly abused her power. Even though ‘Working Girl’ seems like a harmless, romantic drama, its female representation is firmly rooted in classism and sexism.
Mike Nichols’ Working Girl (1988) is centered on Tess McGill, played by Melanie Griffith, who is a Staten Island girl looking to make her way up the Manhattan corporate ladder. Although she has big hair, flashy make-up and gaudy jewelry, she’s soft-spoken, ambitious and smart. She may take the ferry into the city but she has dreams of being more than what people give her credit for. She’s a secretary who earned her night school degree with honors and feels she can “do a job” beyond fetching people coffee. More than anything, Tess is looking for her big break.
Enter her new boss, Katharine Parker, played by Sigourney Weaver. Katharine is everything Tess wants to be — she’s well-spoken, classy and successful. She looks like money and speaks with confidence and assurance. Although slightly intimidated by Katharine, Tess ultimately sees this pairing as her opportunity to finally get her career on track. Her hopes are strengthened more when Katharine tells her that their relationship is a “two way street” and empowers Tess to take control of her career.
Motivated by her good fortune, Tess shares one of her ideas with Katharine; the idea is fresh, and intuitive. Katharine tells her that she’ll look over her notes to see if the idea has potential. This is the opportunity Tess has been waiting for. She gushes to her boyfriend, played by Alec Baldwin, that Katharine takes her seriously and that she doesn’t have to endure the skirt chasing that comes with having a male boss. Working Girl gives us hope that Tess will finally get a chance to prove herself in the cutthroat corporate world. In addition, her boss is a woman—this means, she is educated, ambitious and from what we can tell, willing to help a fellow woman find success in a man’s world. This is a start to positive representation of women in the workplace—while from two different worlds, both are educated and determined to work hard to get what they want.
A freak skiing accident leaves Katharine in the hospital and unable to come into work. She asks Tess to take care her personal business, sending her to her home to handle a number of responsibilities. While perusing Katharine’s fancy living situation, Tess discovers a recorded memo from Katharine that explicitly states she seeks to pursue Tess’s idea without her, ultimately passing it off as her own. Heartbroken at her betrayal, Tess goes home early only to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman. With nowhere to go, Tess flees to Katharine’s home and after some soul searching, decides to exact her revenge.
This is where the movie shifts its direction in terms of female representation; what could be an opportunity to illustrate a harmonious relationship between two women in the workplace, instead does the opposite. Because Katharine steals Tess’s idea, we automatically pull for Tess, the lower-class underdog; consequently, we are forced to view Katharine, the upper-class princess, as the demonized, selfish boss, determined to achieve success no matter what. Hurt, yet motivated to take control of her career, Tess is now forced to lie in order to have her voice heard. This causes her to be pitted against a boss who has clearly abused her power. Even though Working Girl seems like a harmless, romantic drama, its female representation is firmly rooted in classism and sexism.
Tess finds herself in a difficult situation — she wants to move up the corporate ladder but no one takes her seriously because she’s a secretary. After discovering Katharine’s plan to hijack her idea, Tess sets up an appointment with Jack Trainer, played by Harrison Ford; she needs Jack’s help with making her idea a reality. With Katharine out of town, Tess has an opportunity to make a name for herself but before this can happen, she must refine her image. Insert the Hollywood makeover; Tess and her best friend Cyn, played by Joan Cusack, sit in Katharine’s bathroom—Tess with a beauty magazine and Cyn with a pair of scissors. “You sure you wanna do this?” Cyn asks, holding a piece of Tess’ hair. “You wanna be taken seriously, you need serious hair,” she replies.
Audiences are used to seeing makeover scenes where the ugly duckling emerges as a swan but this particular scene holds more meaning. Tess is the lower-class underdog; she has a heavy accent and her hair is teased to the ceiling. Instead of embracing her roots, she’s forced to leave her identity behind for corporate acceptance. It makes sense that she does this; unfortunately, by wearing Katharine’s clothes, cutting her hair and altering her dialect, the film manages to comment on which class has more power. If she needs serious hair to be taken seriously, then what kind of hair does she have before the makeover? As her evolution progresses it’s clear she’s trying to emulate Katharine who represents the upper-class princess, and ultimate model of success. In a classist society, this is an example of the upper-class being taken more seriously, having more power, and garnering the most respect.
Tess’s plan to thwart Katharine demonstrates the notion that women don’t belong in management. Women in power are seen as ruthless, am-bitch-ous and emotional. It’s this characterization that affects most women in power, pigeonholing them and undermining their success. This stereotype is evident in Working Girl; Katharine is a woman who in the beginning of the film is portrayed as focused, strong and willing to assist a female co-worker with her career. Unfortunately, as her character develops, it’s discovered that she’s not as honest as she seems. Because Katharine steals her subordinate’s idea, we now have to question her career veracity. Has she stolen other co-workers’ ideas in order to further her career? Tess went to Katharine because she was her boss; she respected her opinion and ultimately her position of power. By stealing Tess’s idea, Katharine abuses this power; her actions reinforce the stereotype that women are unable to handle management positions.
While the film relies on sexist tropes in order to create an antagonist for Tess, one has to wonder, what if Katharine was a man? Would a man have even respected Tess enough to listen to her? This creates a difficult position for Working Girl; one can argue that a man would not have listened to Tess; therefore, there wouldn’t be a storyline worth pursuing. They had to make Katharine a woman but by doing so, they portrayed her as conniving, devious and incapable, thus harming the female image.
Tess’s plan is under way; no one suspects she’s a secretary posing as management. Jack’s on board and everything is going well, including the fact that there is a connection between the two. But like most movies, all good things must come to an end. With the deal almost solidified and Jack and Tess clearly in love, she’s one step away from proving her worth. Not to be foiled, Katharine shows up at the meeting and blows Tess’s cover. In a corporate “cat fight” Katharine belittles Tess, makes her out to be crazy and steals her place at the meeting table. All is not lost for Tess, however. Days after the meeting, she runs into Jack, Katharine, and the group of men involved in the deal she put together. With Jack’s help, she’s able to prove to the CEO that it was her idea all along, telling him, “You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you’re trying to get there. And if you’re someone like me, you can’t get there without bending the rules.” Katharine makes one last desperate attempt to prove the idea was hers but everything crumbles around her.
The lower-class underdog manages to beat the woman who has everything. What’s interesting to note is that both women had to lie/cheat in order to achieve their goals. Katharine tried to cheat by stealing Tess’s idea and Tess had to “bend the rules” in order to have her voice heard. While this seems innocent, the film argues that women aren’t capable enough to get ahead on their own—that ultimately they must rely on lying or cheating in order to climb the corporate ladder and find success.
Working Girl is one of my favorite romantic dramas; unfortunately, it took a couple viewings in order to question its female representation in the workplace. Even though these images seem harmless, upon further investigation, they aren’t. Being able to recognize and question these images encourages viewers to challenge their line of thinking and perhaps even write alternative perspectives that can empower and strengthen the female image.
Chantell Monique is a Creative Writing instructor and screenwriter, living in Los Angeles. She holds a MA in English from Indiana University, South Bend. She’s a Black Girl Nerd who’s addicted to Harry Potter, Netflix and anything pertaining to social justice, and female representation in film and television. Twitter: @31pottergirl
