Jane Fonda – Bitch Flicks

‘Grace and Frankie’ and the Binary of Bisexual Erasure and Representation

What makes it even more exciting to me, as a queer woman, is that not only are we being treated to these stories of our elders but that queerness is acknowledged and exists amongst older people in this television series. … My one bone to pick with ‘Grace and Frankie,’ for all of my true and deep love, is the decision to make Sol and Robert come out as being gay after 40 years of consummated, loving marriage to their wives. Surely, there was a possibility they were in fact bisexual?

This guest post written by Leena van Deventer appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Advancing women’s representation in film and television is without a doubt a noble cause, as is improving the representation of many different marginalized groups. Our media should reflect the community the story is about, and our communities are full of people of different genders, races, ages, sizes, and sexual orientations. Failure to do so can contribute to the greater erasure, dehumanization, and intentional ignorance of a marginalized group’s existence, which can have devastating effects on marginalized folks in our society.

Cheers can be heard all through the internet every time a new movie is announced with a strong female character as the lead role. But those roles have changed over the last 20 or so years, and if we’re concerned with raising a generation of girls readying themselves for the coming feminist revolution, we need to consider whether we’re doing them a disservice by holding up this combat and conflict-driven Lone Wolf Badass as Finally The Female Character That Will Deliver Us From Evil and Seize the Means of Production While Looking Fabulous.

When I look back at the movies I held dear as a teen (no judgment okay), I’m reminded of The Craft, Thelma and Louise, Sister Act (1 & 2), A League of Their Own, Now and Then, or Steel Magnolias. A common thread through all of these stories was that of women’s friendship. These women knew they would live and die for each other; they knew they were better off together than alone. This has probably subconsciously affected my feminist practice, and influenced how much Molly Lambert’s article, “Can’t Be Tamed: A Manifesto,” resonated with me on a molecular level. It’s a tool of the patriarchy to convince women that women are their own worst enemies and can’t get along; it’s a radical act to actively push against that and love harder than you ever have before.

Imagine how much more Hermione Granger could have achieved if she had a Thelma to her Louise? A smart or brave or rough best friend who would do anything for her? What about Katniss Everdeen or Bella from Twilight? Who would they spend Galentine’s Day with? Who would die to protect her? While it’s inspiring to see badass women, like Rey, Furiosa, or possibly even a new Rocketeer (which is exciting as the sequel will star a Black woman), it’s easy to see the narrative being easily hijacked from women’s collective advancement to one of insular capitalist bootstrapping, a narrative which broadly prioritizes men (and stereotypically masculine qualities) over women. We shouldn’t be leaving a trail of bodies behind us, we should be amassing an army along the way.

The modern tale of female friendship I was looking for popped up in an unexpected place, to minimal fanfare, and has now officially taken up residence in a permanently rent-controlled corner of my heart. Netflix’s Grace and Frankie is a tale of female friendship and strength, with season two recently dropping and a third season on its way. It’s a tale of two septuagenarian women being bound together by adversity to find the good in each other and potentially resign to the fact that they may be the last great loves of their lives.

The first season introduced the main characters: Robert and Grace Hanson (played by Martin Sheen and Jane Fonda), and Sol and Frankie Bergstein (played by Sam Waterson and Lily Tomlin). These couples were brought together by Sol and Robert working together as partners in their law firm, and as such, both families spent a lot of time together over their 40 years of marriage, including their now adult children, who all have cousin-esque relationships with each other for the most part. They bought a shared beach house, which after Sol and Robert come clean that they have in fact been in love with each other for the last half of their marriages, becomes the primary residence of the now-displaced wives, Grace and Frankie.

Season one had many saccharine moments that I have no doubt turned a lot of people off continuing to watch, but Season two doesn’t make that same mistake. It’s sharper, wittier, and we get to see more of what makes these women tick. They know each other’s routines and quirks now, after living together for so long, and they’ve grown more fond of each other. What was once a one-dimensional joke about a control freak, push-your-feelings-down, Type A woman living with a pot-smoking, tie-dye wearing, hippie (Ho ho! The odd couple! What hijinks will ensue?) has now become less about how different the two women are and more about how they can parlay their respective strengths and weaknesses into finding a way to be there for each other no matter what.

Grace and Frankie understand the importance of banding together, and we see this in the episode where Grace catches up with some snooty country club friends after not being in contact since the break-up. The women scoff at what it must be like to live with a strange eccentric like Frankie, and Grace reminds them that she’s the only person who understands what this situation feels like, and the only person who reached out to help her, before telling them they’re assholes and leaving to go hang out with Frankie instead. The second season is underscored by a commitment between these two women; they will be there for each other to the end.

It’s thrilling for me to experience the stories of these women. As a 31-year-old woman, I cannot possibly comprehend what it would be like to lose a friend I’d loved deeply for 40 years. I was yelping and hooting and hollering at the closing scene, as Grace and Frankie walk in slow motion out of the house, onward to their new sex-toy-making empire that markets vibrators to older women (dishwasher-safe with large font instructions and comfortable grips to compensate for arthritis). We don’t hear these stories about older people enough.

What makes it even more exciting to me, as a queer woman, is that not only are we being treated to these stories of our elders but that queerness is acknowledged and exists amongst older people in this television series. Homophobia is so often linked with being old-fashioned; more prolific in previous generations. Queer stories of our elders are crucially important to our history, a sentiment further impressed upon me at the recent screening of Winter and Westbeth, a stunning and uplifting documentary about queer older people and the rich, full lives they led as artists in public housing in New York’s West Village. We need more older characters on-screen, especially LGBTQ people and people of color.

While we may be coming in leaps and bounds in terms of LGBTQ representation, I fear we still have a long way to go for equal acceptance for the “B” (and definitely the “T”) portions of that acronym. My one bone to pick with Grace and Frankie, for all of my true and deep love, is the decision to make Sol and Robert come out as being gay after 40 years of consummated, loving marriage to their wives. Surely, there was a possibility they were in fact bisexual? Was it because gay is easier for audiences to understand than “those confusing bisexuals”? Bisexual erasure frequently occurs in media and is common even within our own activist circles. People (even prominent LGBTQ activists) make biphobic comments about how bisexual teens are just confused; or bi people are promiscuous, greedy, and can’t be monogamous; or the very tired quip, “Bisexuality is just a truck stop on the road to gay,” as if bisexuality doesn’t exist and people must choose. So I can understand how difficult it can be for us who are bisexual to have some issues with representation when we struggle with representation in our very own dedicated spaces.

With a lack of bisexual characters in film and television and damaging tropes about bi people in media, it would have been great to see two bi men in Grace and Frankie, especially two older men. Bi men characters and queer characters who are older are both rarely depicted in film and television.

Because I do love the show so much, perhaps I would like to imagine the decision to make Sol and Robert gay as opposed to bisexual is because of the history of the (undeserving, cruel) association between bisexual people and infidelity, given that the men in this show engaged in a 20-year affair with each other. Perhaps co-creators Marta Kauffman (who has absolutely managed to inject more heart into this show than previous works such as Friends) and Howard J. Morris wanted to avoid contributing to that damaging stereotype? But that’s probably being too kind.

We have a long way to go with representation of all kinds: race, gender, age, size, disability, sexuality. We can get better at advancing this cause by being critical of the things we love. We can write as many strong female characters as we like in the hopes it will advance feminism, but a lone wolf isn’t going to get much done. We also need more female characters who aren’t just young, cis, straight, white women. We need to inspire girls by showing them inclusive representation and the power of women’s friendship, and we need to show them that those women can be of any age, and that strength isn’t always about picking up a bow or aiming the crosshairs at the bad guys. Sometimes it’s about holding your best friend’s hand while you do something scary.

Leena van Deventer is a game developer, writer, and educator from Melbourne, Australia. She has taught interactive storytelling at RMIT and Swinburne Universities and is co-author of Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames with Dan Golding for Affirm Press. You can find her on Twitter @LeenaVanD.

‘Barbarella’ and the “Savagery” of Futuristic Sexual Politics

One version of Barbarella draws her as a progressive, sex-positive, and role model-worthy character that saves the universe. … Barbarella the character might be the worst example of a superheroine by many of our contemporary expectations for a female lead not least because of the ambiguous dynamics of her (sexual) agency. … ‘Barbarella’ as a film remains a superheroine movie with a mission: save the future of sexual politics.

This guest post written by Olga Tchepikova appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Oh Barbarella Psychedella… notorious campy Queen of the Galaxy and a retro sci-fi enthusiast’s dream come true. In my mind, she exists in two distinct versions: One — the more permanent one that I find to be true for the longest time between refreshing my memory — draws her as a progressive, sex-positive, and role model-worthy character that saves the universe. The other — which I become aware of every time I refresh my memory — reminds me that although Barbarella may be at the center of every scene during her mission she is not always the catalyst of action. Based on this conflict, I am hesitant to call Barbarella a superheroine. However, I think it is valid to label Barbarella a superheroine movie. But what exactly is the difference?

Barbarella has been praised for parodying the image of a hyper-sexualized astronaut woman especially with regard to the sexist organization of space travel programs in the 1960s and often classified as a feminist film for its display of a sexually active female protagonist. Lisa Parks wrote a wonderful essay on space programs and Barbarella in the book Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s (1999) edited by Hillary Radner and Moya Luckett. Indeed, the heroism we find in this movie seems inevitably bound to a fixation on sex. But precisely because the film’s iconography so strongly predicates Barbarella as intergalactic sex kitten, it is important to acknowledge that contrary to the popularized image of her promiscuous pursuit, she almost never actively seeks out sexual partners. Rather, she responds to other people’s sexual desire for her. But instead of dwelling on questions about erotic agency, I would like to point out that the sexual heroism we might associate with Barbarella is strongly contingent on the futuristic setting of the story — a setting we are completely detached from, but cannot help but read through our internalized socio-cultural conventions regarding sexuality. Consequently, in the story’s terrain, it is especially intriguing that sex as we know it has become irrelevant, or — in the characters’ own words — even “savage.”

In Barbarella’s version of the future ‘making love,’ or that which we refer to as romantic physical intimacy, does not exist anymore. “Love” may be the official motto of the Republic of the Earth, but there is no sex in it. In fact, the sexual future we see here is a neoliberal dystopia. Sex has been deemed too distracting — a threat to maximum efficiency. With the help of science, people in the 41st century take pills and touch hands for one minute “until full rapport is achieved.” For the best possible effect, their “psychocardiograms” must align. And to further emphasize the routine of this practice, we find out that only the poorest of the populace — the ones who cannot afford pills and psychocardiogram readings — have sex in the form of ‘genital intercourse with their clothes off.’

In a future shaped by such conventions, Barbarella is requested to find Durand Durand who is, as it turns out later, a scientist-turned-megalomaniac that wants to take over the universe. Her search leads to Sogo (the future’s abbreviated version of Sodom and Gomorrah) — a city where the “primitive state of neurotic irresponsibility” (Barbarella’s words) is alive and well. In Sogo, pleasure and death are the two main forces in action, making it an exceptional location in the pacified, hyper-scientific universe of 4000+ AD. And it is here that we realize that the “neurotic irresponsibilities” Barbarella is worried about strongly resemble the 1960s fantasies of counter-cultural hedonism and excess. Only in Barbarella’s era, their bad reputation is grounded in the disturbance of efficiency, not a lack of moral conventions.

Certainly, Barbarella’s main agenda is not to lay out the path our society might be taking in the coming centuries. It is a campy sci-fi film after all. But can we really fully dismiss that this could be our future? One where there is, as a rule, no sex in love and no love in sex?

There are plenty of ways in which sexuality (and love, for that matter) has been and continues to be regulated for the sake of a random status quo maintained through directed shaming and punishment. Aside from the long tradition of monitoring and restricting women’s physical, mental, and emotional faculties, ‘those in charge’ have also been persistently harassing individuals and communities displaying non-(hetero)normative desires and identities. And this rigid tenaciousness causes the personal to remain political until further notice, or at least until we live in a time like Barbarella’s day and age — where you don’t have to bother putting on clothes for discussing a diplomatic mission with the president because ‘naked’ is not synonymous to ‘sexual’ anymore. And even if it was, ‘sexual’ would merely mean a match of psychocardiograms, allowing for the best possible experience of touching hands for a minute.

The separation of sex and love exemplified in Barbarella’s universe is not as uncommon as it used to be — at least in newer public discourse and social behavior. Casual sexual encounters, or ‘hook-up culture’ in the mouth of people who disapprove, can be both a means to ridicule people who are interested in bonding with their sex partners — as suggested in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — or a convenient code to avoid the distracting nature of romance and emotions for the sake of personal fulfillment and success in other spheres of life. As of now, we like to exhibit emotionally detached sexual encounters for the sake of efficiency as a personal choice — something that can or even will be reversed if we choose. But what if, indeed, it were possible to achieve ‘full rapport’ with another person without going through the trouble of physical intercourse and being exposed to the dangers of disease contamination and emotional attachment?

The definite separation of sex and physical sensation à la Barbarella takes this idea far out of the already tense and fragile comfort zone defining our culture’s progressive and inclusive attitudes towards sexuality. From where we stand now, a social norm that dictates this separation seems almost dehumanizing. Do we really want to be that progressive? It is one thing to think sexual intercourse without emotional attachment, or sexual sensation without sexual partner(s), but it is hard to think sexual sensation without the respective physical, and maybe even emotional stimulation. However, the over-exaggeration of this idea, to me, is fundamentally what defines the sexually heroic nature of Barbarella from the vantage point of a culture that recycles this film’s iconography on a regular basis — not least because somewhere along the way, she makes the ‘efficient sex’ of the future look ridiculous.

Barbarella was created during a time of social and sexual revolt but placed in an age where the hyper-civilized earth community overrode this one human trait that continuously has been causing trouble throughout history. Despite being a strong believer in the futuristic world order, she reverts to ancient practices that go against a lot of the principles working to maintain the 41st century’s social order and recognizes the productive potential of sexual distractions. She chooses body fluids over pills, feeling over pragmatic ritual, quality over quantity. In the eyes of the future, she becomes “savage.” In other words, she becomes like us. Her choice for ‘the old-fashioned way’ champions sex — even the casual type — as an important form of social activity, not a disturbing call of nature.

Barbarella the character might be the worst example of a superheroine by many of our contemporary expectations for a female lead not least because of the ambiguous dynamics of her (sexual) agency. But that is now, and this was then. Barbarella as a film remains a superheroine movie with a mission: save the future of sexual politics. Indeed, it seems like the sexual libertinage of counter-culture might be a smaller evil than time-efficient, pharma-induced orgasms to be received through fingertips. But then again, it is another 2000+ years until the 41st century — more than enough time for sexual intercourse to be declared “savage.”

Olga Tchepikova has lived, studied, and worked across various places in Europe and the U.S.. Her mind in free time, as well as in research, is mainly occupied with films about and critical theory on subculture, outsider figures, horror, violence, death, sexuality, and the sex industry.

‘The Danish Girl’ and ‘Youth’: Why We Need To Stop Giving White Guys Oscars

Another way for a male actor to win an award is to put on a dress and play a trans woman (see Jared Leto and ‘Transparent’) which explains why we now have ‘The Danish Girl’ in theaters, directed by Hooper and starring Redmayne as trans pioneer Lili Elbe. At least one trans woman has already pointed out how this film, like ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ before it, has scenes that could have been lifted from porn (not the best place to find versimilitude) but also how the script forces Elbe into the “tragic degenerate” trope, just like queer characters invariably were in the bad old days.

Nearly five years ago, when Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech swept the Oscars I wasn’t displeased. Sure it was yet another film by men about men in which the women barely had speaking parts, but Colin Firth gave a great tortured performance in the lead and the screenplay–like the film itself–seemed to understand it wasn’t telling the “feel good” story many critics and audience members mistook Speech for: the screenwriter has said that when he told the Queen mother (the film depicts when she became Queen) that he was working on the script, she asked him to not make a film of it until after she was dead–because it would bring back too many bad memories.

I skipped Hooper’s next film: Les Misérables because it gave every sign of being the kind of gooey movie I would detest. It also had Eddie Redmayne in it and after sitting through the supposedly “based on a true story” nonsense of My Week With Marilyn in which Redmayne starred (opposite an underrated Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe), I had had enough of him. Last year Redmayne won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in the bio-pic The Theory of Everything proving that an able-bodied actor has a good chance of getting an Academy Award for playing a disabled person (and as long as the able-bodied keep winning, disabled people will never be cast to play these roles themselves).

Another way for a male actor to win an award is to put on a dress and play a trans woman (see Jared Leto and Transparent) which explains why we now have The Danish Girl in theaters, directed by Hooper and starring Redmayne as trans pioneer Lili Elbe. At least one trans woman has already pointed out how this film, like Blue Is the Warmest Color before it, has scenes that could have been lifted from porn (not the best place to find versimilitude) but also how the script forces Elbe into the “tragic degenerate” trope, just like queer characters invariably were in the bad old days.

The whole film feels very dated (and not just because it takes place in the early 20th century) but also, in spite of it being “based on a true story”, false. Like a bad TV movie made ten or twenty years ago, this film posits that Lili (who starts out as Einar) had a wife, Gerda (Alicia Vikander) who had no idea her husband was anything other than a regular guy, even though Lili was a longtime model for Gerda’s work as an illustrator and painter. When Lili wants to transition, Gerda is surprised and hurt saying, “But Lili doesn’t exist. We were playing a game.” and later cries, “I need my husband! I need to hug my husband,” just like the suburban wife of a trans woman might say on Maury.

The real-life Gerda Wegener was queer and, while the couple lived in Paris, did not keep secret her relationships with women, so the film misses the opportunity to show that the feminine qualities of Lili may have been what attracted Gerda in the first place, a possibility shows like Maury and movies like this one never consider. The film also gives short shrift to the gender politics of the time, never detailing the obstacles a woman artist like Gerda would face in that era and downplaying Lili’s decision when she transitions to stop painting–even though she had won acclaim as an artist when she was “Einar”.

This film fails on so many levels, it’s hard to pick any one aspect, but Eddie Redmayne deserves special mention. A man in a dress playing a trans women is always objectionable, but Redmayne is so woefully miscast in this role, I’ll go to any protest of the awards he will probably be nominated for. Lili Elbe was one of the first people to undergo gender affirming surgery and the toast of Paris, going to parties and modeling for Gerda in the latest, revealing fashions but Redmayne’s Lili is a whispery, skittish, drag queen full of shame (at least at first) who wears matronly dresses that come up to the neck and stretch down nearly to the ankle. Other trans woman pioneers (in the US, a generation after Elbe) were not shy, retiring or ashamed: think of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera: they, along with many femme gay men of the time became more open in their presentation as they became more outspoken in their advocacy: they developed pride in themselves to deflect the shame mainstream culture thought was their only option. In this way and many others, their mindset was much more in keeping with the rest of us in 2015 than that of anyone associated with The Danish Girl.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88APYIGkjk” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Nearly two years ago Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty won an Oscar for best foreign language film and again, even though it was a film made by men about men, I’d enjoyed it and was happy. I didn’t know then that award would give Sorrentino the momentum to make one of the worst films I’ve seen in a theater in a long time: Youth.

In a lot of ways Youth takes the indulgences I could ignore in The Great Beauty: the whining of pampered, older, male characters and the fascination with the grotesque (but of course never, ever combining the two to find the grotesque in pampered, main older male characters) and proceeds to make an entire movie out of them. And the whisper of misogyny in Beauty becomes a scream in Youth. Michael Caine is the lead, a retired composer, and his vocal intonations are so familiar from the acting he’s phoned in through the years that, even if he were giving a good performance, at this point we wouldn’t notice. Harvey Keitel is wasted (except very briefly in the reading of one of his last lines) as his best friend, a film director, as is Rachel Weisz as the composer’s grown daughter and Jane Fonda as an aging actress wearing too much makeup (I can’t believe people are talking about nominating Fonda for an award for this role. Her part isn’t a character, it’s an incoherent tempter tantrum). Like The Great Beauty, Youth has great cinematography (again by Luca Bigazzi) but when the results are this loathsome, I’m reminded of how much I would rather see a dimly lit, poorly shot film with a great script than another monstrosity with great stills. As other critics have pointed out, if this film is a leading contender for an Oscar we’re in trouble–or maybe it’s the Oscars, and their increasing irrelevance, which are.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T7CM4di_0c” iv_load_policy=”3″]

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘Grace and Frankie’: Sexuality for Seniors and Life After Marriage

Tomlin and Fonda’s onscreen chemistry is absolutely spot on, giving life to moments that may otherwise have fallen flat. One of the most refreshing things about Grace and Frankie is its attitude to female sexuality in older women. Life (moreover, sex) doesn’t have to stop because you’re getting older. The series illustrates this with frankness and honesty, and we don’t shy away from seeing the woman in that light.

This is a guest post by Becky Kukla.

Something really special is happening in Netflix’s new baby Grace and Frankie. The series aired in its entirety a few weeks ago with relatively little promotion, considering the impressive cast involved. Grace and Frankie marks the return of Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin to comedy television. Not that either of them ever really left the comedy world, though the last time we saw them together was in the ’80s film 9 to 5, which is by all accounts wonderfully funny and female centric. Tomlin and Fonda both starred in 9 to 5 and have been reportedly BFF’s ever since. In a way, following their 2015 Golden Globes presentation, they are almost a pre-cursor to the female comedy duos of today. Think Tina and Amy, Ilana and Abbi, and Wiig and Rudolph. If anyone set the standard for the hybrid hilarious BFFs/comedy duo, it’s Tomlin and Fonda. So, does Grace and Frankie live up to the hype?

Tomlin and Fonda play Frankie and Grace respectively, two women who are shocked to discover that their business partner husbands have been having a secret affair for the past 20 years. They have decided to divorce their wives and marry each other, after the law changes and “we can do that now.” Sol (Sam Waterston) and Robert (Martin Sheen) begin to make a life with each other, whilst Grace and Frankie are left to pick up the pieces. The first episode, aptly titled “The End,” begins with the moment that Robert and Sol break the news to their wives – over dinner at an expensive restaurant (oh the middle-class!). Grace and Frankie are only friends because of their husband’s partnership-turned-relationship, and the only thing they both have in common is that they are both belong to a group of women who are white, mature, middle-class and are generally ladies of leisure; they don’t work and rely on their husbands’ income. Grace is your typical vodka-infused, uptight, emotionless Lucille Bluth type, and Frankie embodies new-age hippie culture and is more at home smoking a joint than “doing lunch.” The set-up of the show is nothing new; we expect the laughs to come from either tired stereotypes surrounding homosexuality or from Grace and Frankie bickering. It’s a pleasant surprise to find that Grace and Frankie doesn’t rely on old and unfunny cliches to make us laugh (or cry).

Whilst Grace and Frankie could easily have tailed off into a comedy about the titular character’s love/hate relationship, the main focus of the series is actually two women supporting each other and pulling one another through an incredibly painful time. The theme of age and the fear of growing old alone is prevalent through the series, reinforcing society’s stigmas about lonely spinsters. Television often has little time for older women, but Grace and Frankie explores the heartbreak and isolation that comes with going through a divorce after 40+ years. Whilst Grace and Robert seem to hate each other (and have done for some time), the saddest story is that of Frankie and Sol. At times gut-wrenching, we see two people who have formed a relationship on the best of a friendships and having to learn to live without it. Tomlin pulls of a phenomenal performance, and epitomizes the highs and lows of such a life changing event. There is a moment in “The Funeral” where Frankie accidentally gets into Sol’s car, forgetting for a moment that they won’t be going home together. It’s a small action, but so significant and Tomlin handles it with perfection.

Even with all the seriousness, Grace and Frankie still has comedy at its heart. There are some wickedly funny lines (that mostly come from Tomlin’s Frankie) and provide plenty of occasions to laugh out loud. The gags don’t come thick and fast, unlike most contemporary comedy scripts, but Kaufman is clearly very happy to let the punchlines linger. It works superbly well because it allows the show to be incredibly funny without having to instantaneously move on to the next joke. At times it almost feels that there should be a laugh track within those pauses, but the absence of one actually helps to cement the reality of Grace and Frankie’s newfound situation. We are laughing because it’s the only way we can deal with this. Who hasn’t been there? There are also some hilarious recurring themes–Frankie’s relationship with technology, Grace’s exploration into sexuality and home-made lube, and the constant quips that the women throw at each other. Tomlin and Fonda’s onscreen chemistry is absolutely spot on, giving life to moments that may otherwise have fallen flat. One of the most refreshing things about Grace and Frankie is its attitude to female sexuality in older women. Life (moreover, sex) doesn’t have to stop because you’re getting older. The series illustrates this with frankness and honesty, and we don’t shy away from seeing the woman in that light. They aren’t just mothers, grandmothers or wives; they are women, with desires and emotions. It would have been great to see more of this, and more of Jane Fonda looking fucking amazing in lingerie!

The supporting cast are very likable, but Grace’s daughter Brianna (June Diane Raphael) is the standout star, often delivering the best lines of the series. The ensemble cast work incredibly well together, providing a neat backdrop for Tomlin and Fonda. Having said that, the romance/non-romance between Coyote (Frankie’s son) and Mallory (Grace’s daughter) was one of the only issues I took with the series. I’m all for sub plots, but neither Coyote or Mallory are particularly engaging characters hence their “affair” seemed incredibly uninteresting, especially in comparison to the far more engaging main narrative.

Grace and Frankie could have also spent more time with its title characters -the show is about them, but a monumental amount of scenes were dedicated to Robert and Sol and the blossoming of their relationship. Whilst it was great to see a gay couple (especially an older gay couple) transcend camp cliches, I couldn’t help thinking that the show isn’t supposed to be about them. Certainly, the series feels more at ease when Tomlin and Fonda are onscreen and I just wished we had seen more of that, instead of the men.

Grace and Frankie triumphs because it doesn’t utilize the gay characters as a trope or a way to increase viewership. Sexuality doesn’t become a selling point. There is more to Robert and Sol than just their relationship, and there is far more to Grace and Frankie than just jilted middle-class ex-wives. It’s a sweet, easy to watch series which not only makes us laugh out loud but also gives us an insight into characters that are usually simply tired stereotypes. It’s probably not going to push any boundaries or make a statement, but enjoyable and well written. I, for one, can’t wait for Season 2.

Becky Kukla is a 20-something living in London, working in the TV industry (mostly making excellent cups of tea). She spends her spare time watching everything Netflix has to offer and then ranting about it on her blog.

13 Disappointing Things about ‘Grace and Frankie’

On the eve of the release of season 3 of ‘Orange is the New Black,’ and while the rest of the world’s feminist media critics still struggle to sort out ‘Sense8,’ I decided to take a look at one of Netflix’s least-buzzed-about original series: ‘Grace and Frankie,’ which premiered in May to little fanfare outside a late night tweet from one Miley Cyrus. ‘Grace and Frankie’ stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the title characters, whose husbands Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them for each other after admitting to a 20-years-running affair. Grace and Frankie move into the beach house the couples shared and forge an unlikely friendship while navigating the single life for septuagenarians. The show has its charms, such that I might have watched the entire season without journalistic integrity as a motivation, but ‘Grace and Frankie’ let me down in a lot of ways:

Promo image for 'Grace and Frankie' — Promo image for Grace and Frankie

On the eve of the release of season 3 of Orange is the New Black, and while the rest of the world’s feminist media critics still struggle to sort out Sense8, I decided to take a look at one of Netflix’s least-buzzed-about original series: Grace and Frankie, which premiered in May to little fanfare outside a late night tweet from one Miley Cyrus. Grace and Frankie stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the title characters, whose husbands Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them for each other after admitting to a 20-years-running affair. Grace and Frankie move into the beach house the couples shared and forge an unlikely friendship while navigating the single life for septuagenarians. The show has its charms, such that I might have watched the entire season without journalistic integrity as a motivation, but Grace and Frankie let me down in a lot of ways:

You may also need vanilla ice cream bathed in whiskey, as enjoyed by Lily Tomlin as Frankie — You may also need big bowl of vanilla ice cream and whiskey, as enjoyed by Lily Tomlin as Frankie

1. The premise turns out to be rather boring. It is easy to imagine a late 90s pitch meeting, where “It’s like The First Wives Club—but their exes are gay. For each other!” is met with applause and pats on the back for cooking up something so “edgy.” And given that the creators of Grace and Frankie are 90s sitcom powerhouses Marta Kauffman (Friends) and Howard J. Morris (Home Improvement), you might expect something embarrassingly old-fashioned along those lines. Fortunately this is not the case, but Grace and Frankie overcorrects: everyone is so accepting of Robert and Sol coming out, and breaking up their marriages to do so, that most of the dramatic interest is obliterated.

2. This blandness coincides with an unfortunate case of bi-erasure. No one ever uses the B-word, even though Robert and Sol seem to have truly loved their wives romantically and sexually before falling for each other. [Spoiler alert!] A late-episode plot development will probably force reconsideration of this issue in season 2, but I’d rather bisexuality not be addressed through a negative stereotype like unfaithfulness.

She's a kooky free spirit, she's uptight and snobby! — She’s a kooky free spirit, she’s uptight and snobby!

3. The odd couple dynamic between Grace and Frankie is alarmingly unimaginative. One is a WASP and one is a hippie! Can you imagine the peyote-fueled hijinx that must follow?

4. It leans heavily on the HILARITY of old ladies saying dirty words while rarely bothering to weave those dirty words into otherwise funny dialogue.

"If anybody is gonna sit on Ryan Gosling's face, it's gonna be me!" — “If anybody is gonna sit on Ryan Gosling’s face, it’s gonna be me!”

5. And yet the series is remarkably chaste outside of its discussion of sandy vaginas and yam-based personal lubricants. Grace and Frankie wants to be celebrated for acknowledging the sex lives of seniors, but the most sexual chemistry we see on screen is between Lily Tomlin and the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

6. The characters are in the very boring As-Perpetually-Seen-on-TV Upper Upper Middle Class, and the show never engages with how the characters’ economic privilege intersects with their aging or sexual identity.

7. The first episode rips off the How to Get Away With Murder scene where Annalise removes her wig and makeup, which a) is significantly less meaningful with a white woman b) undermined by the drastically incomplete removal of Jane Fonda’s makeup. This is her “deconstructed” look:

Jane Fonda's "bare" face — Jane Fonda’s “bare” face

8. And for a show whose main selling point is celebrating women of a certain age, it is a shame they felt the need to shave eight years off Jane Fonda’s age and five years off Lily Tomlin’s to make both protagonists 70 years old. And then have Grace list her age as 64 on a dating website.

9. The one person of color in the cast is the least-developed character. That’s one of Sol and Frankie’s adopted sons, Nwabudike “Bud” Bergstein (Baron Vaughn). It feels like the one chance we get to know him is through his chemistry with his future sister-in-law Brianna (June Diane Raphael), but that relationship is sidelined in favor of…

June Diane Raphael and Baron Vaughn as Brianna and Bud

10. The creepy “I stalk you because our love is so pure” “connection” between the other cross-section of future step-siblings: Mallory (Brooklyn Decker, who has surprising comic timing) and Coyote (Ethan Embry, who is disturbingly 20 years older than he was in Empire Records WHERE DOES TIME GO). Mallory has a hunky doctor husband and Coyote is a drug-addicted loser, but I think we’re still supposed to root for those two crazy kids to work it out? I am only rooting for a restraining order.

Brooklyn Decker and Ethan Embry as Mallory and Coyote

11. And June Diane Raphael is as underused as she normally is, in keeping with her place as television’s Judy Greer.

12. There is an episode in which some of the main characters are trapped in an elevator and one of the characters unexpectedly delivers a baby outside of a hospital setting, but these two storylines occur at different times and places. How dare you tease us with the cliché singularity, show, and not follow through.

13. Dolly Parton does not guest star, denying us the 9 to 5 reunion we want—no, need—no, DESERVE. This better be corrected in season 2.

Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who can personally attest to the deliciousness of whiskey-soaked vanilla ice cream.

“And That’s the Truth”: The Talent and Comedic Timeliness of Lily Tomlin

I owe a great debt to Tomlin for helping me discover comedy, for helping shape my sense of humor, and for helping me define a sense of identity that might not have ever emerged without her. How can anyone argue that women aren’t funny, when my sole entire reason for making people laugh was inspired by a (funny) woman?

This is a guest post by Kyle Sanders.

At this year’s annual Golden Globes, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin presented the award for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical Series. While it was nice to see the stars of one of the best comedies ever made, 9 to 5, it was also exciting to see these two talented actresses reunite on stage in what was of course a quick promotion for their soon-to-debut Netflix series, Grace and Frankie. But what was most notable was the tongue-in-cheek banter they had on stage, discussing how “nice” it was to finally put at rest the “negative stereotype” that men aren’t funny. Of course, it is not exactly true that men have never been funny, but for some reason it has always been heavily debated whether or not women are funny. What I found most ironic was the fact that Tomlin led this conversation, because of all the talented comics out there—male or female—I have always regarded her as my greatest (and funniest) comedic muse.

It is no secret within my social circle that I am absolutely bananas over Lily Tomlin, and from an early age to boot. While I was in grade school, I was introduced to Tomlin from a Laugh-In reunion special that aired in the early ’90s and upon being exposed to her widely popular Ernestine the telephone operator and Edith Ann characters, I found Tomlin’s comedic creations imitable. From that moment, I was hooked. Back before the days of IMDb, I would spend hours in a video rental store, searching through the “Comedy” section for her name or her face on a VHS sleeve (remember those?). It wasn’t before long that I found a “best of” compilation of a little sketch comedy show called Saturday Night Live that featured two of Tomlin’s hosting stints. This newfound discovery of nostalgic humor led me to my first love of comedy. To put it simply: I owe my adoration of sketch comedy and my obsession with SNL to Lily Tomlin. Because of Tomlin, I found the courage to move to the land of improv, Chicago, in the hopes of performing sketch comedy and turn it into a career. Ya hear that? A woman—a FUNNY woman—inspired me to find a career in making people laugh.

And why not? Lily Tomlin is one our most premier comediennes as of all time. Hell, The Laugh Factory includes an artist’s rendering of her among many of the greatest comedians who ever lived. Why we are even still debating this “women are/aren’t funny” theory is beyond my own belief, because as an aspiring comedic performer, I have always touted Tomlin as one of the greats.

First and foremost, Tomlin revolutionized comedy for women. Before Tomlin, most female comics were self-deprecating (Phyllis Diller) or performed material regarding marriage and children (Joan Rivers). Tomlin’s turn in the spotlight did away with joke-telling and produced sketch comedy acts involving a variety of characters inspired by people she had known while growing up in the diverse, blue-collar environment of Detroit. Tomlin’s act embraced the counterculture of the 1960s, during the time of the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution. Gender dynamics were changing, and Tomlin was at the forefront of the women’s lib movement in comedy. She performed material that focused on the working class and the poor, material that required an edgy intelligence that did not go for punch lines or cheap laughs. She certainly didn’t limit her comedy to material about her looks or motherhood or married life—though her sketches didn’t shy away from such matters either. Tomlin was not a standup-comic, but a cerebral comedic performer.

Tomlin’s talent for creating eccentric, offbeat characters landed her a spot on NBC’s Laugh-In, and her prolific career took off overnight. Some of her most beloved characters came about on this variety show, including Ernestine, a snorting, nasally-voiced telephone operator who controlled the phone lines with her sharp tongue and smart-alecky insults. She also gave us Edith Ann, a philosophizing seven-year-old who sat in an oversized rocking chair spouting off words of wisdom while sticking out her tongue. Tomlin’s knack for producing dozens of three dimensional characters would eventually provide her enough material for her own television specials, of which landed her several Emmy awards. These specials reflected the changing times involving racial and gender politics, material that did not involve a lot of punch lines or pratfalls but certainly served as intelligent yet controversial material that not even Louis CK or Chris Rock would have the balls to produce back in the day (and if anyone can track down these specials in DVD format, please let me know!). I would even say Tomlin should be given credit for introducing comedian Richard Pryor (whom collaborated with Tomlin on a few of these specials) to the mainstream when most producers were too scared to let Pryor have any air time. Tomlin was an underground comic almost too dangerous to showcase amid the still-shrewd comedy scene of the 1970s.

Throughout the ’80s, Tomlin starred in films that showcased multidimensional females that could lead to strong box office returns. She has always chosen roles that project a strong persona, never submissive to authority let alone a male figure. Tomlin’s characters are in essence Tomlin herself: offbeat, eccentric, but always strong and independent. Tomlin proved she could stand toe-to-toe with comedy legends like Art Carney in The Late Show. She had a physicality that could keep up with the comedic ferocity of Steve Martin in All of Me (and possess his body no less!). Tomlin’s strong sense of humor and femininity also proved successful alongside other actresses, sharing the screen as well as countless laughs. In 9 to 5, Tomlin’s Violet Newstead is one of three women who take down their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical” male boss, Franklin Hart. Violet delivers a speech of disgust towards Hart that’s one of Tomlin’s most pivotal moments in her acting career:

“Okay, okay, I’m gonna leave, but I’m gonna tell you one thing before I go: don’t you ever refer to me as ‘your girl’ again…I’m no girl, I’m a woman. Do you hear me? I’m not your wife or your mother—or even your mistress. I am your employee and as such I expect to be treated equally with a little dignity and a little respect!”

Violet’s demand for equality was a calling that every working woman heard loud and clear, and with the chemistry between Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, women AND men came to the movie theaters in droves, paving the way for comedic actresses in film that proved female-driven comedies could bring the masses to the box office. Without Tomlin’s collaborative talent in 9 to 5, there would be no Outrageous Fortune, no Big Business (another Tomlin film—this time paired up with the Divine Miss M, Bette Midler), no Baby Mama, Bridesmaids, or The Heat.

Even as an older actress in today’s Hollywood—when most “women of a certain age” are relayed to playing mothers—Tomlin has never been one to play a matriarch as paper thin. She portrayed Mary Schlicting, Ben Stiller’s mother in Flirting with Disaster, as a post-’60s hippie living in a ’90s world and still producing LSD. In Eastbound & Down, her Tammy Powers character was a bowling champion that could spout out more profanity than Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers while exchanging pharmaceutical drugs. In Admission, her Susannah character is a highly renowned feminist author who nearly kills Tina Fey’s date with a shot gun. In Web Therapy, her Putsy Hodge dons an array of costumes, from a fu Manchu beard to a prisoner jumpsuit, to the annoyance of her daughter Fiona, as played by Lisa Kudrow. These performances certainly don’t read as “motherly matriarch,” but as performed by Tomlin, they certainly scream “hilarious.”

With her new comedy, Grace and Frankie, Tomlin proves again how relevant and hilarious her talents still are in a series co-starring Jane Fonda involving two older women whose husbands come out as gay and have fallen in love with each other. For Netflix to add a comedy series (from Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman I might add) about two older women beginning anew, it proves that the old adage of women not being funny is untrue, and with Tomlin in tow, this comedy series will no doubt succeed in continuing to prove that theory wrong.

Late last year, Tomlin was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for her contribution to the American arts. As one of Tomlin’s biggest fans, I had been petitioning for this recognition for years. Yet the moment was bittersweet, because while this was certainly good news for one of my favorite all-time idols, the fact was I would not be there to salute her at the event. One of my career goals in life was to speak on Tomlin’s behalf at the Kennedy Center. Tomlin and I have a few similarities: we both have southern roots planted in Kentucky, we both have an eye and ear for characterizations and impressions, and we both happen to be gay (in fact, Tomlin became the first outed lesbian to received the Kennedy Center honor in its entire history). I owe a great debt to Tomlin for helping me discover comedy, for helping shape my sense of humor, and for helping me define a sense of identity that might not have ever emerged without her. How can anyone argue that women aren’t funny, when my sole entire reason for making people laugh was inspired by a (funny) woman? Women may not have always been considered funny, but thanks to Tomlin’s efforts, women (as well as men) have reason to be funny.

Kyle Sanders lives in Chicago and plans to take improv classes at the Improv Olympic (as soon as his rent gets paid). In the meantime he occasionally contributes to NewsCastic: Chicago and GiGa Geek Magazine among other blogs that deem his thoughts worthy.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Mad Men: Joan Would Like To Burn Shit Down, & Other Feminist Concerns by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd at Jezebel’s The Muse

Don’t Hate on Sansa Stark’s Powerful Femininity by s.e. smith at Bitch Media

Documentary Hits Schools to Empower Next Generation of Girls by Kaitlyn Folmer at ABC News

Who Was the First African-American Woman Director? (The Answer Isn’t as Simple as You May Think) by Sergio at Shadow and Act

Kate McKinnon’s Webseries, Hilarious Kiwi Roommates: April’s Noteworthy VOD Films and Webseries by Tory Kamen and Becca Rose at Women and Hollywood

7 TV Shows About Trans Women Coming Soon to Your TV by Mey at Autostraddle

14 and trying to get pregnant: “Shameless” paints a bleak portrait of the sex lives of girls by Sonia Saraiya at Salon

The Sisterhood of Night by Olivia at Rookie

Ana Lily Amirpour Steals the Show by Vanessa Lawrence at W Magazine

Finally, a Summer Movie Season for Women by Kara Cutruzzula at Vulture

Why Can’t Strong Female Characters Just Be Complex? by Latonya Pennington at Black Girl Nerds

This “Raging Granny” Crashed a Wall Street Dinner to Demand Answers by Peter D’Auria at Yes Magazine

Jane Fonda And Lily Tomlin Reunite In Netflix’s ‘Grace And Frankie’ Trailer by Erin Whitney at The Huffington Post

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

‘Julia’: A Portrait of Heroic Friendship in an Age of Darkness

Although peppered with flashbacks to the women’s childhood and youth, ‘Julia’ is set during their formative academic and professional years. The film chronicles the women’s personal and political lives in the decade that saw the rise of Fascism. We witness how the fight against those dark forces transforms both friends.

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Directed by Fred Zinnemann, Julia (1977) is an exceptionally beautiful portrait of female friendship and heroism. Primarily set in the thirties, it tells the story of two interesting, gifted women, the playwright, Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) and anti-Nazi activist Julia (Vanessa Redgrave).

Before I look more closely at Julia, I need to briefly address the controversy surrounding its narrative source. The film’s Oscar-winning screenplay (written by Alvin Sargent) is based on Lillian Hellman’s memoir Pentimento: A Book of Portraits, specifically her account of her friendship with a childhood friend and anti-Fascist activist called Julia. The story, unfortunately, turned out to be a fabrication. The lie, of course, cheats the reader, and violates historical truth. The question remains, however, whether Julia is partly true or a blend of real historical figures. My focus, here, of course, is on the film. We can choose to write off the cinematic adaptation as fraudulent or appreciate it as a work of fiction. Julia is a fascinating, involving study of courage and its depiction of friendship persuasive and affecting. The caliber of the acting can also not be disputed. Redgrave and Fonda both give riveting, career-defining performances.

Although peppered with flashbacks to the women’s childhood and youth, Julia is set during their formative academic and professional years. The film chronicles the women’s personal and political lives in the decade that saw the rise of Fascism. We witness how the fight against those dark forces transforms both friends.

Lillian becomes a playwright, battles all the frustrations the profession of writing entails, and eventually achieves success and celebrity. She lives with her lover, and fellow writer, Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards), in a beach house facing the Atlantic. An even more adventurous soul, Julia goes abroad to study medicine at Oxford and Vienna, before becoming a committed anti-Fascist activist. Although both friends are ultimately characterized as strong women with strong ideals, Julia is portrayed, from the start, as the more courageous, self-assured, and politically engaged woman. Lillian is more insecure, and human, while Julia is both resolute and ethereal. Although a fellow left-winger, Lillian is not immune to the finer things of life. Regarding class identity, Julia’s mindset is more remarkable. A child of extreme wealth, she utterly rejects the lifestyle and values of her privileged caste.

The flashbacks to the friends’ youth are haunting and illuminating. Even as an adolescent, Julia (Lisa Pelikan) is enraged by economic inequality and social injustice. We see her express her impatience at her friend’s conventional need to hear of her family’s trips to Europe. The young Lillian (Susan Jones) is dazzled by Julia’s affluent, cosmopolitan background and lacks her friend’s political consciousness. Lillian, in fact, worships her friend. Julia recognizes that veneration sometimes characterizes female adolescent friendship, and the actresses who play the teenage friends credibly capture that particular dynamic. Such friendships can, of course, become abusive but this is not the case with Julia and Lillian. Although the young Julia plays the dominant role, and has a patrician, prefect-like manner, she is, nevertheless, a warm, just, soul. Julia enlightens, and inspires Lillian. Crucially, she is Lillian’s heroic example.

The deep affection Lillian has for Julia endures and Fonda conveys her love with a remarkable candor. The scenes between the adult childhood friends are, in fact, extremely moving and beautifully played. The playwright, it must be noted, is written as a considerably complex woman. She is sensitive, vulnerable, moral and humane, as well as idealistic and spirited. Fonda’s compassionate, intense portrayal captures both her insecurities and charisma. The scenes between Lillian and “Dash” are also vividly, and tenderly performed. Robards plays Dash as a crabby, no-nonsense yet supportive mentor-lover and both actors are magnetic in their moments together. Whether the portraits of both writers are authentic characterizations is another matter but that applies to all autobiographical and literary depictions of real people, of course.

Julia is the most extraordinary character in the film, however. The viewer sees her, of course, to a considerable extent, through Lillian’s eyes. Preserved by memory and distance, she remains an exotic, daring figure from childhood. Julia may have a certain mythic aspect but she grows up to be a devoted, dynamic political activist and her activism is very real and very dangerous work. Julia provides us with a powerful, multi-layered portrait of female activism. Her characterization does not exhibit the customary misogynist Hollywood stereotyping of female activists as sexless, humorless and nutty. She is sexual, sane, and cerebral. She is, however, a unique human being. Most men and women of privilege crave more wealth, and there is something heroic about Julia’s decision to betray her cosseted class. Julia, indeed, is that rarest of American films, a Hollywood film with a Socialist heroine. Redgrave equally gives her character a steely yet otherworldly power and grace. It is an exquisite performance.

There is another outstanding female performance in Julia. A young Meryl Streep gives one of the greatest scene-stealing cameos in Hollywood history as Anne-Marie, a socialite friend of both Julia and Lillian. It was, in fact, Streep’s very first film performance and her ability to fully inhabit roles is already on display. Her character typifies the kind of woman Julia in particular could have become, a spectacularly self-regarding, superficially charismatic woman of privilege.

Our friends choose a tougher track. When their lives intersect as adults, Julia asks Lillian to perform a courageous act. It will test Lillian but it should also be seen, in a way, as a gift. Lillian is given an opportunity to demonstrate courage and shape history. It is also an act that binds the women together.

Julia is a film laced with tenderness and sadness. Ultimately, it is a tale of both heroism and tragedy. Although it cannot be categorized as obscure, Julia has been somewhat forgotten. This is not that surprising, of course. Most film critics are men, and Julia is a story about women that foregrounds and honors female friendship. Although shot in a conventionally romantic, almost cozy fashion, Julia is unusual in many ways. It is an American film for adults about the loving friendship of two accomplished women with romantic and professional lives. What’s more, it’s a movie about female activism and heroism. It needs to be fully restored to our cinematic memory.

‘9 to 5’: The Necessity of Female Friendships at Work

Like the three fates, the friends conjure a life-altering force by listening to each other, by laughing, by being friends. The scenes where they envisioned the demise of their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss start to play out for real in madcap, accidental, and intentional ways. As the fabric unrolls, each woman experiences being supported by the other two and feels compelled to help her friends. In their confusions, cover-ups, and retribution schemes, Violet, Doralee, and Judy knit together a solid friendship where each character finds strength and support. And manage to avoid getting caught. It’s the little things.

This guest post by Deb Rox appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Forget “leaning in.” To thrive in a corporate environment you need work BFFs who will do three things for you: mentor you up the ladder, make sure you are included in an lunch order if someone is arranging delivery, and help you blackmail your boss should it come to that.

Work friendships between women are sacred. Office friends serve as your career siblings. They are essential playmates who share the chores of daily living, and more importantly, bear witness to the same dysfunctions and deadlines. Good work friends will evolve lines of gossip (institutional and interpersonal, both matter) and ways to process everything from office memos to the bizarre co-workers who are not your friends. All of this is amped up in bad and equitable work situations where women need friends to help bust ass and glass ceilings, and to simply survive.

Movies take on the theme of office friendships, but great representations of women friend are few and far between. Wall Street and tech movies are boytown. Office Space is the go-to classic for illuminating oppressive corporate cubicle life, but it doesn’t come close to passing the Bechdel Test. I love Jennifer Aniston as much as the next flair-hater, but she’s in Office Space as a complicated love interest and to represent service work, the “feminine” version of tech work in this film’s universe. She is there to be dated and to be saved. She is not there to make friends – nor does she have any.

Other movies offer working girls friends but only as side plots (Melanie Griffin had Joan Cusack in Working Girl) or they only offer frenemies (think of poor Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada and how she had to settle for glimpses of kinship, and at the end of the movie at that. )

In fact, Anne’s Andy needed a girl gang in the magazine office more than she needed a couture hook-up. What she needed – and what I needed again and again in various horrible job situations – was the ultimate project team as realized in the 1980 triumph 9 to 5. She needed Doralee (Dolly Parton), Violet (Lily Tomlin) and Judy (Jane Fonda,)

Incredibly radical for its time, 9 to 5 has become the standard by which all of workplace friendships on and off screen are measured. These women are gold. GOLD. Would you help me steal a body from the morgue? Would you hogtie our boss to keep him from calling the cops on me? Would you help me enact the progressive, women-centered policies I dream of bringing to our workplace? If your answer is “no,” don’t bother asking me to help you proofread your latest pivot table. What I need is real women friendships at work. Friends like Violet, Judy and Doralee.

The friendships in 9 to 5 are like what would happen if Lucy and Ethel paused halfway on the road to becoming Thelma & Louise. The holy trinity are really more akin to wartime combat buddies than to anything else. At the start of the film the women are fairly wary of each other, battle broken as they are from their individual struggles. Doralee, Violet, and Judy probably wouldn’t be friends in if they weren’t thrown together into the battle of Frank Hart Jr.’s (Dabney Coleman) corrosive workplace.

The sad thing about the first act, which is brilliantly exacted, is that they see each other through the lens of the decidedly exploitive, sexist office environment – and they don’t like what they see. Of course they don’t. In that nasty patriarchal universe defined by Hart they are reductive stereotypes: the slut, the shrew, the out-of-place housewife. They fall prey to gossip and suspect the very-Dolly Doralee of sleeping with the boss (ew, that mustache). Violet, a newly divorced and rather meek character at first, is viewed as a drain on mega-competent Judy. Judy is bitter (rightfully so) about the way she’s been passed over repeatedly in the sexist environment.

The brilliance of 9 to 5 is how the story inverts all of that. It upturns Hart’s universe and it also reverses how the characters see themselves and each other. In doing so it makes an environment of female friendship possible and necessary, and it is absolutely gleeful to to see those barriers dissolve as the women start to bond and start to see themselves as on the same team. It’s genius, really, the way it shows that stereotypes are limiting, destructive and wholly created by sick systems. In 9 to 5, sexist systems are personified by Hart, who was, as Doralee put it, “evil to the core.”

The turning point of the movie, and of their friendship, takes place in Doralee’s house. They end up pissed off on behalf of the mistreatment sleazy Frank Hart imposes. They each take a few hits of some primo ‘80s Maui Wowie and take turns narrating revenge fantasies. These scenes are fabulous, with Hart shown hunted and trapped on a toilet in the women’s bathroom and hog-tied and roasted on a spit. Doralee, giving him a taste of his harassment, calls him “my boy from 9 to 5.” Animated blue birds of happiness help Judy poison Hart in her gruesomely delicious fairy tale, and happiness befalls the kingdom when the king falls through the window to the sidewalk below.

The misandric revenge factor is fun, but the serious power in 9 to 5 happens when the friends begin making changes in the office. Judy, bolstered by her fabulous management team, is a better leader than Hart could ever be, and together they bring in every progressive workplace program imaginable in 1980. These legit moves are more rewarding than any of the hog-tying scenes because women do dream of these changes, we do work together to make them happen, and we want equity more than we want punishment. Well, reducing Hart to watching daytime television for company was pretty rewarding, too.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwDMFOLIHxU”]

9 to 5 knew we want good workplaces and good friends who are invested in our success just as we are invested in theirs. Wrapped in with all of the fantasy, in 9 to 5, female friendships were elevated as leverage against systemic organizational sexism, and as a positive factor for both individual empowerment and sustainable leadership. Almost every single scene supported this thesis except for those defining Hart’s character and a very few others that contextualized the character’s home lives. Mostly, though, this movie belonged to the bond forged by Doralee, Judy and Violet during their beautiful mutiny.

Watching the movie, you want these women as your friends. You want to get Violet stoned, you want to cheer as Doralee flawlessly twirls a lasso with her red-clawed, manicured hands, and you want to stay up all night writing new human resource policies for the corporation of your dreams with Judy. After watching 9 to 5 you’ll want to trade in your car for a bigger vehicle, one with a bench seat in the front big enough for all of your work BFFs and with a trunk big enough to conceal and carry your boss if happens to be a “sexist egotistical lying hypocritical bigot.” Should it ever come to that.

Deb Rox serves as Entertainment Editor of BlogHer where she writes about media, pop culture, and current events. She will vote for any political candidate who promises to unite the continent into one time zone for easier live-tweeting purposes. Follow her on her blog Deb on the Rocks and at @debontherocks on Twitter.

An American Icon: In Praise of Jane Fonda, AFI’s Life Achievement Award Winner of 2014

The roles she began to play during this period revealed a growing socio-political awareness.

Written by Rachael Johnson.

On June 5, Jane Fonda received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement award. She fully deserves the honor, of course. The two-time Oscar winner is, simply, one of the greatest American film actors of the last 50 years. There is a certain sincerity and intensity to Fonda’s acting and, as with all the finest stars, the camera never finds her boring. Her greatest performances, in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), are nothing less than master classes in the art of acting. Fonda has also led an interesting, eventful life. She has been an activist for decades, and her political interests have not infrequently been reflected in her choice of roles. An inspirational interpreter of American femininity on the screen, she has, moreover, championed feminist causes in both the United States and around the world.

Many of the films Fonda has appeared in address social and political issues while many of her roles have been culturally significant. The very early ones are, generally speaking, less interesting but in movies such as Barefoot in the Park (1967), Fonda’s vivacious protagonists are clearly intended to represent youthful 60s womanhood. Directed by her then husband, the late French filmmaker Roger Vadim, the wacky, erotic sci-fi Barbarella (1968) made her into one of the cinematic sex symbols of that decade. Her next role could not have been more different: in the dark, Depression-set drama, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, she plays a participant in a hellish dance competition. There is great depth and complexity to her character and Fonda won her first Oscar nomination for the part. The roles she began to play during this period revealed a growing socio-political awareness.

They Shoot Horses Don't They — *They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?*

Fonda’s greatest, Academy Award-winning performance–to date–is in Klute (1971). As I noted in my article, “Female Identity and Performance,” Klute should not only be celebrated as a suspenseful psychological thriller about a sex worker and a detective but also as “an allegory of the female condition in patriarchy.” Alan Pakula’s film powerfully explores female sexuality and independence as well as violence against women and misogyny. Reflecting social change, Fonda portrayed independent professional women during the 70s and 80s. She played TV reporters in The China Syndrome (1979) and The Electric Horseman (1979) and a psychiatrist in Agnes of God (1985). Fonda also, of course, starred in 9 to 5 (1980), a lively, subversive revenge comedy that directly addressed sexism in the American workplace. Incarnations of real-life, historical figures have been rare but in Julia (1977), she played Lillian Hellman, one of the key American playwrights of the 20th century. In The Butler (2013), she portrayed former first lady, Nancy Reagan. As the former President’s politics contrast sharply with Fonda’s, the decision to play his partner is a somewhat amusing one.

Fonda has not only portrayed American femininity for decades; her off-screen feminist activism has also been widely acknowledged and appreciated. A supporter of the V-Day movement, the actor has actively championed anti-VAW initiatives around the world. She has also demonstrated an interest in women’s health. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995 and the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at the Emory School of Medicine in 2002. A co-founder of the Women’s Media Center, the actor has, furthermore, shown a commitment to improving the status of women in the US media.

Fonda championed progressive political causes as a younger woman. In the late 60s and early 70s, she supported Native and Black American rights and campaigned against The Vietnam War. Fonda’s visit to Hanoi during the Vietnam War in 1972 was the subject of controversy and one incident in particular caused anger in the United States. A photo was taken of a gleeful-looking Fonda as she sat on a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun site. In her autobiography, My Life So Far (2005), Fonda explains, for her part, that the act was spontaneous and not intentionally staged; she was singing a song with her hosts and sat down unwittingly at the site. There are, in fact, Vietnam vets today who have not forgiven Fonda for her Hanoi visit, particularly for the gun incident, and the actor remains a target for virulent right-wing abuse online. In fact, a certain right-wing US news source–you can guess which–reported anger by some veterans at Fonda receiving the AFI award. In her memoir, Fonda apologizes for the photo. She also states that the gun incident constituted a betrayal of her own involvement with the GI movement, explaining that it was the veterans themselves who exposed her to the horrors of the Vietnam War.

Right-wing obsession with the image, of course, not only indicated frankly racist indifference to the mass deaths of Vietnamese civilians but it also served to obscure the political and moral motivations for the trip as well as the infinitely greater transgression of the war itself. Fonda does not apologize for the trip in her memoir. She went to raise awareness in the United States of Nixon and Kissinger’s underhanded, escalated bombing of the country, particularly its dikes. Any reading of the historic response to her visit, particularly the gun incident, as well as lingering resentment, should also take into account the following truths: politically engaged women have traditionally endured greater scrutiny and judgment than their male counterparts while women who have been perceived as traitors have always been subject to more intense vilification. Fonda herself expresses an awareness of this in her memoir: “I realize that it is not just a US citizen laughing and clapping…I am Henry Fonda’s privileged daughter who appears to be thumbing my nose at the country that has provided me these privileges. More than that, I am a woman, which makes me sitting there even more of a betrayal. And I am a woman who is seen as Barbarella…an embodiment of men’s fantasies.”

Again, many of the movie projects she was involved in during the era addressed her political concerns. One, in fact, tackled the war in Vietnam. Conceived and developed by Fonda herself, Coming Home is the story of a wife of a Marine Corps captain who has an affair with a paraplegic vet when her husband is in Vietnam. An intimate, political take on the conflict, the drama addresses its life-changing consequences. It not only examines war-related disabilities and PTSD but also looks at its impact on women with partners in the military.

The China Syndrome (1979), a thriller about a cover-up in a nuclear plant, reflected Fonda’s concern with the dangers of nuclear energy. The credibility and urgency of the movie’s message was amplified by a real-life incident at the time of its release in 1979: astonishingly, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, effectively a limited nuclear meltdown, occurred less than a fortnight after the opening of the film. Other films Fonda appeared in during this period critiqued materialism. The romance The Electric Horseman (1979) espouses an anti-corporate ethos while Fun With Dick and Jane (1977) takes aim at the American Dream. Although set in a much earlier era, the anti-Fascist Julia examines the nature of courage and political engagement.

Fonda has played a great many parts in her own life. She has, of course, been a fitness and health guru–as aspect of her life that, I must admit, interests me the least–as well as a memoir writer. Fonda’s private life has been equally been eventful. She has been married to three charismatic men–the politician Tom Hayden, media mogul Ted Turner, as well as Roger Vadim–has three children, and is currently in a relationship with music producer, Richard Perry. It is difficult to think of another American movie star who has had such an accomplished, interesting and influential life but Fonda’s deeply confessional autobiography is a candid account of female insecurity and self-abuse. My Life So Far chronicles the experiences of a privileged though objectified woman in a patriarchal society and details the psychological damage that sexist attitudes inflict upon women. It is shocking to read director Joshua Logan’s suggestion that Fonda procure a more defined look by having her jaw broken and reset. Another troubling aspect of her memoir is her account of her relationship with her father. Jane adored Henry though he was a cold and distant parent. On Golden Pond (1981), a drama about a troubled father-daughter relationship, was a gift to Henry from his daughter–Jane produced and starred in the film with him and he won a Best Actor Oscar for it–but you wonder whether he deserved her love. It is, to be frank, a love that comes across as emotionally slavish father worship. Fonda also, it seems, had troubles with the men in her life in the past, including sexual betrayal. My Life So Far may be read as an act of female strength in that it opposes traditional patriarchal attitudes towards weakness but it is also a quite a perplexing and dispiriting affair. As a feminist icon, should Fonda not be highlighting her work more? Tough yet vulnerable, independent yet emotionally dependent, the younger Fonda arguably embodied the contradictions of middle 20^th century womanhood.

Fonda retired from acting in the early 90s but returned in 2005. The films have not been remarkable but it’s great to see her grace both the big and small screen. Her role as CEO Leona Lansing in the TV series, The Newsroom, is strikingly played but we are left wanting more. The good news is that she will star with Lilly Tomlin in a Netflix comedy. It would also be a wonderful thing to see another great central cinematic performance from Fonda but even if it does not happen–through preference for smaller parts or opportunity–the great roles of her prime will continue to stand the test of time.

Few figures in American popular culture have played such a dynamic public role as Fonda. Whatever your opinion of her politics or fitness/health projects, it is difficult to disregard her passion and commitment. Fonda was at the very epicenter of social and political change in America for many years. The 76-year-old has shown creativity and daring in both her career and activism and she should be celebrated not only for her great performances but also for her personal courage and resilience. Jane Fonda is an American icon and survivor.

Great Kate: A Woman for All Ages

This guest post by Natalia Lauren Fiore appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

When my twin sister, Jenna, and I entered Bryn Mawr College, we–like most of the 1,300 undergraduate women–were immediately drawn into the bold legacy of its most famous graduate: Katharine Hepburn, ’28. While adjusting to campus life, my sister and I would often picture the well-documented scene of Ms. Hepburn’s–Kate’s–mortifying encounter with an older girl who pointed her out as a “self-conscious beauty” the first time she walked into the college dining hall, an incident that prevented her from eating in public ever again. The isolation she experienced in her early days as a collegian wasn’t entirely self-imposed, but largely stemmed from the singular trauma of discovering her older brother, Tom, hanging from the rafters in the attic of their godmother’s house where they had been vacationing, his neck broken by a noose made of sheets which he had apparently been using as props during a play rehearsal. The event changed Kate irrevocably and, as she later recounted, split her into “two people instead of one, a boy and a girl” (Life: Remembering Katharine Hepburn 10 Years Later, p. 32, 37).

During history classes in Thomas Great Hall, Jenna and I would imagine Kate, on cold winter nights when she was tired of studying, in the outdoor Cloisters of the then-library, stripped of her clothing, skinny-dipping in the fountain–an adventurous tradition which, by her own account, seemed to take root in her father’s odd insistence that each of his children take baths in ice-filled tubs every morning before school (Jane Fonda: My Life So Far, p. 418). Kate fully embraced her father’s practice as a “character and constitution-building ritual” she continued beyond the confines of the college cloisters. It was in those cloisters that Kate’s emerging confidence as a collegian would be propelled by an insatiable determination to inhabit the stage, which she did to sensational effect on May Day 1927 when she appeared as a strange, fierce girl/boy in The Truth about Bladys, a play by A.A. Milne.

Kate’s stage debut in Bladys the year before she graduated inspired the college to select May Day for the annual ceremonial screening of The Philadelphia Story (1940), a box office hit written for Kate which would, by her own orchestration, transform her image from “box office poison” to bankable screen star. When Jenna and I gathered with the other girls in Thomas Great Hall, or outdoors on Merion Green to enjoy the ritual screenings, we would marvel at the impossibly elegant and graceful image of Kate as Tracy Lord, “the goddess lit from within,” who could only be described using John Wayne’s exclamation on the 1975 set of Rooster Coburn, “DAMN! THERE’S A WOMAN!”

While this ritual screening was initially intended to instruct the Bryn Mawr women on the virtues of marriage–something Kate herself fleetingly tried with Main Line heir Ogden Ludlow on the heels of her graduation from the college–the real lesson lies in the demonstration of Kate’s fearless initiative behind the camera. She secured the film rights and nurtured the project herself, rewriting the script with playwright Philip Barry, committing to performing it onstage, and firmly negotiating her own terms which stipulated that she play the lead onscreen as well–a miraculous feat for a woman navigating the strictly patriarchal movie-making industry at the dawn of its Golden era (Life: Remembering Katharine Hepburn 10 Years Later, p. 42, 64).

But the prevailing image of Kate that engaged us while at the college and has remained with us since is a far less overtly glamorous or legendary one that came not from her own life story, nor her onscreen presence, but through someone else’s. On freezing winter nights when we exited the dining halls with our teeth chattering from irresistible yogurt topped with Oreos, too cold to even entertain the notion of plunging nude into the cloister fountain, Jenna and I would instead snuggle against the heated bay windows of our dorm, reading memoirs and biographies together. Of course, there was Kate’s memoir, Me, and A. Scott Berg’s commemorative biography, Kate Remembered, released 12 days after her death. Yet, this prevailing image appeared in Jane Fonda’s intimate, inspirational, and moving memoir, My Life So Far, which proved revelatory for us as “self-conscious” young girls on the cusp of womanhood. In chapter 8, Fonda recalls the filming of On Golden Pond (1981) with the then 73-year-old Kate, and her father, Henry Fonda, whose health was rapidly declining during the shoot.

Filming On Golden Pond — Filming *On Golden Pond*

Fonda documents how initially Kate “disliked” her, but after filming a scene which demanded that she, in Kate’s words, “face her fears” and resist the danger of “becoming soggy,” the elder actress took on the role of Fonda’s surrogate mother despite the fact that she had never had any children of her own . During the “mothering” she received from Kate, Fonda explains how her elder co-star firmly encouraged her to be more self-conscious–not in the negative sense, but in the sense that she should develop “a consciousness of self,” an awareness of “the impact our presence has on other people”–an awareness Kate herself possessed since those early days at Bryn Mawr, and had already mastered in her portrayal of Tracy Lord opposite Cary Grant, who affirmed her power to stir people:

“…She had this thing – this air you might call it – the most totally magnetic woman I’d ever seen and have ever seen since. You HAD to look at her. You HAD to listen to her. There was no escaping her.” (Life: Remembering Katharine Hepburn 10 Years Later, p. 42)

Kate was also aware of the power Henry Fonda’s presence had on his daughter during the filming of On Golden Pond–a strained dynamic that often left Fonda feeling dismissed, discouraged, and–at its climax–depleted of the emotion she needed to perform the major scene of the film. Mortified that she had become “dry” and panicked that her father would find out, Fonda confided in Kate, who came to set even though she wasn’t expected to be there that day. As the director gave the cues to begin filming, Fonda tried to buy time, telling him that her back would be to the camera until she was ready for him to roll. Then, at “the time of reckoning,” she describes the image before her and its impact:

“I turned away to prepare, though I had no idea what to do, and as I was staring at the shore, trying to relax and bring myself into the scene, there was [Kate] Hepburn, crouching in the bushes just within my line of vision. Nobody could see her but me. She fixed me intensely with her eyes, and slowly she raised her clenched fists and shook them as if to say, “Do it! Go ahead. You can do this!” She was willing me into the scene: Katharine Hepburn to Jane Fonda; mother to daughter; older actress, who’d been there and knew about drying up, to younger actress. It was all those layers of things and more. Do it! Do it! You can! I know it. With her energy, she literally gave me the scene, gave it to me with her fists, her eyes, and her generosity, and I will never, ever forget it.” (Jane Fonda: My Life So Far, p. 436-437)

In essence, Kate took the role of Fonda’s off-camera scene partner, aware of how her presence and maternal connection to the younger actress could draw out a great performance. With her fists, she motivated Fonda to face her fears and to confront the difficult, painful emotions that had both plagued and eluded her on and off the screen.

As Fonda points out, Kate had been there, often forced to elicit emotion with no one present to draw her into the scene. For Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) 14 years earlier, she played many of her scenes to an empty wall since Spencer Tracy, only weeks from death, no longer had the stamina to sustain a full-day’s shoot (Life: Remembering Katharine Hepburn 10 Years Later, p. 35). She had famously met “Spence” on the set of Woman of the Year (1942), their first exchange characterized by Kate’s observation, “You’re not as tall as I expected,” which revealed the self-conscious awareness of height as integral to her image and presence. Despite the producer’s prediction that Spence would “cut her down to size,” Kate is a force to be reckoned with as Tess Harding, the smart, successful foreign correspondent whose talent and ambition are tested once she marries. In the film’s penultimate scene, which my sister and I would watch on repeat at Bryn Mawr, Tess breaks into her estranged husband’s apartment with the intent to win back his affections by cooking him breakfast. Kate carries much of the scene herself without dialogue at her disposal until Spence’s character, Sam, enters the kitchen where Tess is making a mess of the meal. With impeccable comedic timing, Kate captures Tess’s misguided determination to demonstrate her domesticity.

Especially in the silent moments, she commands the viewer’s attention–as she did Fonda’s, who “never tired of looking at her”–with her massively expressive eyes that, according to Cary Grant, “could see right through the nonsense in life” (Life: Remembering Katharine Hepburn 10 Years Later, p. 62), and her perfectly sculpted cheek-bones that held the intensity of her expression and that grew even more defined and magnificent with age (Jane Fonda: My Life So Far, p. 427). Defying the producer’s prediction, she instead extenuates her height through the agility of her movements and through the pant suits she insisted on wearing before they had become the acceptable fashion for well-bred women.

The legacy of Kate’s “pant suit look” for modern professional women was recently depicted in an episode of CBS’s critically-acclaimed drama series, The Good Wife when a judge asks Alicia Florrick (Juliana Margulies) what she is wearing. Alicia replies, “A pant suit, your Honor.” The judge admonishes her, “In my courtroom, Mrs. Florrick, men wear suits and women wear skirts.” One can imagine what Kate’s reaction would have been had the judge said that to her character, Amanda Bonner, in the romantic-comedy Adam’s Rib (1949)–perhaps a forerunner of The Good Wife–that again pits her against Spence, this time as married lawyers arguing opposing sides of an attempted murder case.

Most of the nine films Kate and Spence did together feature battle-of-the-sex plots which, at certain points, blurred or even reversed the roles women and men typically played in marital or committed relationships. These plots suited Kate’s life-long image of herself as inhabiting both female and male traits, particularly in the wake of her older brother’s tragic death. Six years before her pairing with Spence, she unabashedly emphasized her androgynous traits, shaving her head to play a boy for Sylvia Scarlett, just as 19-year-old actress Bex Taylor-Klaus recently did for her role as the lesbian tomboy, Bullet, in the third season of AMC’s crime drama, The Killing. The legacy of Kate’s powerful presence is recognized in Bex’s “self-conscious” performance, which takes root in her eyes and manifests itself in the nuances of her expression, movement, and stature. It is also recognized in the onscreen power of other contemporary actresses, notably Cate Blanchett, who won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Kate in Martin Scorsese’s film The Aviator (2004), chronicling the life of Howard Hughes.

And there’s Jane Fonda herself, who seems to have permanently absorbed the physical and emotional energy Kate gave her that day when she was “dry.” This past year, Fonda appeared as ruthless reporter Leona Lansing in HBO’s The Newsroom. Her performance is magnificent, particularly in the final scene of Season 2, Episode 7 when Leona refuses to accept her staff’s resignation after a scandal. Like Kate, she commands our attention, utilizing every ounce of her presence and engaging our emotions with her vivacity and humor. Fittingly, her role is that of motivator–the encourager behind the scenes willing her dishonored staff to “Get it back!”

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i4zNm4KqYg”]

When she was working with Kate for On Golden Pond, Fonda details her elder co-star’s stubborn conviction–despite her liberalism and feminist persona as the daughter of a suffragette who was also a Bryn Mawr alum (Class of 1899)–that a woman could not balance an acting career with motherhood if she wanted to be “great.” As director Frank Capra attested:

“There are women – and then there is Kate. There are actresses – then there is Hepburn. She is wedded to her vocation as a nun is to hers and as competitive in acting as Sonja Henie was in skating.” (Life: Remembering Katharine Hepburn 10 Years Later, p. 69)

Kate’s unwavering dedication to this “vocation” produced an unprecedented career that lasted decades and won her a record four Academy Awards, the last one for On Golden Pond. Fonda recalls that the morning after her win, Kate telephoned to gloat, “You’ll never catch me now!” (Jane Fonda: My Life So Far, p. 439). Indeed, Kate’s record remains intact, although the indefatigable Meryl Streep is close, having won three and mostly likely poised to win another in the near future. But perhaps one could interpret Kate’s boastful exclamation as more of a motivating challenge–a “raising of the fists,” across the ages–willing younger generations of actresses to face their fears and to be conscious of their presence.

In 2006, three years after Kate’s death at age 96, Bryn Mawr established the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center, which hosts the Hepburn Medal ceremony, a lifetime achievement award given to women artists and activists who have transformed their worlds. Recalling Jane Fonda’s memoir, my sister and I imagine that if Kate were alive, she’d pointedly challenge the younger actress in her maternal “God-is-a-New-Englander” voice, “Well, if you can’t catch me in the Oscar count, you can win a Hepburn Medal instead!”

Natalia Lauren Fiore received a B.A. in Honors English and Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College and an M.F.A in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University, where she wrote a feature-length screenplay entitled Sonata under the direction of novelist and screenwriter, Don J. Snyder, and playwright, Jack Dennis. Currently, she holds a full-time tenure track teaching post at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida, where she teaches English and Writing. Her writing interests include film criticism, screenwriting, literary journalism, fiction, the novel, and memoir. Her literature interests include the English novel, American Literature, and Drama – particularly Shakespeare. She blogs at Outside Windows and tweets @NataliaLaurenFi.

‘9 to 5’: Still a Fantasy

“Hey we’ve come this far, haven’t we? This is just the beginning.”

“The beginning” was in 1980, when this feminist comedy classic was released. Dolly Parton belted out the title song, which features a “boss man” who is “out to get her”–it’s an uplifting song, though, that echoes the closing celebratory sentiment: this is just the beginning. Things are going to change.

Well how have we done in 34 years?

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.

“That equal pay thing–that’s got to go.”

At the end of 9 to 5, the Chairman of the Board comes to visit Mr. Hart to congratulate him on his division’s success. He applauds the creative workplace choices that upped productivity by 20 percent. Job sharing policies allowed people to work part time, and an on-site day care, flex time, and equal pay boosted morale and created a “splendid environment,” according to the Chairman. But the equal pay? He whispers to Hart that that has to go.

In reality, Violet (Lily Tomlin), Judy (Jane Fonda), and Doralee (Dolly Parton)–three of Hart’s employees who waged war on him, their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot” boss–were the ones who made the changes in the workplace.

Hart is promoted to a job overseas, and the power trio take their place in his office, toasting their success (in both the workplace and in getting rid of Hart) with champagne.

Judy and Doralee express concern over the lack of equal salary policies, but Violet interjects:

“Hey we’ve come this far, haven’t we? This is just the beginning.”

The beginning was in 1980, when this feminist comedy classic was released. Dolly Parton belted out the title song, which features a “boss man” who is “out to get her”–it’s an uplifting song, though, that echoes the closing celebratory sentiment: this is just the beginning. Things are going to change.

Well how have we done in 34 years? While President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Act in 2009, the National Women’s Law Center reports that “American women who work full-time, year-round are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.” Roughly half of employers offer flextime and only about a third of the “best companies to work for” offer child care, even though these policies–as shown in 9 to 5–can increase productivity, profit, and worker morale.

Of course, these policies are typically only available to professional workers at large companies. For working class women, the situation is more dire, and the fighting is up a steeper hill. Domestic workers, retail workers, home care workers, and restaurant workers are fighting hard and “leaning in” (without rich white women telling them to), but the fight is still necessary.

The House and the Senate are gridlocked over raising the federal minimum wage. Of workers who earn minimum wage, two-thirds are women.

That beginning sure has lasted a long time, Violet.

While the fact that 9 to 5 is still so timely is depressing, there’s much to celebrate in this female buddy comedy. For a comedy, the women are complex and well-written, embodying female stereotypes without becoming stereotypes (and at times dismantling them). They work hard, they play hard (what a great scene, when Doralee, Violet, and Judy are drinking and getting stoned), and they get into a bunch of trouble, but they win in the end.

Meanwhile, commentary on misogynist bosses, anti-family workplaces, patriarchy, and sexism and harassment in the workplace is woven throughout the film.

When they get high, the women have separate revenge fantasies about how they would murder Hart. Violet’s is accompanied by animated birds and woodland creatures, and she, Doralee, and Judy end victorious–in princess costumes waving atop their castle, addressing their adoring subjects who they’ve freed from the oppressive (“sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot”) reign of Franklin Hart. They rewrite the princess narrative something fierce.

And how are we doing, in terms of women and comedy blockbusters, 34 years later?

As Bitch Media pointed out in an article about great female buddy comedies:

“‘Who knew a bunch of ladies could create comedy gold?’ was a common refrain when Bridesmaids first came out. The answer? Oh, I don’t know, maybe ask the millions of moviegoers who made 9 to 5—the 20th-highest-grossing comedy ever?”

It’s a fun comedy that has stood the test of time–which again, is also pretty depressing. What also strikes audiences is how completely female-centric the comedy is, and how much it works. We can imagine for once what it must feel like to watch a film that examines women’s lives and only has one featured male character–who is an (all too realistic) caricature. I can’t speak for male viewers, but I imagine the experience of viewing a film like this is quite similar to what women audiences are faced with constantly. Unfortunately, comedies with women and women’s stories at the helm are still as rare as on-site daycare.

Rewatching this 1980 classic reminds us that women’s lives are complex and have the potential to be made into blockbusters. We’re also reminded that in regard to women in the workplace, we stil have a long way to go. Violet was right–this was just the beginning. Why does the happy ending seem so far away?

If you want a fun, sexist blast from the past, read this New York Times film review of 9 to 5. Workplace policies may not have changed enough since 1980, but I’d like to think that the feminist blogosphere would have eviscerated a review like that. Progress.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.