Conveying a Soul: The Greatness of Meryl Streep

From the feminist angle, Streep’s mold-breaking of the representation of women and her mark on scripts probably adds to her greatness in a way we can never completely measure because we can’t track it. One particular example worth mentioning is that the script for ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ did not originally explain why Joanna Kramer wants to leave Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and she fought the director Robert Benton on the script until the character is allowed to say why herself.

Meryl Streep

This guest post by Cynthia Arrieu-King appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses. 

If you Google “greatest living actor,” the first hit is not only Meryl Streep, but also lists with headings like “besides Meryl Streep” and “after Meryl Streep.” There are video montages, plural, of people freaking out about how much they love her or respect her work. Her work in the mid-70s to early 80s came across the cultural wires as something freakish: the mercurially reproduced accents, the ethereality and seamlessness and virtuosity.
There’s not really any way around the boring facts of talent and hard work here. She has always known her lines. She has always been the one who bikes home from the set in the rain instead of taking a cab. She works with the coach until she’s not just speaking Polish, but Polish with a German accent (Sophie’s Choice). She hides in the closet to practice her singing for Mamma Mia! while her family yells, “We can still hear you.” She presents a moonskinned serenity and hearty laughter in her interviews that belies the hours and hours of monomaniacal obsession that is artistry that has no reason to prove it deserves to be here. It just is here. It is incontrovertible. That probably comes from a good family, a very good education, insane work ethic, shockingly keen intuition, intelligence, and a good ear.
So many actresses show in their performances why it’s hard to be a woman, and the worth of that feels political and rooted in everyday life. Streep knew she could get away with more without putting forth a persona like Jane Fonda. In Streep’s work she never seems to be like any particular person, but convinces the viewer of how human that character is. It is easier to see, especially in her earlier work, the places where people exist in themselves purely and react purely rather than emphasizing gestures. They seem like the essence of a person rather than a person, which sounds like a problem in a way. But this subtle light show makes some sense given what she once told James Lipton. She explained on Inside the Actor’s Studio that she once thought acting was a stupid way to make a living; it doesn’t do anything in the world but now she sees “its worth is in listening to people who maybe don’t even exist or who are voices in your past…come through you through your work and you give them to other people. Giving character to characters who have no other voice, that’s the great work of what we do…I mean so much of this is vanity (being a celebrity)…But the real thing that makes me feel so good is when I know I’ve said something for a soul…I’ve presented a soul.”
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pha-aouBlo”]
Streep has an ability to embody in an otherworldly fashion so often in historical context. Shirley MacClaine in an American Film Institute tribute to Streep once said, “The mystery of your talent is so otherworldly, it makes me understand that there is more to all of us than meets the eye.” So what is she doing? What is she imagining in Sophie’s Choice when she tries to tell the truth of her past after “all the lies” she has told? The containment of her pain and love, the softness of her face recalling, weakness, puniness, rage, the effortless clarity of a traumatic recollection: these all move together in her face such that all seem to present themselves, all the layers are visible somehow. A different actor might show determination, grit, resolve, terror. Streep knows memory doesn’t quite settle into its original feelings at all. So even while recounting her character’s efforts in the Holocaust, you see something that feels from another time, paradoxically immensely present. Here’s the clip:
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70_1MW46G9I”]
There’s another movie in her oeuvre, Plenty, that shows Streep transcending the class and propriety by being able to do almost literary interior monologue as monologue. It doesn’t even come across as something Shakespearean or professed the way Elizabeth Taylor might have done it, or balky the way Hepburn might have, it’s just spilling out. It’s not entertaining in any popcorn movie sense or even particularly sanguine. This movie trots out in Streep’s Susan Trahane the most subtle selfishness, ambivalence, detachment. The narrative elides plot to a large degree, so that you feel you’re missing something on first viewing. People slavishly watch this movie over and over. Susan is contaminated with something so guarded behind rage you do have to see it a few times to understand what her character means, and it’s the kind of vice that makes you feel bad for her. You actually feel bad for her having this rage. This performance reminds the viewer of the difficulty of true self-awareness, deceit, or self-deceit. The closest thing I’ve understood to this in art are the characters in Alice Munro’s short stories who often seem fairly normal and well-adjusted until you start seeing what price they are paying for some subtle flaw escaping their own attention. This is the small heroism for all of us: to know ourselves, to know what we cannot bear and to say something about it.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJq6mafSr-Y”]
From the feminist angle, Streep’s mold-breaking of the representation of women and her mark on scripts probably adds to her greatness in a way we can never completely measure because we can’t track it. One particular example worth mentioning is that the script for Kramer vs. Kramer did not originally explain why Joanna Kramer wants to leave Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and she fought the director Robert Benton on the script until the character is allowed to say why herself.  The effect turned Joanna from a villain of misunderstood women’s liberation–as the script was written–into a person I think it would be hard for any woman living in/having lived in a male-bread-winning-female-stay-at-home family not to witness without blazing recognition. This is a fierce resolution about the representation of women that has spanned her career and for which Streep has more recently got into some hot water over with the Disney people. Many of her lines in Kramer vs. Kramer were written by her, particularly the courtroom scene, and the final scene where she changes her mind about custody of her son. It’s not uncommon to hear in interviews how she spoke her mind about some scene change or tried to hold back from speaking her mind “for a change.”
One can look back on this era of Streep’s work and see that she did not pick the Jane Fonda roles, or the roles of abrasive people on the outside of establishment. She seemed to pick roles or be given roles of a woman always struggling against the constraints of her place, but within something: a marriage, a company, an historical moment. She said on being cast in The Deer Hunter: “They needed a girlfriend, so that was me.” And so she took roles, got acclaim, was always thought to be overpaid when the male actors were getting far more than she. Then something happened when she turned 40. She did not get the same kind of roles. She noticed. She wanted to be in something funny, so eventually she was cast in several comedies, sometimes as a witch, always sending up the Hollywood machine as in Death Becomes Her. She didn’t care if she was not the pretty one. She didn’t think that was what she had been getting cast for anyway, in the pre-40 days.
Having said that, what has happened since that turning point that makes Streep the go-to actress everyone wants for any role for a woman over 60? As Tina Fey quipped at the 2014 Golden Globes, “Streep proves there are still roles for Meryl Streeps over 60.” Tracey Ullman said it so we understand the score even more: “You’re (Meryl’s) the only one working: The rest of us have to show our tits.”  She’s taking all the roles: Margaret Thatcher, Julia Child, a composite of Anna Wintour. This is after a career that started with her domination at Yale, her acceptance then moving into funnier parts. She decided, at some point, “(I)t’s easier to project yourself into what you were, not what you are. Movies are a young person’s playground.” And a little more tellingly: “As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.”  Ergo, dominating her field. Ergo, not questioning where her territory begins and ends. As Goldie Hawn says, “Meryl is a freak. She has no limitations. Well, she’s a martian.” That must be her unsaid lesson to us on greatness. You can’t really learn it, and you never let opportunity get past you.
 Part of me wonders what would happen if she did some little off-the-map film or what it would mean for her to have a late breaking McConnaissance (with less crazy self-regard). Maybe more of a ReConnaissance, a re-knowing? Would that amount to “making it easier for everyone else”? She has nothing to prove, and part of her potency as an artist comes from the fact that she never gave off one vibration of having to prove herself, actor-wise. But something might replenish what have become somewhat recognizable mannerisms in her impersonation-like roles these last years: The head wag of delight. More importantly what are we losing in our depictions of people getting older by having, seemingly, the mythos that only she and three other people play these parts? Something about class probably, race, and ethnicity definitely.
Having gotten momentum in the last few years to gravitate toward fun (Mamma Mia!) and over the top (August: Osage County), she’s thinking nevertheless about history, history as made by women (The Iron Lady). She’s literally supporting the museum of women’s history. Her artistic wishes seem to revolve around wanting women’s history to prevail. For the roles to become more numerous. For film to show the lives of women in proportion to their importance in the real world, as she’s always worked for. Bit by bit, how can it happen? And today, do actresses need to thank her for her breaking the glass ceiling in acting as much as they did in the last decades? Probably not. Maybe we’ll get to a moment when actresses will have the luxury of not having to recall that ceiling. Hopefully long before we forget about Streep.
Streep’s daughter once said of her role as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada: “Now they know the real you.” But whatever monomaniacal and feminist politics she’s wielding, Streep’s still conveying the soul. At a tribute to her acting she said, “I wish I were her, I really do,” and this remark on her celebrity doubles as a remark on the people she’s portrayed. She’s given us this love through 35 years of work to date, and she’s going to keep pushing for the unheard to be heard. In this scene from Silkwood, she gives a look. Friendship, pity, love, helplessness, resolve, seeing the mortal body, a whole idea supported by the shot of the wig and the glasses. It’s a good microcosm of what Streep does–the listening to a spirit, and making sure to truly witness and to speak up for that person’s essence.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Ec20v7wX8″]

Cynthia Arrieu-King is an associate professor of creative writing at Stockton College in New Jersey where she teaches about literature and plagiarism, so beware lazy magazine sites. Her previous Bitch Flicks articles include one on True Grit and one with Stephanie Cawley on Twin Peaks

Women and Work/Labor Issues: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Women and Work/Labor Issues Theme Week here.

A Plea For More Roseannes and Norma Raes: Addressing The Lack of Working-Class Female Characters on American Screens by Rachael Johnson

Working-class female protagonists remain rare, however. More often than not, working-class women play supporting roles as mothers, wives or lovers. Their characters are invariably underwritten or stereotypical.


The Power of Work/Life Balance in Charmed by Scarlett Harris

Phoebe and Paige’s evolution through their working lives is particularly poignant to the millennial Charmed audience; many people I know grew up watching the three (or is it four?) sisters flitting from job to job in their quest to find purpose and fulfillment. And we don’t even have daily demon attacks to contend with!

Insubordination and Feminism in Norma Rae by Amber Leab

A primary question about social fiction is whether the story remains relevant, or if the sociopolitical situation remains mired in the past. Norma Rae does retain relevance, though she’d likely be working in Walmart today instead of a textile mill (as I watched, I wondered how many textile mills still operate in the U.S.). While the movie seems to be a window on a past time in working America, it’s still relevant—and progressive—on many levels.


People who don’t work in the arts don’t realize how much work goes into it. Writers write hundreds of pages before any reader (who isn’t a blood relative) loves their work. Musicians practice for countless hours and write a lot of shitty songs before they compose a tune that makes someone want to sing along. Moms Mabley, the Black, queer woman comedian born in 1894 in the Jim Crow south, ran away at age 14 to become a performer and spent much of the next 66 years onstage, performing and polishing her own comedy routines. Her long experience may be why her work, nearly 40 years after her death, still elicits laughs.

Because Katharine steals Tess’s idea, we automatically pull for Tess, the lower-class underdog; consequently, we are forced to view Katharine, the upper-class princess, as the demonized, selfish boss, determined to achieve success no matter what. Hurt, yet motivated to take control of her career, Tess is now forced to lie in order to have her voice heard. This causes her to be pitted against a boss who has clearly abused her power. Even though Working Girl seems like a harmless, romantic drama, its female representation is firmly rooted in classism and sexism.


9 to 5: Still a Fantasy by Leigh Kolb

“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?


The Devil in The Devil Wears Prada by Amanda Civitello

Our contempt for Miranda Priestly is due, in large part, to the way the film contextualizes her decisions, not just her personality. In making her into a shrill caricature of a woman executive whose single-minded focus on her career ruins her personal life, the film, like so many others, shortchanges the potential of a character like Miranda.


Women, Professional Ambition, and Grey’s Anatomy by Erin K. O’Neill

It is the overwhelming drive for excellence that makes the women on the show so real. It sometimes feels that this kind of ambition is not allowed to exist on TV. Sure, women can have high-powered careers and be very successful. But this is different. This is a show that not just portrays ambitious women, but is actively about professionally ambitious women and how they relate to each other and society.


Working Women in Film by Amber Leab

Women of color who are workers don’t weigh heavily in the American cultural imagination. When women of color appear in films, they tend to be secondary characters in low-paying jobs. Rarely do we see movies about working women who happen to be women of color.


Jessica, Rachel, and Donna are all women working in a male-dominated industry. Jessica has overcome the sexism in the workforce by out-thinking it and by dominating the competition. Rachel has chosen to forego any help from her father, in favor of trying (and failing) on her own. And Donna has seen the patriarchal systems of power, and used them to her own advantage.


Working Class Family With a Touch of Absurdity: Raising Hope by Elizabeth Kiy

TV families are generally presented as aspirational. They usually live an upper middle class livestyle and frequently live comfortably on a single salary, have college degrees and wealthy backgrounds.
Usually when characters work menial labor or minimum wage jobs, they are presented as being in a transitory period. This is the stage before the character gets their life together, when the artist waits for a big break or where a youth supplements their allowance with their earnings. It’s rare that this work is presented as the character’s real life, how it will likely always be.

 

The Devil in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’

Our contempt for Miranda Priestly is due, in large part, to the way the film contextualizes her decisions, not just her personality. In making her into a shrill caricature of a woman executive whose single-minded focus on her career ruins her personal life, the film, like so many others, shortchanges the potential of a character like Miranda.

"The Devil Wears Prada" poster
The Devil Wears Prada poster

 

This guest post by Amanda Civitello appears as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.

One of my favorite childhood books was Earrings, a picture book written by Judith Viorst that tells the story of Charlie, a little girl who wants one thing in life: a pair of earrings. She doesn’t just want them: “she needs them, she loves them, she’s got to have them.” I am certain that this book is meant to teach children the difference between wants and needs, and the value of waiting for what we want (I waited four long years for my pierced ears). Instead, my takeaway was this: earrings are, as the book puts it, “beautiful and gorgeous,” and not only did I want them, I wanted lots of other things like them. As a teenager, I discovered fashion magazines, once again coming face-to-face with a plethora of beautiful things I wanted, needed, and simply had to have (namely, a black Chanel quilted handbag). Like many girls my age, the closest I’ve come to stepping out decked in designer clothes and accessories culled from the pages of Vogue is The Devil Wears Prada, the 2006 hit film starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt.

Directed by David Frankel and based on Lauren Weisberger’s roman-à-clef, the film follows wannabe journalist Andrea “Andy” Sachs as she tries to make a writing career in New York City. Andy’s big break, so she tells herself, arrives in the form of a job offer from Runway magazine, as the second of two personal assistants to the magazine’s editor-in-chief, the inimitable Miranda Priestly. One has the impression that Miranda’s reputation must precede her in editorial circles, but stunningly, Andy has never heard of her (or her magazine, for that matter), and so she takes the job. At the start, she has little interest in Runway or the fashion world at which it is the incontestable center. She holds out hope that she’ll be able to make it through the requisite year – “work here for a year,” her new colleague tells her, “and you can work anywhere in publishing” – relatively unscathed, but it soon becomes apparent that this will not be the case. The reason for this, of course, is her boss: a taskmaster and capricious perfectionist, Miranda is more than a little drunk on her admittedly well-earned power.

Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of the fictional Runway magazine.
Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of the fictional Runway magazine.

 

It should come as no surprise that it’s Miranda Priestly who comes in for the harshest judgment, even when Andy acts in a similar way. Rather than simply leave Miranda as the deliciously draconian executive she is (at one point, she sends Andy out on a mission to secure the unpublished manuscript of the final Harry Potter book), the film makes an attempt to humanize her. “Humanizing” powerful or complex women characters by making them more sympathetic – typically by casting them as mothers, as Amanda Rodriguez and Megan Kearns observed in regard to Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity  – is an all too common trope. But Miranda’s role as mother to her twin daughters does little to humanize her; rather, the film uses the breakdown of her marriage (and later, Andy’s long-term relationship) to humanize her. This decision forces Miranda to make a groveling apology to her husband for being caught in a meeting and unable to contact him when they were meant to have met. Indeed, it’s hard not to feel for Miranda in that moment, of course.

Miranda in one of the two "humanizing" scenes, musing over the implosion of her current marriage.
Miranda in one of the two “humanizing” scenes, musing over the implosion of her current marriage.

 

But the plot provides ample opportunity to make Miranda a more sympathetic character: a workplace narrative that is given only the vaguest of mentions. In the film’s final 15 minutes, we learn that Miranda’s boss, Irv Ravitz, the CEO of Runway’s publisher, has been planning to replace her. Of course, Miranda knows, and she manages to circumvent Irv’s plan by saving her job at the expense of giving her longtime employee Nigel a significant promotion. But all of this happens behind the scenes, because this storyline is meant to convince Andy to see the light and leave Runway, which she does. Having humanized her with a tearful scene in which she announces the end of her marriage, we’re immediately reminded of how cruel and calculating Miranda actually is, such that our final estimation of her is negative. We’re meant to kick ourselves for sympathizing with such a cold-hearted woman in the first place.

Miranda (Meryl Streep), Andy (Anne Hathaway), and Nigel (Stanley Tucci)
Miranda (Meryl Streep), Andy (Anne Hathaway), and Nigel (Stanley Tucci)

 

A more robust look at Miranda’s psyche and motivation might have made her too sympathetic, in the end: a woman who has to fight to keep the job at which she excels? Perish the thought. How sad that it is preferable to emphasize that a woman with prominence and power is ruthless, conniving, and frigid, rather than a dedicated, disciplined individual who goes to great – and ultimately, selfish, being at the expense of others – lengths to protect her own position. If Miranda were a man, we still wouldn’t be cheering as she gives the promised job to her rival instead of her loyal employee, but we’d likely have a bit more respect for her for conspiring to keep her job with as little collateral damage as possible. As the saying goes, “you do what you have to do” – except, it seems, when one is a woman.

The Devil Wears Prada hinges on one crucial supposition: that the world of fashion and the “real world” are mutually exclusive. In the end, we’re meant to cheer for Andy, who has managed to break free from the artificiality of Runway to become a cub reporter, and pity Miranda, who has sacrificed the same kind of happiness Andy now enjoys for her career. We’re supposed to laugh at the “clackers,” the well-heeled denizens of Runway, and at the intensity with which Miranda considers turquoise belts to pair with a dress which no one would actually wear on the street. It’s easy to dismiss Miranda’s considerable achievements as editor-in-chief of Runway, since her industry is perceived as frivolous. Would we have the same perspective on Miranda if, for example, she was actually helming a publication like Granta, The New Yorker, or The Economist? I think not.

The infamous turquoise belts
The infamous turquoise belts

 

It’s easy to dismiss magazines like the fictional Runway – or its real-life counterparts like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and W. – as the silly, self-indulgent, entirely out-of-touch by-products of a narcissistic industry. And to a large extent, they are self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, and incredibly out-of-touch. But they do represent, as Miranda so eloquently argues, the lookbooks of an extraordinarily profitable and important industry, one that extends far beyond the glossy pages of a magazine and into the homes of people who don’t give a second thought to what is written in its pages. Miranda Priestly as executive – and her thinly veiled inspiration, current Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour – shouldn’t be perceived as lesser because she’s in a “frivolous” industry, and I wish that the film hadn’t hammered the ridiculousness of the fashion industry as much as it did. It’s a business, like anything else. Early in the film, Miranda takes Andy to task for calling the clothes at the run-through “stuff” – and she’s correct. It isn’t just “stuff” at all, and it’s a shame that the film makes the point so well and then spends the rest of its running time trying to dismantle it.

Andy in her "lumpy, blue sweater"
Andy in her “lumpy, blue sweater”

 

Are there better things in life to save for than a Chanel bag? Yes, which is why my teenage Chanel fund has long since been absorbed into my bank account. The Devil Wears Prada captures quite well the degree of luxury and inherent frivolity in the fashion industry. Our contempt for Miranda Priestly is due, in large part, to the way the film contextualizes her decisions, not just her personality. In making her into a shrill caricature of a woman executive whose single-minded focus on her career ruins her personal life, the film, like so many others, shortchanges the potential of a character like Miranda. After all, a complex, strong woman doesn’t have to be “nice” in order to be either of those things; Miranda could have been a compelling villain. Instead, the narrative plays to our sympathies and turns her into a conniving shrew.

With that said – I’m still waiting on that Chanel, you know.


Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She is the editor of Iris: A Magazine of New Writing for LGBTQ+ Young Adults, a not-for-profit literary magazine publishing fiction and poetry with LGBTQ+ themes. She has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.