1ST MAY 2022

RECORD 5 WORK VS ROMANCE, A HOLLYWOOD DILEMMA

Special writing to this Labour Day is dedicated to my speculative thoughts on why all work-related themes in movies are always seen as negative versus their romantic subplots. Are the movies really made only for us to dream romance? And what do females dream about in the cinema?

Films like Romancing the Stone (1984) tend to be in the TV programme again and again and also commercially successful in the cinemas are to be resurrected for sequels over and over again unlike Working Girl (1988), for example, that tend to stay in the history and cinephiles’ lists but unlikely to make people come again to the cineams for. And that all despite the modern era, women making money in business, runnng corporations and film companies that make and produce movies with other females and about other females. What essentially Reese Witherspoons’s company Hello Sunchine does. Her friendship and collaboration with Nicole Kidman brought 2 seasons of fantastic Big Little Lies (2017-2019), where we get to unfold and understand complex characters and the backside of white previleged and not-so women in the US. Not a unititng dreamy romance but a relatable drama that brought unheard voices avant scene. Another ‘working girls’ story that turned out commercially successfull is an ultimate feminist statement of the 80s between Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda, called 9 to 5 (1980). If you haven’t come across it, you surely know the theme song written and performed by Dolly Parton that catches you from the first “Working nine to five, what a way to make a living!” Although, let’s flick through the successful working girl films after the Holly Golightly, and moving to the 90s we have a legacy of extremely successful Clueless (1995), we have Legally Blone (1997) starring Reese Witherspoon. And the last one actually get to have a sequel. However, they are still state a dream, a fairytale that is relatable but comicly unrealistic, that plays on Shalesperean twists. Is that actually our dreams?

In the past, films with working females, always push for juxstaposing their male colleagues. Let’s just look at a whole genre of ‘working man’ movies that doesn’t need to have any strong gender inequality problem. Whether we talk about Devil’s Advocate (1997) or Scorsese’s Wolf from Wall Street (2013), they reflect on the global and eternal good and bad. Such movies don’t have to exist between the genres or take on an additional layer of social problems (plus a real-story aspect) as in Erin Brokovich (1997) or gender inequality as in The Associate (1996) with Whoopi Goldberg so to have an impact after the viewing. All movies about working girls in offices appear to be more of a point than an actual story to follow, which unpicks into a pretty Sci-Fi material quite often (with gender roles being equalled or the corporation becomes more human as love wins it all in Two Week Notice (2002) with Sandra Bullock and Carry Bradshow to be able to afford that many Manolo Blahniks).

It is hard to imagine an equally successful movie about a dreamy and romanticly unreal man (if we compare to Wolf from Wall Street (2013) or All the President’s Men (1976) ) without it become cringe and the main charater seen as a loser. Let’s think about iconic How to Get Rid of a Guy in 10 Days (2003) and Richi Tennenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). As all male character has a jounrey or their ultimate goal, whether it’s Forrest Gump (1994), Galdiator (2000) or a movie about upbringing as Boy (2010) by Taika Waititi (which is a bit out of our topic range). Well, we might not see a female version of Unbreakable (2014) or every other movie with Harrison Ford. Where main characters don’t seem to be questioned twice what actually they want. Most of the ‘working men’ has to deal with what comes. When female characters always dream in the movies, and keep asking themself - ‘is that what I want?’. 

So let’s talk of a game changer. Let’s get back to an Oscar-winner actress Sandra Bullock, who boomed a chimera of romance for a working girl genre. We have Miss Congeniality (2000) (which has a sequel), Proposal (2009), Morning Glory (2010) with Rachel McAdams, Set it Up (2018) with Zoey Deutch among others. In the 2020s a working girl is no surprise, so the spotlight of the story on the female fight is moved to urban or single moms (The Blind Side (2009), Big Little Lies (2017 - 2019) ), the 70s activists (Mrs. America (2020), Battle of the Sexes (2017), On the Basis of Sex (2018) ), young women with tragic stories (Maid (2021) ) or women who worked enough and finally get to learn what pleasure is, as well as stories of women helping as Vera Drake that was portrayed by Imelda Staunton and gender-n-society as in Transamerica (2005).  The narrative of a working girl today asks her, ‘is that career goal all that I wanted or should I go back to good-ol’ happy-end romance?’ 

Women and their daily duties get to have their time on screen for a while now. As in European cinema after WII a working girl is seen a head of a household too. Like Sofia Loren’s Antonietta in Una Giornata Particolare (1977) dir. by Ettore Scola, looking into frozen dreams of hers and her friend for the day, Gabriel. We get to share her space and time in the period of fascists’ Italy. Similar in Vera Chytilova’s O něčem jiném (1963) unites a working girl that runs away from her routine and  a hard-working famous athlete Eva Bosakova that being constantly doubted of what is her choice. Fictional storyline meets real documentary shots and interwines two women. How Trinh. T. Minh Ha describes importance in decolonising language we use in representation in her essay on documentary films and the importance in perceiving that image as an almost a dream of manifesting a new system. Hoping that it will change our relationship we build. So is the future is female really then? As both, daydreaming romances and Sci-Fi scenarios of ‘then what’ in the offices give the freedom to answer what women dream about.