Reel Women: Sister Act

Today, E.L. brings us back to a movie invested in community—though this community is expressed in a somewhat unexpected way. As with all of the movies in our Reel Women series, this one offers up a kind of unabashed pleasure that can be the most radical form of self-care. And, like all movies in this series, this one is best enjoyed with your witch coven by your side.

---

 

Welcome back to Reel Women, our series featuring women on film. Last time we talked about the erotics of female competition in Working Girl. This time we’ll concentrate on the erotics of female collaboration in Sister Act.

 

Whoopi Goldberg, rare EGOT winner and shade-throwing daytime TV hostess, sparkles as a lounge singer-cum-nun on the run. My childhood memories of this movie include the musical numbers and habits, but I had totally forgotten the brilliance of Whoopi’s comic timing. She leads a cast of talented comedians who, dressed in habits, must more or less bring the laughs using only their faces. Considering the use of women’s bodies in mainstream comedy from the 90s, this is an impressive feat. Women tend to exist in these movies as either the objects of lust that reveal the limits of the male protagonist’s own attractiveness (think There’s Something About Mary), or as the undesirable butt of the joke (think every fat woman to grace celluloid since the inception of the film medium).

In Sister Act they are neither. Women’s bodies aren’t played for comedy here, which feels pretty impressive when you begin to count the number of non-normative bodies in this movie—the convent is filled with old women, fat women and a black woman, and none of these are targeted for easy jokes. Dressed in habits, their bodies don’t figure much at all (with a few notable exceptions, including Kathy Najimy’s dance scene). Instead, comedy grows naturally from women talking to each other.

Kathy Najimy, Whoopi Goldberg and Wendy Makkena owning the face game in Sister Act (1992)

Released in 1992, Sister Act feels like an anomaly. Part of a small cohort of early 90s sisterhood movies such as Thelma and Louise (1991) and A League of Their Own (1992), it is far more interested in the drama of female relationships than the will-they-or-won’t-they of heterosexual romance. In fact, the fantasy offered by all of these films is that of an escape from the stifling confinement and sometimes outright violence of a world with men. At best, the men in these films are well-intentioned but myopic (see Harvey Keitel in Thelma and Louise) and at worst, they are selfish and brutally violent (Harvey Keitel in Sister Act). And even Brad Pitt’s torso can’t soften the fact that the options for male relationships in these films are so much less compelling than those offered by women.

The action of Sister Act begins with the threat of masculine violence that sends us to the most homosocial place on earth. The convent here is at once a refuge from the world of men and a space in which female collaboration can transform the world for the better. Once sex with men loses its capacity to generate action and motivation, what’s left is the powerful, difficult and dynamic society of female friendship.

That’s not to say these female friendships aren’t also erotic. The taut looks that Maggie Smith’s Mother Superior shoots Whoopi Goldberg’s Deloris sizzle with angry energy, and their understated power struggles are nothing if not sexy.

Maggie Smith as the Reverend Mother with the look of a Dom in Sister Act (1992)

But the true romance, I think, blossoms between Deloris and Sister Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena), the convent’s hot young novitiate. Delores is the worldly older mentor to Mary Robert’s naive but curious pupil, and if Delores were a man we would expect a steamy kiss before the final credits roll.

Their relationship reminds me of another film in which witnessing a gruesome murder sends a worldly metropolitanite to a cloistered religious community. In Witness (1985), it seems obvious to us that Harrison Ford’s cop will end up in the arms of the Amish mother played by Kelly MicGillis, but in Sister Act the convent keeps queer possibilities safely in the subtext. Delores cracks Mary Robert’s shell and frees her voice, and Mary Robert in turn offers Delores a gentle welcome to the convent community and even sneaks into Delores’ bedroom to offer her flower (alarm clock) to keep Delores company while she sleeps.

Uncertain attraction in the convent, Sister Act (1992)

Mary Robert is almost always shot in closeup to capture her doe-eyed gaze at Delores, and the looks they exchange are always tender and quietly knowing. Beneath their robes Delores is velvet wrapped in steel, gently drawing out Mary Robert whose self-effacing timidity belies her spunk.

The thesis of Sister Act is that really well-arranged choral music can revitalize a neighborhood. In this world, a rollicking arrangement of “Salve Regina” can entice teenage street toughs to Sunday Mass and a dozen nuns in a local church choir can become famous enough to attract the Pope himself for a visit. In this world, the rejuvenation of the church and the community beyond is made possible by the artistic collaboration of a bunch of middle-aged women. In this world, the final reward isn’t the arrival of a man (even if he is the Pope), but is rather the final musical number itself.

Church choir remixes “Salve Regina” in Sister Act (1992)

Community in this movie takes shape around the commune rather than the couple. Sister Act is interested in the possibilities that open up when we shift our attention away from heterosexual sex, reproduction and the nuclear family toward forms of connection that do not need men to thrive. Community spaces and relations are built through joint effort among non-reproductive women rather than through normative family structures, and the aesthetic appeal of the choir’s performances replaces the sex appeal of the female body as the site of community (re)production.

While heterosexual sex ends with Vince chasing Delores with a gun, female collaboration here ends with a bunch of nuns cackling joyfully over contraband tubs of ice cream.

Finally, because I can, I will leave you with this image of one of my favorite moments from the film: Delores dismissively eyeing Vince’s gift of a purple mink jacket while sporting a full-length fur coat. An allegory of heterosexuality if there ever was one.

Two fur coats in one scene, Sister Act (1992)

 

Advertisement

Big Sound Saturdays: Sister Soul

Ladies first, there’s no time to rehearse

I’m divine and my mind expands throughout the universe

– Queen Latifah, “Ladies First”

For today’s mix, I collaborated with the inimitable M.H. to serve a broad swath of soulful, genre-spanning women: from R&B and blues to hip-hop, soul, country, reggae, and funk. Donna Summers leads us in with the radio edit of what, when she first released it as a single on Oasis Records in 1975, totalled at about sixteen minutes and fifty seconds of orgasmic moaning, the mega-hit “Love to Love You Baby.” We float on Dolly’s “Early Morning Breeze” through the melty, ecstatic harmonies of Studio One’s the Soulettes and into Mariah Carey’s timeless “Fantasy,” into what Maya reminds us is one of the best tough-girl songs of our early teens: Toni Braxton’s breakup anthem, “He Wasn’t Man Enough For Me,” and through the lyrical gymnastics of young Queen Latifah and Monie Love. No story line to chart in this mix, really: Erykah Badu plays the prophet, Denise La Salle takes no prisoners, Etta James wreaks havoc over what must be the best horn solo in soul history. A room full of strong women, singing together.

It felt so right and good to make a mix where Denise La Salle rubs shoulders with Toni Braxton, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love—where Sugarpie DeSanto can sing her pre-party dress-up hip-shaker nestled between a progenitor and a disciple, where Mariah links arms with fellow high-voiced angel Dolly Parton. In Sister Soul, Aretha Franklin answers TLC and Big Mama Thornton protects her brood, excoriating the man trying to break into this sonic house of women with the righteous, enormous, “I Smell A Rat.” Maya and I have more rooms to fill with female musicians—stay tuned!

Reel Women: Working Girl

Melanie Griffith changing into professional uniform as Tess in Working Girl (1988)

 

Welcome to our new series: Reel Women! Every month, we’ll offer a few films—classic, indie, campy, award-winning, forgotten, beloved, bad—that feature powerful, resolute, angry, conflicted, hilarious, shallow, deep women. This series stretches beyond the Strong Female Protagonist trope—our leads can’t kick ass in heels without smudging their lipstick. They don’t throw off pithy one-liners after they’ve pulverized the foolish men that Underestimated Them, and their strength doesn’t serve as justification for their presence in a male-driven movie. They’ve got bad hair and mean families and do stupid things in pursuit of guys that aren’t good for them. We’re here to celebrate the results—sometimes brilliant, sometimes cringe-worthy—when women are given the opportunity to carry a movie.

These films are best experienced with other women. So assemble your coven, and queue it up!

Megan Fox in Transformers, proving she’s hot and strong by fixing a car (!!)—what she lacks in midriff she makes up for in mechanical skill

First up to bat: Working Girl.

In many ways, Working Girl is the wicked step-daughter of 9 to 5. Produced only 8 years later, it seems already to be looking back with contempt at intra-office sisterhood. In less than a decade, the secretary’s fantasy transforms from righteous punishment of a boneheaded misogynist male boss to the strategic usurpation of the job and boyfriend of a Mean Girl female boss. In some ways, this represents a kind of progress—women can be bosses now as well as secretaries. At the close of the 70s, even after so much feminist agitation for workplace reform—over the course of a few decades, The Equal Pay Act  and Fair Labor Standards Act (1963), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964), Title IX (1972), and the Pregnancy Descrimination Act (1978) among others were instituted to address gender inequity—women were still relegated more or less to the role of secretary and subject to all sorts of violence and discrimination in the workplace. But by the end of the 80s the Working Girl, with her sneakers and shoulder pads, had become a powerful trope that suggested both women’s increasing professional power as well as the fear that their desire to “have it all” might undermine their femininity. As Harrison Ford’s character Jack says to Melanie Griffith’s Tess during their first encounter, “You’re the first woman I’ve seen at one of these things that dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman.”

But in other ways, the rise of the Working Girl at the expense of the secretarial sisterhood signals a shift away from professional equality toward an ethos of individualist success that has no room for something like community. Where three women in 9 to 5 not only teach a much-needed lesson to an incompetent man but also successfully run a corporate department as a team, Working Girl represents the heights an ambitious woman may reach when she’s willing to leave other women behind.

Behold the sisterhood of Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda in 9 to 5 (1980)

There are moments in Working Girl of non-competitive female connection, but they are few and far between. Tess’ best friend Cynthia, played by the sparkling and wacky (and so much better than her brother, I don’t care what any of you say!) Joan Cusack, sticks by her side and throws down tough truth bombs when Tess’ ambitions seem to outpace reality. “Sometimes I sing and dance around in the house in my underwear,” she tells Tess, “Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.” But, for the most part, Cynthia is there to remind us with her Midwestern solidity and real talk that a girl with green eyeshadow and feathered hair will never make it in the world of double-breasted power suits.

The lesson of Working Girl is that sisterhood is best left to the secretaries.

Joan Cusack rocking that green eyeshadow as Cynthia in Working Girl (1988)

The film actually rehearses the language of female solidarity only to reveal it as stale and empty. The central female relationship between Tess and her manipulative boss Katherine, played by Sigourney Weaver, is one predicated on deep animosity and competition veiled—at least at first—by the rhetoric of sisterhood.

During their first meeting, Katharine lays out some “ground rules” which include a dress code authorized by Coco Chanel—“Dress shabbily,” Katharine declares while eyeing up Tess’ jewelry, “they notice the dress. Dress impeccably, they notice the woman. Coco Chanel.”—And an emphasis on teamwork. “I consider us a team. Tess. I want your input. I welcome good ideas and I like to see hard work rewarded….It’s a two-way street on my team.” But female teams in Working Girl don’t seem to work. Katharine steals Tess’ ideas and Tess steals Katharine’s clothes, house, job and boyfriend. It is the All About Eve of the yuppie generation, and like many things that don’t surprise me about the yuppie generation, this version celebrates Eve Harrington dethroning Margot Channing.

Rather than sisterhood, we’re offered male partners and mentors whom Tess can trust and run to when the women in her life get too catty. The business plot includes a fatherly corporate type who can see through Katharine’s machinations and finally gives Tess the credit (and the job) she deserves. This is a far cry from 9 to 5 in which both the bosses and the husbands are witless at best, and downright malevolent at worst. In Working Girl, there is only room for one woman in the corner office, and you can either be her or be her secretary.

Harrison Ford as the moderately charming but pretty forgettable love-interest/trophy is the least interesting part of this movie. He exists, on one hand, as the reward for Tess’ plucky go-get-‘em attitude, and on the other, as the heaterosexual object of desire that secures her femininity in the midst of her ambitious ladder-climbing. He might be the least suave rich investment executive in Manhattan in the late 80s. He mixes Scotch with Tequila, he has the smallest bed any bachelor living in a historic walkup has ever owned, and his closed-mouth kisses look deeply uncomfortable. His character is, in other words, the embodiment of what a pubescent boy thinks game looks like.

The most pitiful bed ever to grace a bachelor pad, Working Girl (1988)

Sigourney Weaver’s Katharine is, for me, the best thing about Working Girl. She is the Mean Girl par excellence, and in the version of this movie in my head, she is Christian Grey to Tess’ Anastasia Steele. She wears full-length mink coats, uses fainting as a business tactic, and proves just how milquetoast Harrison Ford is standing next to her.

Full cougar, even with a cast, Sigourney Weaver is perfection itself in Working Girl (1988)

Her scenes with Melanie Griffith sizzle because the chemistry born of female aggression, in the world of Working Girl, is so much more potent than the desire born of heterosexual love. This movie conjures up the very thing it attempts to discipline: a world in which female relationships—competitive, destructive, erotic—are more vital and compelling than the men offered to replace them.