FIL110 WA9

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Recommended: Gender inequality within work spaces

The interplay between the film Working Girl (1988) and American cultural and social tensions of the late 1980’s is expressed in the film’s mise en scène and story lines. The narrative takes place in the competitive, back biting world of Wall Street in the late 1980’s during a time when women still struggled for equality and were more often than not seen as sexual objects. Drugs were a major social concern of the time as cocaine became widely popular from American yuppies to the rich and famous. Since money afforded all kinds of status symbols in a flourishing economy, the use of cocaine, “the rich man’s drug” was on an incline. The film Working Girl depicts life in the late 1980’s New York financial district accurately, the “main characters Tess, Jack, and their contemporaries are in the midst of a drug-fueled, greedy era in which people will use anything they can, including their sexuality, to get what they want.” (Boerner, 2007) Dressing for success was also a major concern within the ranks of the white collar working class.

The narrative of the film Working Girl coincided with the financial state of America during the late eighties when the economy was flourishing. Despite the economic upswing of the American economy, competitiveness and back biting was a major concern as people tried to climb the corporate ladder. The film’s protagonist Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) earned her bachelor’s degree by taking night classes while working as a secretary, but was not given the same chances to succeed as the men around her. Her experience as a secretary hampered her ability to be taken seriously and be promoted to a higher position. Although women had come a long way with equality, in 1988 the financial industry on Wall Street ...

... middle of paper ...

...ation to succeed progresses, the change can be reflected in her garments, hairstyle and manner of speaking. By the film’s end she is dressed in a more corporate and acceptable manner for business. The class distinction from the secretary pool and the executives had obvious differences. The secretaries wore their hair teased and high with lots of colorful makeup and too many accessories that visually separated them from the executives by attire. The costume designer clearly expressed these lines in the different styles of dress of the secretary pool and the corner office inhabitants.

References

Boerner, H. (2007, February 21). Working girl. Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/working-girl.
Wick, D. (Producer), & Nichols, M. (Director). (1988). Working girl (Motion Picture). USA: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

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