Thoughts on 9 to 5
I watched 9 to 5 last night and I have some thoughts on it.
First of all, it is a great movie and I highly recommend it. From the men being promoted over clearly more competent women to the use of jargon to coerce workers into doing more, the film portrays the realities of working life both in the time it was shown and now. The movie keeps this serious topic light and funny with over the top fantasy sequences, quirky characters, and plot twists that I personally didn’t see coming. I enjoyed the film as entertainment and as an analysis of workplace problems. Though it is disheartening to see that the workplace problems of sexism, classism, racism, and ableism addressed in the film (some more blatantly than others) still run rampant today.
Second for some thoughts on random scenes and aspects of the movie.
My first thought from the DVD menu was that this film stars Lily Tomlin who plays Frankie and Jane Fonda who plays Grace on Netflix’s show Grace and Frankie, so they definitely should have Dolly Parton on as a homage to this film in some way. This thought came with consequences however because throughout the whole film I couldn’t stop seeing Tomlin’s character as Frankie and Fonda’s character as Grace. There actions were sometimes just spot on as to what their characters on the show would do that it was hard to separate the roles.
Judy using a type writer for the first time is me trying to use my boss’ MacBook at work after a life as a PC user: frustrating and mistake-ridden. A shoulder mounted telephone receiver holder is brilliant though and I totally wish I had one for my iPhone.
The hairstyles in this movie are hilariously awful. Oh late 70s, you can keep your big poofy hair. Some of the skirts were super cute and I wanted them, but they chose some of the ugliest colours for those skirts and the shirts with which they paired them. I also want some of the cars. Cars looked so much cooler in the 70s. Also can we talk about the #looks Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are serving in their fantasy sequences?
I think the main characters would have a lot of fun playing this Whack Your Boss game if it had been around way back then. They could take some pointers on being a bit more creative.
My last note on a more serious tone is that I was surprised to find the film to be intersectional. While clearly the film focuses on three white women’s problem with their white male boss, if one is watching, you can see how the changes they implement are helpful to everyone. At the very beginning, Violet (Lily Tomlin’s character) and a black mailroom worker discuss their difficulties in getting promotion, showing it isn’t just gender that causes struggles in the work place. At the end, when their reveal to their boss the changes they made, the office is visibly more diverse. A man in a wheelchair rolls to his desk. There are more women of colour shown than in previous scenes. It shows that the women were not only making changes to benefit themselves and those like them, but everybody. And the changes they made are things feminists today are still searching for: daycare services, equal pay, flexible hours. I was expecting this movie to be very white woman centred, and while it mainly was, the addition of those background characters were a pleasant surprised.
Overall, I recommend this movie as fun and educational. And I will thus end on what “9 to 5” conjures in my brain: