In praise of 9 to 5 and the ​’80s career woman

You’re in the same boat / With a lot of your friends
Wait­in’ for the day your ship’ll come in / And the tide’s gonna turn / And it’s all gonna roll your way

Dol­ly Par­ton sings these words in ​‘9 to 5’, the theme song from the 1980 film of the same name. Devel­oped and pro­duced by Jane Fon­da, direct­ed by Col­in Hig­gins and co-writ­ten by Patri­cia Resnick, 9 to 5 cen­tres on a trio of female office work­ers belea­guered by their ​“sex­ist, ego­tis­ti­cal, lying, hyp­o­crit­i­cal big­ot” of a boss (Dab­ney Cole­man). There is Judy (Fon­da), a prim divor­cée forced to return to work, Vio­let (Lily Tom­lin), a straight-talk­ing senior employ­ee who watch­es with grit­ted teeth as her male col­leagues climb the company’s ranks, and Doralee (Par­ton, in her first fea­ture film role), a bux­om blonde on the receiv­ing end of a leer­ing boss and jeer­ing, gos­sipy co-workers.

The three end up bond­ing over a shared hatred off their boss, get­ting stoned and swap­ping revenge fan­tasies after work. When Vio­let acci­den­tal­ly slips rat poi­son into her boss’ cof­fee, the girls bandy togeth­er to cov­er up her crime – and, with Coleman’s Franklin Hart, Jr tem­porar­i­ly out of the pic­ture, to imple­ment some seri­ous changes at the office. Equal pay, flex­i­ble work­ing hours, a job share pro­gramme and a crèche are intro­duced, with Vio­let cheek­i­ly (albeit uniron­i­cal­ly) quip­ping that accord­ing to research, ​“pro­vid­ing ade­quate ben­e­fits con­tributes to a hap­pi­er and ulti­mate­ly more pro­duc­tive work­force”. Her supe­ri­ors agree – except about the equal pay thing, of course (“that’s got to go).

Released in 1980, 9 to 5 kicked off a run of office come­dies about white, white-col­lar women work­ers that would con­tin­ue through­out the decade. These come­dies were a direct response to the women’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment of the 1970s. As women began to grasp new­found social and sex­u­al free­doms, film­mak­ers began explor­ing their pro­fes­sion­al desires, anx­i­eties and oppres­sions. With its car­toon­ish humour and slap­stick hijinks, the broad com­e­dy of 9 to 5 feels some­what removed from the work­place-set rom-coms that fol­lowed it. Yet what real­ly dis­tin­guish­es 9 to 5 from lat­er films like Baby Boom or Work­ing Girl is its pol­i­tics. With its prank­ish anar­chy, sis­ter­ly sol­i­dar­i­ty and union­i­sa­tion of the work­force, 9 to 5 is a utopi­an social­ist fem­i­nist fan­ta­sy. Even Parton’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics serve as a play­ful back­slap of anti-cap­i­tal­ist solidarity.

In Baby Boom and open­ing mon­tage cuts quick­ly between sky­ward shots of tow­er­ing, Man­hat­tan sky­scrap­ers. A stop sign screams ​‘DON’T WALK’ but the film imme­di­ate­ly estab­lish­es that hun­dreds of sneak­ered, skirt­ed Wall Street women are doing it any­way. A voiceover con­firms the film’s choose-your-own-adven­ture fem­i­nism, explain­ing that these women are mov­ing ​“out of the pink ghet­to and into the exec­u­tive suite”. Diane Keaton’s JC Wiatt is one such woman – a high-pow­ered busi­ness exec­u­tive whose self-assigned alias is ​‘The Tiger Lady’. When she inher­its baby Eliz­a­beth from her deceased cousin, she’s forced to accom­mo­date the child. But by the film’s log­ic, babies are incom­pat­i­ble with board­rooms and so JC quits her job and buys a fix­er-upper in Ver­mont, where she meets a hand­some vet and starts a suc­cess­ful busi­ness ven­ture mak­ing gourmet baby food.

In her book ​‘Back­lash: The Unde­clared War Against Amer­i­can Women’, Susan Falu­di argues that Baby Boom ​“pre­tends to reject the ​’80s mon­ey eth­ic with­out ever leav­ing its orbit”. In oth­er words, JC’s suc­cess – finan­cial, famil­ial and roman­tic – is the result of her abil­i­ty to redi­rect her busi­ness skills to a ​“more wom­an­ly” but sim­i­lar­ly lucra­tive voca­tion. But per­haps JC’s domes­tic exploits reveal more about screen­writer Nan­cy Mey­ers (an Amer­i­can clas­si­cist of the high­est cal­i­bre) and her per­son­al fas­ci­na­tion with fam­i­lies, inte­ri­ors and women in the home. In any case, JC doesn’t take to moth­er­hood as com­fort­ably or as quick­ly as some of the film’s crit­ics suggest.

Baby Boom set a new tem­plate for films about work­ing women, swap­ping out 9 to 5’s social­ist fem­i­nism for neolib­er­al choice fem­i­nism and eco­nom­ic indi­vid­u­al­ism (also in 1987, anx­i­eties about women’s eco­nom­ic indi­vid­u­al­ism also man­i­fest­ed in Adri­an Lyne’s domes­tic thriller Fatal Attrac­tion). Two years lat­er, Mike Nichols’ Work­ing Girl arrived. With its Stat­en Island hero­ine and every(wo)man tagline – ​‘For any­one who’s ever won. For any­one who’s ever lost. And for every­one who’s still in there try­ing’ – the film pri­mar­i­ly con­cerns itself with class. Melanie Grif­fith stars as Tess McGill, a work­ing class pen­cil-push­er with ​“a head for busi­ness and a bod for sin” who suf­fers a string of unsup­port­ive boss­es – the most recent of whom is Katharine Park­er (a deli­cious, wink­ing Sigour­ney Weaver). Bright, prag­mat­ic and pow­er­less, Tess comes up with the ideas but receives none of the credit.

In clas­sic fairy tale fash­ion, Tess tries out a new job, new clothes and a new boyfriend (played by Har­ri­son Ford on unusu­al­ly light, good-natured form) – all bor­rowed from an unsus­pect­ing Katharine, con­ve­nient­ly laid up after a ski­ing acci­dent. If Tess is Cin­derel­la, Katharine is the wicked step­moth­er who gets her come­up­pance (worth it, though, to see Weaver jab­bing her crutch­es at Grif­fith in a rare moment of phys­i­cal com­e­dy for the actress). As Falu­di points out, ​“Tess is allowed to move up the ranks of Amer­i­can busi­ness only by tear­ing anoth­er woman down; in 1980s cin­e­ma, as in America’s real board­rooms, there’s only room for one woman at a time.”

9 to 5’s empha­sis on sis­ter­hood, social­ism and sol­i­dar­i­ty is out; pull-your­self-up-by-your-boot­straps indi­vid­u­al­ism is in (per­haps indica­tive of the dif­fer­ence between Jim­my Carter’s pres­i­den­cy in 1980 and Ronald Regan’s in 1988). Yet while its pol­i­tics are imper­fect, there’s some­thing to be said for Work­ing Girl’s fem­i­nist prax­is. Not her pet­ty tus­sles with Katharine, but rather her con­niv­ing com­mit­ment to some­how cheat­ing the sys­tem and find­ing a loop­hole that allows her to approach work in her own way.

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life work­ing my ass off and get­ting nowhere just because I fol­lowed rules I had noth­ing to do with set­ting up,” Tess tells her col­leagues in her cli­mac­tic speech. This rejec­tion of con­strict­ing, cor­po­rate rules – and an endur­ing sense of self-made mox­ie – is the lega­cy of the ​’80s career woman on screen.

Bechdel Test Fest and The Cel­lu­loid Sor­cer­ess are host­ing a dou­ble bill of 9 to 5 and Work­ing Girl at the Phoenix Cin­e­ma in Lon­don on Sun­day 5 March. Tick­ets are avail­able at bechdel​test​fest​.com