Women Labor Activists in the Movies: Nine Depictions of Workplace Organizers, 1954-2005Some of the most indelible images of women in recent American film have been of working women fighting for labor reform or to expose corporate corruption. This critical text explores films with female labor activists as main protagonists, illuminating issues of gender and class while depicting the challenges of working class women. Films covered include Salt of the Earth, Pajama Game, Union Maids, With Babies and Banners, Norma Rae, Silkwood, and Live Nude Girls Unite! Through comparative analysis, the text examines the responses of these films to the labor and feminist movements of the last half century, and how American cinema has articulated notions of disempowerment, ambivalence and, at times, the resistance of both women and the working class at large. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Multiple
Transgressions of Salt of the Earth | 15 |
Two WorkingClass Women Protofeminist Performance and Resistant Ruptures in the Movie Musical The Pajama Game | 47 |
Union Maids
With Babies and Banners and the Feminist Historical
Documentary ... | 73 |
Norma Rae
Silkwood and the Politics of the Docudrama | 101 |
Labor Struggle and Solidarity in Live Nude Girls Unite | 141 |
Have We Really Come a Long Way? | 164 |
Mapping the Rhetorical Tensions | 189 |
Chapter Notes | 199 |
| 213 | |
| 225 | |