Gender and Cinema: Portrayals of Female Academics

While there is a virtual cornucopia of films devoted to male professors (usually white) for film critics and analysts to poke and prod, the number of films featuring female academics is paltry in comparison. In the real world, 37 out of 100 tenured professors are female (Waxman & Ispa-Landa, 2016), but they do not gain this level of representation in Hollywood cinema. As the images offered for consumption within popular culture influence the dominant discourses that circulate about life, the universe and everything, an analysis of films featuring a female academic, such as Mona Lisa Smile, Wit, and Teacher’s Pet, may add to our understanding how our notions of “who is a teacher” are shaped along gender lines. In addition to the paucity of films from which I could choose, many, if not most, of the films featuring a female academic stink. Being able to get through the film without throwing up, or throwing a shoe at the TV, was a major criterion as I chose the three discussed here.

Mona Lisa Smile (2003) portrays a young art history teacher Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) who exchanges the freedoms of Berkeley for the staid traditions of Wellesley in 1953. Back in the day, Wellesley delivered courses in grooming, table setting, and something called deportment, and the teacher of this portion of the curriculum (played by Marcia Gay Harden) takes them very seriously. There is culture shock at first between west coast, passionate Katherine and her east coast cool students, but most are beguiled by her enthusiasm for modern art. Betty (Kirsten Dunst) is not seduced so easily, and informs on Katherine to her mother, who is on the board of trustees. Modern art? Scandalous! What’s next, communism, and sexual liberation? Though we can see where the plot is headed, the film is not totally pedantic and color-by-the-numbers. We are offered an opportunity to immerse ourselves in a year in the life of a teacher and student, two persons open to new experiences and possible identities.

Regarding gender, Mona Lisa Smile successfully addresses how women’s lives are delimited by social institutions and rigid gender expectations, suggesting “we’ve come a long way, baby” by highlighting just how stuffy, conservative and confining the messages have been. The student body is told at one point that “A few years from now, your sole responsibility will be taking care of your husband and children.” Katherine bucks the school’s messaging, and tells the Wellesley President, “thought I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders -- not their wives.” But the theme of women’s liberation falters in spots. After Katherine caustically complains to an Italian colleague (Dominic West) that Wellesley women seem to be mostly interested in a “finishing school education”, her bitterness evaporates as he presents a gift, and a kiss. It must have been a doozy, because for a while, Katherine seems to forget about her ire towards the institution. Is a 2003 film sending the message that job satisfaction for female academics would rise with just a kiss on the lips from a male colleague(s)? Does the film nostalgically pine for the good old days when real men caught their colleagues with a kiss, or that Katerine has the attentions of not just a boyfriend back west, and the hot Italian professor, but perhaps a third, quite mature (William Holden)? The various romantic diversions muddle the film’s central message that her students have nothing to lose but their chains of gender role socialization. Further, as it is set at Wellesley, we are provided a message of empowerment for white, upper middle class women, but not the working class, or persons of color struggling with ubiquitous macro- and micro-aggressions. Nevertheless, the movie did not “suck”, and I did not throw up.

In Wit (2001), Emma Thompson plays Vivian, a topnotch professor and scholar who is dying of cancer. Her physician, a former student, speaks of her amazing lectures conducted with “no notes.” And yet, Vivian is isolated, and goes through chemotherapy with only a single visit from someone from outside the hospital. The visitor is a female professor/mentor who encouraged Vivian to be socially connected as a student. Vivian chose instead to spend her time alone in the library, putting all her stock in being extremely smart. Thus, Vivian is an accomplished teacher and scholar who suffers from a profound loneliness that is never expressed in her professional life; her personal life, like herself, is a remote island unto itself. She is a success in her career, but a failure in life. In contrast, in Mona Lisa Smile, Katherine’s professional and personal lives intersect, each informing the other. She uses adverts in her art history class that show “the perfect housewife” vacuuming and ironing with big smiles on their faces as they please their spouses and families. Katherine then asks, “What will the future scholars see when they study us?” Faced with silence, Katherine says, "I didn't realize that by demanding excellence that I would be challenging the roles you were ‘born to fill.’ My mistake”, and exits the classroom. Of course, the cultural contexts of an American, shoot-from-the-hip, “free verse” pedagogy versus proper, stolid Queen’s English tradition in British classrooms partially inform the contrasting portrayals of these two female academics. But at least they are both depicted as competent, and inspiring, teachers and scholars.

Lastly, the oldie but goodie Teacher’s Pet (1958) features Doris Day as Erica Stone, an instructor of journalism at a city university. There are tropes and stereotypes aplenty in the film’s opening exposition, but these are thankfully dispatched as the plot gets going. Clark Gable, playing a newspaperman named James skilled at manterrupting, is introduced striding into Erica’s classroom, hell bent to lecture everyone on how journalism cannot be taught there (ironic, much?). He assumes that a dowdy, brown haired woman with glasses is the professor, and directs his tirade towards her, but she signals she’s not the teacher. Then blonde Erica enters, and James stares and expresses first great surprise, and then great interest. Under an assumed name, James remains in the class to make his case. Over time, he sees that she is honestly committed to educating her students about journalism, and is really smart. When asked why she teaches, she says, “I have my own ideas about what newspapers should be, and I know they can be a great deal better than they are.” Discovering who James really is, she doesn't make a scene, but is instead disappointed because he has been unfair to the other students in the class who have worked hard to be there. Like the Italian prof in Mona Lisa Smile, he goes for the grab and kiss, but it’s no magic moment. Her response is “Are you finished?” It’s like back to the future; we get a female teacher with a greater feminist sensibility in a film from the 1950s than the 2003 one set in the 1950s. Who knew?

Further, in Teacher's Pet, the intellectual exchanges between James and Erica transform them both. James becomes willing to concede that education is just as important, if not more so, than experience. But he also encourages Erica to critique her own father's own work as editor of a small-town newspaper, and to begin to see its gossip column caliber (think a 1950s print version of TMZ). At the conclusion, they have both moved and grown as people and professionals, with a lot less kissing and grabbing. What's striking about Teacher's Pet is that Day’s character is satisfied with her personal and professional lives. She doesn’t depend on a man emotionally or financially, and she is both ambitious and happy. The reciprocity between Erica and James is refreshing, and they have a future together…as mutually respectful, professional colleagues. So, a film from 1958 is one of the few in existence to show a female academic who is fulfilled in both the personal and professional realms, and one whose two worlds intersect, rather being contained in separate silos. Teacher’s Pet successfully resists Hollywood’s dominant discourse that women professionals, in or out of the academy, cannot be happy. Alternatively, they can be competent, ambitious professionals, and independent (but not socially isolated), emotionally fulfilled people. Nearly 60 years later, I'd argue that there’s a lot of room for more depictions like this one.

Few U.S. films about female teachers provide the impetus for a meaningful dialogue about what constitute realistic images of educators (Hamdan, 2005), and realistic scenes of female academics navigating the minefield of gendered and racialized expectations of their roles and responsibilities as they try to shape young people’s identities and conceptions of what’s possible in the 21st century. Perhaps a viewing of these three films could provide an opportunity for a valuable conversation on this topic. Women of color often face institutional expectations that they engage in numerous service activities related to student advising and supporting retention of nontraditional students and students of color, and then are criticized for not having done enough publishing. I suspect that following this important dialogue, a question would persist: “What must be done?”, rather than the premature, self-congratulatory assessment, “We’ve come a long way.”