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![Norma Rae Norma Rae](https://emanuellevy.com/media/photos/p_16117.jpg)
![Norma Rae Norma Rae](https://emanuellevy.com/media/photos/p_16118.jpg)
![Norma Rae Norma Rae](https://emanuellevy.com/media/photos/p_16119.jpg)
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Sally Field won the first of her two Best Actress Oscars in 1979 for “Norma Rae,” directed by Martin Ritt. Her second Oscar was in 1984 for “Places in the Heart.”
Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae is a fictionalized account of Crystal Lee Sutton, the textile worker turned labor activist, living in a Baptist town in the Deep South. Set in the summer of l978, the narrative begins with the arrival of an outsider in what appears to be a dormant town. His arrival sets in motion events that will forever change the town and its workers. The film is original in its use of outsider: Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Liebman) is a Jewish labor organizer from New York.
In the first sequence, Norma Rae (Sally Field) realizes that her mother, Leona Witchard (Barbara Baxley), has not heard what she had said twice. She rushes her to the doctor to examine her hearing. At first, the cool Dr. Watson dismisses the case’s seriousness, “it happens all the time.” His advice is to find another job. “What other job” screams Norma, “In this town, this is the “only job.” “You’re nothing to any of ’em,” she tells her mother–and herself. Indeed, the workers are vastly exploited: They are overworked and underpaid. Lunch breaks are too short. A sign in the dining room instructs: “Give your chair to a spinner, they only have 15 minutes.”
A 31-year-old widow, Norma Rae is the mother of two children, one illegitimate, and the other born shortly before her husband died. Norma strikes a unique friendship with Reuben. The two protagonists could not have been more different, though they are not social types. A leftist intellectual, Reuben is engaged to a Harvard University labor lawyer. His favorite leisure activities include poetry (Dylan Thomas), Chinese food, and the Metropolitan Opera. By contrast, Norma has never traveled and has not read much. In fact, she has never met a Jew, thus initially possessing similar stereotypes about Jews as the other town’s inhabitants. “I heard you all have horns,” she says, “What makes you different” Reuben answers in one word, “History.”
However, they share in common true grit and strength to recognize a good cause and fight for it, which is more important for their friendship than similarity in backgrounds. Norma Rae, like Melvin and Howard, epitomizes the democratic ethos, the potentially open quality of American life.
By standards of classic American films, Norma Rae is a woman of loose morality. In an early scene, she is in a motel with a married man. Once a week, she is taken out and gets, as he describes “a big steak, pralines, and sex.” When Norma tells him “there’s a lot of gossip,” and that she has decided to terminate their affair, he slaps her in the face, reminding her “you’re here to make “me feel good.” But in sharp deviation from conventions, Norma is neither punished for her promiscuous sexuality, nor for giving birth out of the wedlock. “Did you get married” asks Reuben. “He didn’t bother,” Norma replies. As for her husband, he died in a barroom brawl, six months after her second child was born. Courtship and marriage are far from being glamorized. In Norma’s life, being married is just one status, not the most important one. The proposal of Sonny Webster (Beau Bridges), who works in a gas station, is one of the most original and unsentimental in American films. “I don’t owe a nickel in this town,” he says, “I can fix anything electrical. I’m alright after my first cup of coffee.” Having said what he considers basic, he proceeds: “I turn my paycheck the minute I get it. And I come straight home from work and I stay there.” Norma, too, is matter-of-fact. She asks Sonny to kiss her, because “if that’s alright, then everything else will be.”
Nature is represented by the lake, where Norma and Sonny spend a relaxed day in the country. It is also the place where Norma and Reuben go swimming. There are two refreshing points about this sequence. First, they don’t make love and the scene is devoid of any romanticism or eroticism. Second, Reuben and Norma are not observed by others and there is no gossip. One almost expects the swimming scene to follow the conventions (sensationalism, gossip) of a similar scene in Peyton Place (l957). The violation of these expectations makes the scene all the more pleasurable. Norma spends more time with Reuben than with her husband, a good, trusting man. At first, Sonny complains that she has neglected her domestic chores: cooking, washing, ironing. He is also envious that, when taken to jail and has only one phone call to make, she calls Reuben, not him. Expressing his resentment to Reuben, the latter sums up Norma’s personality in three brief sentences: “She stood on the table. She’s a free woman. You can either accept her or not.”
In a feat of jealousy, Sonny confronts his wife, suspecting she might be unfaithful to him. Here too, Norma deviates from other screen heroines: she hasn’t slept with Reuben, but admits, “he’s in my mind.” As a mother, Norma is not the self-sacrificing type. “I’m a jail bird,” she tells her children,” I’m not perfect. I make mistakes.” “You’re gonna hear many things about me, but you’re going to hear them from “me first.” She then tells her children the truth about their respective fathers.
The closure of Norma Rae is remarkably consistent, standing in opposition to more conventional Hollywood endings. Norma and Reuben part with a respectful handshake rather than the clichd embrace or kiss. And even though there are still differences between them, they part as equals, both have benefited from the friendship. Reuben has changed Norma’s life, which is now richer; she is much more politically aware. But Reuben thanks Norma for her stamina, companionship, and commitment to the cause. The closest Reuben comes to expressing personal interest is by saying, “I enjoyed looking at your shining hair.” Norma has gained self-respect and self-discovery of resources she has always had in her, but had to be revealed. Norma is now a new woman, with a new consciousness.
By American films’ standards, Norma Rae is a feminist heroine, demonstrating that an uneducated but resilient woman could acquire political consciousness (the first necessary step in any protest movement) and could also introduce normative and structural changes. Feminist critics have argued that Norma gains consciousness with the assistance of a man, implying that without a man she would never have changed. But under the circumstances in which she lives, is it possible for Norma Rae to change without the assistance of a male outsider Could change have originated in town by any of the local residents, male or female For a Hollywood film of l979, “Norma Rae made a new statement about gender roles and politics.