{"id":23127,"date":"2023-07-05T22:05:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T22:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/questions\/what-was-your-take-on-norma-rae-what-did-she-stand-for-can-you-see-yourself-standing-up-for-what-you-believe-in\/"},"modified":"2023-07-05T22:05:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T22:05:33","slug":"what-was-your-take-on-norma-rae-what-did-she-stand-for-can-you-see-yourself-standing-up-for-what-you-believe-in","status":"publish","type":"questions","link":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/questions\/what-was-your-take-on-norma-rae-what-did-she-stand-for-can-you-see-yourself-standing-up-for-what-you-believe-in\/","title":{"rendered":"What was your take on Norma Rae? What did she stand for? Can you see yourself standing up for what you believe in?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please talk about the film study on Norma Rae. <\/span><\/p>\n

View the additional scene of the Union video clip in this Lesson before answering this discussion post. <\/span><\/p>\n

“For those who haven\u2019t seen the movie, or whose memory of it is hazy, a recap: Norma Rae Webster\u2014played by a ferocious Sally Field, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, in 1980\u2014is a Southern single mom of two who works on the dim, noisy floor of the town textile mill, where her parents, and, likely, her grandparents, have worked before her. It\u2019s a grim, precarious, and repetitive job, which makes for a grim, precarious, and repetitive existence. Early on in the movie, we see her attempt to rouse her mother, who has gone temporarily deaf from the incessant din of the mill\u2019s machines. The plant doctor is unimpressed: \u201cNow, you know it happens, Norma Rae. It happens all the time!\u201d he says, suggesting that the older woman \u201ccan get herself another job\u201d if this one isn\u2019t to her liking. But in their mill town, there is no other job and no real alternative to the low-paying and dangerous work that the plant provides.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though she is as constrained as anyone by her work and life conditions, Norma Rae is spirited. The movie\u2019s original theatrical poster, an image of which is used as a thumbnail on Hulu, shows Field silhouetted on a white background, smiling widely as she raises her arms high in a cheesy triumphant stance, a slice of bare tummy revealed over the waistband of her jeans. The film itself, however, presents the character\u2019s spunk as an angrier, more complicated, and occasionally self-defeating thing. She rails against her circumstances by talking back\u2014to the worthless men she sleeps with and who degrade her, to her loving but domineering father, to her uncaring bosses. \u201cNorma Rae, you have the biggest mouth in this mill,\u201d one of her managers tells her, before attempting to neutralize her workplace demands\u2014for a Kotex machine in the women\u2019s bathroom, for longer smoke breaks, for more time off\u2014by giving her a supervisor job, which she leaves soon afterward when she realizes that it makes her a \u201cfink\u201d in the eyes of her fellow-workers. \u201cYou\u2019re looking fine, Norma Rae,\u201d the deadbeat father of one of her children tells her, when he runs into her at a local baseball game. \u201cI\u2019m always fine. I\u2019m a horse!\u201d she tells him, defiantly. Like a horse, she is strong, and she keeps going, but she also has blinders on. On her own, she is unable to shift course.<\/span><\/p>\n

A turn comes about when Reuben Warshowsky (the great Ron Leibman, who died this past December), an organizer for the Textile Workers Union of America, arrives. A New Yorker, Reuben is an oddity in town, and his unionization efforts are met with resistance. As far as most millhands are concerned, he is a communist Jew interloper who will cost them their jobs. Norma Rae, however, is intrigued. \u201cI think you\u2019re too smart for what\u2019s happening to you,\u201d Reuben, with whom she develops a platonic but transformative relationship, tells her. The film\u2019s most iconic and well-known scene\u2014and the one I recalled, from watching it as a teen\u2014is a moment when Norma Rae stands on a table at the mill and holds up a sign that reads \u201cunion<\/em>,\u201d until, one by one, the workers around her stop their machines and silence falls on the factory floor.<\/span><\/p>\n

On this viewing, what struck me even more strongly, however, was the movie\u2019s suggestion that no struggle can take place alone. Norma Rae is heroic, but she comes into her own, as a woman, because she is fighting for class solidarity\u2014a struggle that, in turn, could not happen without a breaking down of long-standing ethnic and racial barriers. Even though he is Jewish, Reuben doesn\u2019t have horns, as Norma Rae was taught to expect (\u201cI\u2019ve never met a Jew before,\u201d she tells him. \u201cAs far as I can see, you look just like the rest of us\u201d), and, though she is a woman, habitually derided by men, he treats her as his equal. What\u2019s more, the racist tactics taken by the factory bosses, who try to persuade white employees that their Black co-workers are scheming to take over the union, can only be countered by a white-Black coalition working together against management. Speaking from the pulpit at a Black church, Reuben tells the workers of his grandfather\u2019s textile union and its members: \u201cWhen they spoke, they spoke in one voice, and they were heard. And they were Black, and they were white, and they were Irish, and they were Polish, they were Catholic, and they were Jews.\u201d To watch the scene, toward the end of the movie, in which the factory workers chant as one, to celebrate their unionization victory, is to be reminded of something that is not only moving but also, still, more relevant than ever. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/egcc.instructure.com\/courses\/37915\/files\/10167889\/download?verifier=ezvaLLr60kTnlryD0UU9uLd7GyAvwxTMUcqmjKKr&wrap=1<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n


<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

If you get the chance to watch the whole movie on your own, it is worth watching. This is a powerful excerpt from the movie.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was your take on Norma Rae?<\/span><\/p>\n

What did she stand for?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Can you see yourself standing up for what you believe in?<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n


<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please talk about the film study on Norma Rae.  View the additional scene of the Union video clip in this Lesson before answering this discussion post.  “For those who haven\u2019t seen the movie, or whose memory of it is hazy, a recap: Norma Rae Webster\u2014played by a ferocious Sally Field, who won an Academy Award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"disciplines":[706],"paper_types":[],"tagged":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/23127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/questions"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/questions\/23127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=23127"},{"taxonomy":"paper_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/paper_types?post=23127"},{"taxonomy":"tagged","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodacademic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tagged?post=23127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}