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‘Mona Lisa Smile’ explores college life through feminism, marriage, and gender roles by way of a progressive teacher at the end of a traditional era (Goldsmith-Thomas & Newell, 2003). The film begins in the fall of 1953 at the start of a new semester at Wellesley College, the prestigious all-girls institution in Boston, Massachusetts. The film’s plot revolves around Katherine Watson, a 30-something year old, unmarried, art history professor who arrives at Wellesley from California bringing with her modernism and an eagerness to be an impetus for change at the aversion of the conservative, built-on-tradition institution’s faculty, alumna, and astute student body.
Through her lectures, which veer from the approved syllabus, Watson strives to open her students' minds to new ideas and paths for their lives. She challenges her students to break tradition, to pursue careers they are interested in, and to see beyond graduation or a wedding, whichever comes first. Her lessons are used as a way to share her views with the students; that women must not conform to stereotypes society imparts, or the roles they have traditionally taken on, as women born to become housewives and mothers.
Watson’s views and ways of teaching are seemed as subversive by the school's administration and board of directors; traditionalist women and alumnae who believe Watson should stick to the outlined curriculum. The administration warns Watson against pushing her progressive agenda and even threaten termination if she continues to interact with students as she has been doing. Instigated by their criticism, Watson’s lessons become even more fervent in impressing feminism and the future of women. She is adamant that her students must not settle to be housewives, but should pursue careers and societal change for women. Though she encourages her students to think independently, she inadvertently attempts to conform them to her own ideas as an endorsement and validation of the life she has chosen to lead. When she has this revelation and recognizes they have a right to choose their own paths, she chooses to leave Wellesley after only one year. However, as she is driving away from campus, her students chase after her car, evidence of the impact and lasting influence she had on the group of young women.
The film is a glimpse at the evolution and role of college for women in America. A particularly summation of this discord is when Watson exclaims in disgust, “It's brilliant, really. A perfect ruse. A finishing school disguised as a college…I thought I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow's leaders, not their wives!”. Though the students were the best and brightest, from the highest of society, the societal expectation was still for them to marry during or directly following their undergraduate studies and not only that, but they should not consider pursuing careers outside of the home. Alas, their top-notch education and prestigious degree form Wellesley was still only an M.R.S. degree. However, as emphasized by the president of the college, Wellesley was proud to be able to afford women a premier college education, something inconceivable only decades prior.
‘Mona Lisa Smile’ artfully portrays the role college plays in student development. Through formal lectures, communal living, and social independence we see familial ideas and views being challenged, emergence of sexuality, exposure to progressive or controversial moral topics, such as contraceptives and extramarital affairs. Additionally, the film portrays the important role of traditions, student newspapers, and alumnae to a college. Each element was influential in the college’s hiring, firing, and administrative practice. Lastly, the film showcases the example of the level of engagement a professor can only dream of in a college class when every pupil shows up to the first day of class having already completed every reading on the syllabus. Overall, the film addresses several issues of the time it is set, and some issues higher education still wrestles with today.
However, there were several problematic and negative issues of college and education presented within the film. Although most are likely historically accurate, these depictions reinforce gender stereotypes, sexual assault on college campuses, and homophobia. Examples of this, include one tradition of chasing a baby carriage to predict who will first bear a child, one male professors’ promiscuity with his students and the administration’s ability to not address this obvious abuse of power, and the firing of a lesbian school nurse. One particularly salient portion of this reinforcement of gender and deviation from nearby Harvard’s course curriculum, were the courses taught by Watson’s housemate which included etiquette, hostessing, and deportment.
The film was produced and screened in 2003, and the reality is, it is easy to decide whether Pollock's splatters are really art 50 years after the question's been resolved than it is to deal with the issues of today. It is easy to laugh at the pressed aprons, pin curls, and gendered advertisements of the 50s than examine our own hypersexualized mass media industry. It is easier to take on an extremely black-and-white version of the issue of creating space for women in academia and the workplace in midcentury America than try to answer it in the present, after 50 years of critiquing systems and practices surrounding the dilemma. It's always easier to rewrite, exaggerate, and evaluate history than to deal with our own systems of oppression.
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