9 To 5

9 To 5

This is the story of three New York office workers who kidnap their sexist boss in a feminist revenge fantasy that is funny, part says it all. 9 to 5, starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin became popular in the ’80s and was recently re-released during the Comedy Genius season at the London BFI Southbank. The opening credits Roll has a brilliantly upbeat song by Parton that proclaims, “In the Same boat / With a lot of your friends / Waiting for the day / Your ship will come in / And the tide’s gonna turn / And it’s all gonna roll your way.” 38 years after the release of the film, where does the prophecy of Parton stand?

Patricia Resnick was the writer of the film and three years earlier, she was a writer (uncredited) for Robert Altman’s experimental movie 3 Women with the three leads possibly embodying id, ego and collide. Does this analogy apply to Parton, Fonda and Tomlin, a PhD thesis needs to be written on that. As of now, 9 to 5 is a great flashback from an era full of wage slavery and gender-based oppression, including a cool scene with the giant Xerox collating machine, honking IBM goofballs electric typewriters, and a menacingly giant office like in the movie The Apartment

9 to 5 seems a lot meaner and more feral compared to that film, say, Working Girl (1988) which came later, and unlike that film, it did not seek to offset the negative portrayal of women with the positive inclusion of a male love interest character.

The sections which depicted the three women’s marijuana-induced phantasy of what violence they want to carry out on their boss (Dabney Coleman) were quite stunningly artistic and their strategy for the violence was rather quite extreme as well. As soon as their obnoxious boss has been captured, they forge his sign on memos announcing job-sharing, a nursery, and a new office layout to accommodate wheelchair users among other stakeholders.

Pretty audacious things, and not every working environment in 2018 has that much as 9 to 5 finally, it appears, wades into the waters of the equal pay debate, albeit rather shallow ones.

Out of the three, maybe only Tomlin does convincingly play an office employee: her expression is an amusing collage of a fierce spirit of parody hating everything. In my view, those more comic and Ortonesque parts of the movie occasionally unfairly may undermine the broader social message of the film. But satire is perhaps the only thing that permits anything. And who can say whether or not the key plot such as this one could later inspire the “bossnappings” which have become popular among French workers. Watching 9 to 5 is a lot of enjoyment.

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