Working Girl 1988

The decade of power dressing was cemented on the big screen as Melanie Griffith played the ultimate Working Girl in the 1988 film. The before and after working-woman makeover perfectly captures the styles of the decade, from extravagant to professional. The film represented ideals of the time whilst show casing the 'look' of the 1980s.

"In 1984, with another term in the White House at stake, Ronald Reagan’s team decided to accentuate the positive. “It’s morning in America again,” proclaimed campaign ads that showed men and women hurrying to work, buying new homes and getting married...
Four years later, as the nation bade its tinseltown president farewell, a film came out that seemed to sum up the reinvigorated American dream even more effectively. The opening scenes of Working Girl might be the best advert for New York – and, by extension, for American capitalism – there has ever been. As the morning sun spills out over the Hudson, we circle the Statue of Liberty to the drumbeats of Carly Simon’s anthem to sheer determination, Let the River Run. Goosebumps are obligatory. The camera homes in on the Staten Island ferry, which transports our heroine, Tess, and thousands like her, to the bustle and business of Manhattan."1

Working Girl epitomises the enduring power the Cinderella narrative as a perpetuation of the American Dream, with the main character rising from being a secretary to a powerful executive, even winning a man. The 1980's was the decade where women were being told that they could have it all, including powerful careers and an age where largely due to Reagan's policies was dominated by corporate greed and power. This links back to the "it's morning in America again" ad in the films representation of the decade as full of optimism for young working people. However, much like the cultural phenomenon of the yuppie, Working Girl is dominated by white characters, to the exclusion of other races from the American Dream narrative. 2

In the final scene of the film, "an exterior shot slowly zooms out to reveal her window as one of a grid of nine, then 25, then 49, then 81. She is a unit in the machine of profit and loss, more worker ant than romantic heroine. After morning in America comes another morning, then another, then another, all in the service of the dollar." 1 So whilst the film is a romantic comedy, it is at its heart a representation of the America that was rising in the 1980s and arguably continues today.

1 https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/nov/27/why-working-girl-offers-the-real-deal-mike-nichols-melanie-griffith

2 Amy deGraff, From Glass Slipper To Glass Ceilings: "CINDERELLA" AND THE ENDURANCE OF A FAIRY TALE Merveilles & contes, Vol. 10, No. 1 (May 1996), pp. 69-85, Published by: Wayne State University Press.