“No.  No names.  No business cards.  No ‘you must know so-and-so.’  No resumes.  Let’s just meet like human beings for once.”

Two and a half years ago I slowly started to be able to walk again.  After seven years using either a walker or Cratchitt (the name for my cane), I awoke one morning and just felt a tiny bit better.  Honestly I had nearly forgotten what healthy felt like, so I grabbed hold of that feeling and didn’t let go.  Two years later I was once again working full time and transitioning off of Social Security disability.

People who knew me then, during those many years I used Cratchitt, are shocked to see me now; and people who know me now have a hard time imagining me from then.

There’s a good joke in there somewhere, I think.  Imagine a dialogue between two people who just met: “Oh, you know Aaron, who walks with that heavy cane?” “No, the Aaron I know doesn’t use a cane.  You must be thinking of someone else.”  I don’t know the punchline, but it’s a good set-up for a comedy of errors bit, a sort of a disability version of Who’s on First?

Many people struggled to accept my improving abilities.  They witnessed me slowly adapting, but still often expressed doubt. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “What if the problem comes back?” “You look tired today.” “You really believe you can go back to work?”  I think, for some of them, it was comfortable for me to always remain “the sick one.”  Their sincere and loving concern got mixed with the subtle discrimination of lowered expectations.

Of course, I struggled too.  It wasn’t as easy as “one day I was sick, the next day I was not.”  As wonderful as it was to put away Cratchitt, the physical and emotional stress of retraining one’s legs to function as normally as possible remains a painful and conscious effort.  It’s the sort of pain that, in all fairness, most people cannot understand and I wouldn’t want them to.  After all, how they see me, and we all see each other, must be based at least somewhat on imagination.

I’m getting off topic and haven’t even mentioned the movie yet.  For my purposes, it’s only fair that I admit others see me able to do things now that I could not do a couple of years ago.  There is a divide, a gulf even, separating then and now insofar as how others understand and label me.  My challenge was jumping that gulf while dodging obstacles in order to claim the right to relabel myself.

Mike Nichols’ Working Girl (1988) joyfully dramatizes that jump.  By examining the struggle of trying to become something new, it demonstrates exactly what great films, and even favorite films, can accomplish.

Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) wants to be something other than a secretary.  She absolutely knows she can be good at the business of mergers and acquisitions and, through the course of the film, proves she is good at it.  The problem is overcoming the label others have placed upon her, “secretary.”  Note how I wrote that sentence.  The label itself is not bad, but Tess does not want it.  It is no longer welcome, but difficult to undo.

She transforms herself, first intellectually with night class, speech class, and work experience.  Then she transforms physically, with new clothes and new hair (“You want to be taken seriously? You need serious hair.”).  She changes in these ways first because she believes these are the traits that will make her successful, and she’s not wrong, she’s just not completely right.

But then she starts working for Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver).  For Tess, Katharine is the embodiment of success.  When she looks into a mirror, Tess sees herself as Katharine.  But then Katharine betrays Tess and steals Tess’s idea for the Trask radio acquisition.  Tess begins to understand just how risky change can be, but she does not shirk.  She commits to bettering herself.

She’s scared, to be sure.  Note the scene when Tess and Cyn (Joan Cusack, in a well-earned Oscar-nominated role) are “borrowing” Katharine’s wardrobe.  The dress she picks is worth $6000.00 (it’s interesting that Katharine has left the price tag on it).  Tess has a small anxiety attack.  Defending herself has led to deception on a very serious scale, and the price tag gives her a moment when the possible consequences of her plan become very real.   What is the real cost of individual choice?

Make no mistake, Tess is deliberately lying.  We excuse her sin because her motives are commendable, and because Katharine has wronged her.  There’s also an instinctive justification at work.  When one is trying to overcome a difficult obstacle in the pursuit of something good, ignoring societal rules can be okay.  When I was returning to work, I downplayed my physical symptoms, at least at first.  I can’t mask them entirely, but to just get in the door I very carefully withheld information about my remaining symptoms.  I desperately needed to be back to work, if for no other reason than to be around other humans and to somehow contribute again.  Without regret, and like Tess, to me lying felt justified.

And I suppose therein is my real interest in this particular film.  Obviously I’ve not published anything here for several months, with good reason.  But when I just happened across Working Girl again, I knew what my first essay back on “Shadows and Silence” would be.

I admire good filmmaking as a way to discuss Life.  I’m neither a film critic, nor a filmmaker; I’m film’s champion.  Openly educating each other about our individual struggles and accomplishments, without being didactic, can lead only to a better world.  Films, the well-made ones, give that education.

And the best films succeed because they give a compelling view into someone else’s Life.  Whether a Munchkin, a Hobbit or a secretary, films lead us into wanting to know more about someone.  And one’s favorite films, in some way, remind a person of their own Life.

Oh how comforting it is to label each other: Abled/Disabled; Male/Female; Sick/Well; Father/Mother; Secretary/Manager, etc… Humans necessarily thrive on being able to understand each other through labels that, once applied, can be very difficult to change.  And woe to those of us who try to label ourselves something other than expected.

I know that struggle.  Tess McGill knows.  This film knows.  Deep down, in some way, we all know.