Hollywood and Catholic Women: Virgins, Whores, Mothers, and Other Images

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

A Quick Guide for Non-Catholics to Catholic Terminology

Chapter One

Catholic Women’s Place in Film—An Introduction

Women, Catholicism, and Film

The Problem Facing Catholic Women in Film

Film Criteria

Defining Feminist Theory

Chapter Two

Never Quite As Good—A Brief History of Women’s Oppression Within the Catholic Church

Biblical Interpretation

The Early Church

The Middle Ages

The Theology of Mary

The Second Vatican Council

Women and the Church Today

Summary

Chapter Three

Women Religious—Nuns and Virgins on Film

The Song of Bernadette (1943)—Synopsis

The Song of Bernadette—Analysis

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) —Synopsis

The Bells of St. Mary’s—Analysis

The Nun’s Story (1959)—Synopsis

The Nun’s Story—Analysis

Lilies of the Field (1963)—Synopsis

Lilies of the Field—Analysis

True Confessions (1981)—Synopsis

True Confessions—Analysis

Agnes of God (1985)—Synopsis

Agnes of God—Analysis

Sister Act (1992)—Synopsis

Sister Act—Analysis

Dead Man Walking (1995)—Synopsis

Dead Man Walking—Analysis

Doubt—Synopsis

Doubt—Analysis

Chapter Four

Mothers, Tramps, and Even Some Good Girls

The Quiet Man (1954)—Synopsis

The Quiet Man—Analysis

The Sound of Music (1965)—Synopsis

The Sound of Music—Analysis

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)—Synopsis

Looking for Mr. Goodbar—Analysis

The Verdict (1982)—Synopsis

The Verdict—Analysis

Moonstruck (1987)—Synopsis

Moonstruck—Analysis

Mystic Pizza (1988)—Synopsis

Mystic Pizza—Analysis

The Godfather III (1990)—Synopsis

The Godfather III—Analysis

Dogma (1999)—Synopsis

Dogma—Analysis

Return to Me (2000)—Synopsis

Return to Me—Analysis

Chapter Five

Crime Fighters and Mob Wives—A Sampling of Catholic Women on the Small Screen

Saving Grace

The Sopranos

Chapter Six

Where We Go From Here

Appendix

Review of Literature

Women and the Catholic Church

Roman Catholicism in American Film

Perspectives in Feminist Film Criticism

Bibliography

About the Author

Footnotes

Preface

When I first published Hollywood and Catholic Women: Virgins, Whores, Mothers, and Other Images in 2003, the topic had interested me for quite some time. The book had evolved from my masters thesis, Madonnas, Tramps, and Redeemers: The Portrayal of Catholic Women in Hollywood Films, which California State University, Fresno published in 1992. During my experiences as a journalism and mass communications major, how women were presented in the media, particularly film, fascinated me. Additionally, because my husband worked for the Catholic Church and served as an ordained deacon, images of Catholicism present in film attracted me. From that initial kernel of curiosity, it was a relatively easy process to narrow the topic down to the portrayal of Catholic women within Hollywood films from a feminist point of view.

Nearly a decade later, I found that the images of Catholic women in film and television still captivated me. After the University of South Carolina used the text in its religious women in film course in 2007, I began to consider the idea of updating and expanding Hollywood and Catholic Women into a 2nd edition. Four factors convinced me that it would be worth the time and effort to do so:

(1) With the number of films made every year, it is always interesting to see how Catholic women are being portrayed,

(2) With the portrayal of Catholic women improving, particularly in the area of cable-television, I chose to include two ground-breaking TV series,

(3) The vast changes brought on by social media offered an opportunity to get the work in front of a global audience,

(4) I am constantly amazed at the number of people interested in the topic of Catholic women in film and television.

As with the 1st edition, any text, whether film, literature, or television, can be read in an almost a limitless number of ways; and some will agree with the analyses, while others will dispute them. And that’s great. There are no right or wrong answers; my purpose has always been to make readers think, expand their knowledge base, and maybe even start a friendly discussion. This work is merely a starting point, and my hope is that others will find the portrayals of Catholic women within the mediums of film and television as fascinating as I have, and will continue to delve into the rich and constantly changing spheres of cinema and television.

Kathryn Schleich

2012

Acknowledgements

I owe a great debt of gratitude to the two editors who helped shape Hollywood and Catholic Women 2nd Edition. To my dear friend, Christine Peters, whose sense of humor, editing expertise, and love of film again helped to make this second edition shine.

I also relied on the editorial talents of Margo Dill of Editor 9-1-1. Margo was particularly instrumental with the new material in the book, and I couldn’t have completed the updating process without her consummate skill.

To both of you, I am eternally grateful.

A Quick Guide for Non-Catholics to Catholic Terminology

This work is meant for anyone, but because Roman Catholicism uses terms that may not be familiar to all, the following are definitions for clarification. More extensive definitions may be found in the Modern Catholic Dictionary and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.

Bishop—A successor of the Apostles, who has received the fullness of Christ’s priesthood. His most distinctive power, that of ordaining priests, bishops, and deacons, belongs uniquely to a bishop.

Cardinal—A high official of the Roman Catholic Church ranking next to the pope.

Celibates—A way of referring to those unmarried by reason of religious vows or promise; but particularly used in reference to clergy.

Charism—A gift for doing certain things.

Cloister—The term has several definitions including a monastery or convent and to confine in or seclude.

Diocese—The district or churches under the leadership of a bishop or archbishop.

Discernment—The process of distinguishing whether vowed or religious life is right for a person, as in being insightful or perceptive to a religious calling.

Episcopal—Referring to governance by bishops.

Eunuch—A castrated man. As used in the title, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, it refers to the non-sexuality of Catholic clergy.

Eucharist—The Christian sacrament (Mass) commemorating Christ’s last supper; celebrates receiving the body and blood of Christ.

Eucharistic Meal—The consecrated bread and wine offered as communion.

Grace—In biblical language, the condescension or benevolence (Greek charis) shown by God toward the human race.

Holy Father—A title of the pope

Laity—A person involved with the Church in a position or capacity that is not ordained.

Liturgy—In present day worship, it is the official public worship of the Church.

Mass—The sacrifice of the Eucharist as the central act of worship in the Catholic Church. The Mass is a form of missio (sending) from which the faithful are sent to put into practice what they have learned and use the grace they have received in the Eucharistic liturgy.

Monsignor—A title generally attached to an office or distinction ordinarily bestowed by the pope.

Novice—One who has entered a religious order, but has not taken final vows.

Postulant—A candidate in the beginning stages of joining a religious order.

Professing—The act or instance of making a declaration, as in Catholics professing their faith. Or, proffering vows referring to those in a religious community who have been admitted to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Women Religious—Another term referring to nuns and sisters, women who have professed vows.

Chapter One

Catholic Women’s Place in Film—An Introduction

Motion pictures have existed for over a century. From the beginning, filmmaking has had a powerful ability to shape myths and fantasies that have left an indelible impression on the consciousness of filmgoers. As the noted film historian Peter Biskind writes, it has:

never been much of a secret that movies influence manners, attitudes, and behavior. If we add up all that movies say and show about how we are supposed to be, we find that they present a world view, an ideology that conveys an attitude toward everything from the trivial to the profound . . . .¹

In this context, artists mold the film images of both Catholicism and women, who in some way speak what society thinks or feels, or at least how the artist interprets society’s feelings and ideology.² Separately, Catholicism and women have affected motion pictures in various ways. First, filmmakers have long been fascinated with Catholicism, and no other religion has served as the subject of film as frequently. Second, women have become the focus of many filmmakers and critics, particularly over the last fifty years. Areas of discussion are diverse, covering the portrayal of women in film, the development of various avenues of feminist theory, and the emergence of women writers and directors—many of whom have worked with the film medium from a strictly female point of view.

In recent years, women have made significant gains as directors, writers, and actresses within film and as executives working inside the studio system, but progress could be considered glacial. It wasn’t until 2003 that Julia Roberts joined the elite group of actors in the $25 million per picture club—the first woman to do so. Interestingly enough, Roberts’s career domestic box office for that period was $1.9 billion, just shy of Tom Cruise’s career domestic box office of $2.2 billion or Mel Gibson’s $2.3 billion—yet both men had been getting paid those salaries far longer than Roberts.

By 2009, it appeared women had made significant strides in Hollywood, but that assertion depends on whom you talk to. Women and Hollywood, a blog committed to bringing attention to the films, TV shows, theatre, and other entertainment that highlights women and our contribution to the culture presents just the opposite view. The author, Melissa Silverstein, believes that things aren’t just tough for women in Hollywood, they have reached crisis proportions; and she has sobering statistics to prove her point. Women make up:

17% of all executive producers

23% of all producers

18% of all editors

2% of all cinematographers.³

Silverstein obtains much of her statistical data from Dr. Martha Lauzen of San Diego University, who releases an annual Celluloid Ceiling survey of women working behind the scenes on the top 250 grossing movies each year. Lauzen’s survey notes that in 2009, only 16% of women held the position of director, executive producer, producer, writer, cinematographer, and editor. Worse, that number was down 3% from 2001 and exactly the same as 2008.⁴

But if women in Hollywood—particularly in jobs behind the camera—were not showing improvement, the image of Catholic women in film and television was. In Dogma, released in 1999, Kevin Smith provided a number of positive images of women. There is the lapsed Catholic Bethany who ultimately saves humanity, the muse Serendipity who discusses the Bible being written solely from a male point-of-view, and a female God.

Writer Nancy Miller created the cable series Saving Grace about a hell-raising, hard-drinking, and sexually adventurous Oklahoma City detective named Grace Hanadarko, who is given a last chance angel named Earl. Much like Theresa Dunn in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Grace is committed to her job as a police detective, is sexually promiscuous, and wants nothing to do with the Catholic Church that betrayed her. Unlike Theresa, however, Grace is not punished for being a strong woman who challenges patriarchal society. Instead, the portrayal of Grace shattered stereotypes about what it meant to be a modern Catholic woman.

These are just two positive examples; and while I do believe that women have indeed gained ground since my work was published as a thesis in 1992, it remains clear that women still have much work ahead. Whether dealing with the patriarchal systems of Hollywood, the Catholic Church, or society in general, women will have to continue to push beyond the existing barriers in order to finally achieve equal status with men in all realms of life.

Women, Catholicism, and Film

The primary objective of this work remains the same as its predecessors, which is to study films that portray women in Catholic situations or environments in an effort to determine how women are treated physically and emotionally within the selected works. The main difference is that the work has been expanded to include more recent films and television programs. While tracking the progress of women in Hollywood over the last decade, it seemed a logical step to research whether the images of Catholic women in Hollywood films has also benefited from any positive changes within the entertainment industry.

This work continues to explore some of the oppressive attitudes still frequently condoned by the interrelated patriarchal systems of Hollywood, the Catholic Church, and Western society that often carry over into the portrayals of Catholic women. As in the original study, in order to obtain a representative sample of films fitting this topic, a defined body of eighteen films and two cable-television series, dealing with predominantly Catholic issues or characters, were analyzed.

The Problem Facing Catholic Women in Film

Throughout my original research, the themes of fear, mistrust, and even hatred of women were prevalent in the majority of literature covering Roman Catholicism, Hollywood films, and feminist theory. It became clear that such attitudes are deeply ingrained and had a definite effect on how women were portrayed in films that were predominantly Catholic in nature. Women fare much better on television and are making positive strides, however; these themes are still very much in existence.

Uta Ranke-Heinemann, one of several theologians to explore the existence of such fear within the Catholic hierarchy, writes in Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: At the root of the defamation of women in the Church lies the notion that women are unclean and, as such, stand in opposition to the holy. In the assessment of clerics, women were second class human beings.⁵

This idea is echoed in the work of film critic Molly Haskell, who takes a different perspective through addressing the existing fear within patriarchy in a cultural context. Discussing what she labels, The Big Lie, in her book From Reverence to Rape, Haskell writes:

We can see that women live longer than men, give birth, and endure pain bravely; yet they are the weaker sex. They can read and write as well as men—are actually more verbal according to aptitude tests. And they are encouraged to pursue advanced education as long as they don’t forget their paramount destiny to marry and become mothers, an injunction that effectively dilutes intellectual concentration and discourages ambition. Women are not real women unless they marry and bear children, and even those without the inclination are often pressured into motherhood and just as often make a mess of it.⁶

Society, of course, is not the only system that pushes the idea that women can only be fulfilled as mothers. As almost any good Catholic knows, if a woman cannot be a virgin, preferably in life-long service to the Church, then she is strongly encouraged to marry and to be fruitful. Her salvation then comes through proliferation of the multitudes of the faithful. Bringing the third component of film into the equation, Haskell demonstrates how Hollywood perpetuates this myth:

In the movie business we have had an industry dedicated for the most part to reinforcing the lie. As a propaganda arm of the American Dream machine, Hollywood promoted a romantic fantasy of marital roles and conjugal euphoria and chronically ignored the facts and fears arising from an awareness of The End—the winding down of love, change, divorce, depression, mutation, death itself.⁷

The original three questions dealt with how the interrelated patriarchal systems of Roman Catholicism, Hollywood, and Western Society expressed their predominant attitudes and ideologies toward women. These attitudes generally focus on women not being as valuable as men. The three questions were:

• Is the fear, mistrust, or hatred of women present in the patriarchal ideology of Roman Catholicism reflected in the selected body of films?

• Are there signs of the devaluation of women in the films that can be attributed to the patriarchal ideology prevalent in Western society?

• Are the reforms in the Catholic Church reflected in the film portrayals of women?

In looking at these questions, the component of cable-television is also being added, expanding the pool of material. In the first edition, there was a fourth question addressing the increasing influence of women within the Hollywood system. With strong data indicating that is more myth than reality, the question that should be considered is this: Have women’s expanding roles in society led to improved images of Catholic women in Hollywood films? This final one casts an eye toward the future, speculating on where the cinematic images of Catholic women may be headed.

The premise behind the first question centers on the fear, mistrust or even hatred of women that is still evident within patriarchal systems. In this instance the dilemma focuses primarily on Roman Catholicism. To determine how this perceived fear is presented, chapter two outlines a brief history of women and the Catholic Church. The next step is to examine the chosen body of films in depth, applying this philosophy to film portrayals. Understanding the traditional teachings of Catholicism regarding women can illuminate how the pattern of oppression has continued throughout history and has carried over into film as part of a natural order.

The theory behind the second question also extends from the concept of an entrenched belief system. In this instance, the world view or political system suggests the idea of women’s inferiority within Western society. Molly Haskell expands on this concept when she notes:

The big lie perpetrated on Western society is the idea of women’s inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behavior that merely to recognize it is to risk unraveling the entire fabric of civilization. Alfred Adler, unique among his professional colleagues as well as among his sex, in acknowledging that occasionally women had ambitions similar to men’s called attention to this mistake—the notion of women’s inferiority—fifty years ago.⁸

Film Criteria

My original criteria of obtaining a representative sample of films still applies to this edition. All films were American, produced by mainstream Hollywood, and considered popular—distributed to a wide audience. The definition of predominantly Catholic films films was applied to those centering on Catholic issues or topics; these were not necessarily films made by Catholics. Screen roles were those identified as Catholic characters, not roles performed by Catholic actors.⁹

Also of note, since it would be physically impossible to review all the films containing portrayals of Catholic women (not to mention new works constantly in development across the globe), this work is obviously limited. Eighteen films and two television series have been selected for description and analysis, representing the clerical/religious, romantic and musical comedy, comedy, drama, crime, and melodrama genres.

The selected films were produced between 1943 and 2008, spanning over 60 years. It is nearly impossible to read the minds of the artists and the way they presented Catholic women, and this also limited the research.

Nine of the films are described as fitting into the category of the clerical/religious film, and the relationship between those in religious life and women was central to the film. The second group of nine films portray Catholic women in secular situations within the larger realm of society.

Each of the films was chosen for two main reasons. First, these films featured women often as a lead character, having an opportunity for more participation than, for example, in the crime or war movie. Second, since women were central to the story, these movies best illustrated the fear and oppression often exhibited toward women within the patriarchal structures of Roman Catholicism, Hollywood, and Western society.

There was also an important differentiation between the selected films. Within the clerical/religious films, the issues of Catholicism were primary to the story, with frequent emphasis on the lives of those in religious orders. In the case of the second group of films, Catholicism was still important; but within this genre, it was viewed as a secondary aspect of the narrative. The majority of the characters might still be Catholic, but the story was told within secular situations.

The films in the clerical/religious category studied were: The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), The Nun’s Story (1959), Lilies of the Field (1963), True Confessions (1981), Agnes of God (1985), Sister Act (1992), Dead Man Walking (1995), and Doubt (2008). Films categorized as non-clerical included: The Quiet Man (1954), The Sound of Music (1965), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), The Verdict (1982), Moonstruck (1987), Mystic Pizza (1988), Godfather III, (1990), Dogma (1999), and Return to Me (2000).

The two television series chosen were The Sopranos (1999-2007) and Saving Grace (2007-2010). Both of these would fit into the non-clerical genre. Because a TV show spans a much larger time frame than a movie, individual episodes were not analyzed in depth. Rather, how Catholicism affected the overall program and characters were considered the defining factors.

Feminist criticism remains the best type of critical analysis for this work as it accomplishes two things: It addresses issues relating specifically to women and then determines how these issues are correlated with the place women are assigned in society. Additionally, this type of critical theory debates the traditional values and existing models within society through challenging the nature, development, policy, ideas, and effects of film.

Defining Feminist Theory

Both Hollywood and the Catholic Church constitute patriarchal systems, each of which has frequently contributed to the oppression of women. Often such oppression occurs through relegating women to the status of what E. Ann Kaplan has called absence, silence, and marginality, where the controlling patriarchy believes women’s perceived threat can be minimized.

In an effort to highlight the existence of such attitudes, feminist theory will be applied to the film analysis and interpretation. Feminist theory can be a useful tool in guiding the interpretation of alternative or hidden meanings within the film text. However, because there are numerous types of feminist theory, in this work, feminist theory has been defined through the sources cited. (Refer to the Appendix for a review of the sources.)

In the area of film, feminist scholarly works include: Lucy Fischer, The Lady Vanishes; Jane Gaines, White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory; Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape; E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera; and Madonna Kolbenschlag, The Female Grotesque: Gargoyles in the Cathedrals of Cinema.