Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr, 1978
I read this one because Brian McDonald likes it a lot. It's focused, it tells an emotional story, it speaks to humanity. But somehow I don't really care for it.
It follows Norma Rae Webster, a woman who works in a textile factory. She tries to organize a union, and finally does in the climax just before getting fired. She stands up to the big guys and makes a huge change.
I don't think I really "get" Norma's character development. Or even "get" her character. She seems to be quite strong, stubborn, and independent. But she seems to be this way for the whole film. At the beginning, she was also being taken advantage of by several men. But that problem is quickly solved when she gets married, so her personal growth doesn't seem to be understanding her own value. So what is her growth? What aspect of Norma changes?
It didn't seem like anything, to me. She changed her situation, but she didn't change as a person. I didn't really see her learn any lessons. She stood up for what she believed in and that's awesome, don't get me wrong, but I was expecting to see some internal growth and I didn't see any. It is also possible that it happened and somehow I completely missed it. Or maybe I'm expecting the wrong thing from this story; it isn't about internal change at all, but about changing the world. Mark Kennedy talks about these kinds of stories here. ParaNorman (which I posted about a few weeks ago) is also one of those kinds of stories: the main character is more like a sage-figure, and we watch these stories to see how we, collectively as a society, can change.
tl;dr - This is a good story worth watching, but I didn't connect with it for some reason.
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