Episode Details

This week Eliana and Patrick delve into Lizzie Borden's 1986 dramedy Working Girls about a day in the life of a group of young sex workers in a middle-class brothel in 1980s Manhattan.

A milieu rarely ever depicted on the big screen in American cinema (in their Criterion essay So Meyer stresses that it was not until Sean Baker's Tangerine in 2015—three decades later—that the lived reality of sex workers would take center stage of a major US feature film again), Borden, with her observational eye and collaborative filmmaking process, circumvents the common dichotomous portrayal of prostitutes as either glamorized or pitiable, shedding light on the profession that proves both sympathetic to its characters and discerning of the mundanity of their profession—ultimately highlighting the autonomy women can exercise while embracing that the world's oldest profession is just that—a profession.

Resources:

• Borden, Lizzie, and Gordon, Betty. “Lizzie Borden and Bette Gordon on Working Girls.” Criterion, 2021,
• Da Costa, Cassie. Lizzie Borden Is Finally Getting Her Due. Vanity Fair, 15 July 2021,
• Felando, Cynthia. „4 Lizzie Borden.” Independent Female Filmmakers. A Chronicle Through Interviews, Profiles, and Manifestos, edited by Michele Meek, Rouledge, 2019.
• Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex. The Case for Feminist Revolution. 1970.
• Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.Free, Erin. „Unsung Auteurs: Lizzie Borden.“ FilmInk, 12 May, 2021,
• Gagne, Emily. “Director Lizzie Borden on Censorship, Community and the Movie She’s Kept in the Closet for Over 40 Years.” That Shelf, 1 March 2023,
• Hoberman, James. “Lizzie Borden’s ‘Working Girls’ Is About Capitalism, Not Sex.” New York Times, 16 June 2021,
• Huber, Christoph. “Whatever Happened to Lizzie Borden?” CinemaScope, 17 March 2018, 22 Sept. 2023.
• Isaacson, Johanna. “Hollywood Kills Feminism: the Work of Lizzie Borden.” Blind Field, 14 August 2019.
• Lane, Christina. Feminist Hollywood. From Born in Flames to Point Break. Wayne State University Press, 2000.
• Mayer, So. “Working Girls: Have You Ever Heard of Surplus Value?” Criterion, 13 July 2021.

Sound

• EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal and Nancy O'Doan and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein Archive
• Intro: CNN