Mona Lisa Grimace

Yesterday I went to see Mona Lisa Smile. In 50's America, liberal Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) arrives at Wellesley College, a premiere Girls' education centre, to teach art history. Much to her dismay she finds the place predictably conservative and even somewhat diminutive of a woman's role in society. The main aims of her wards are to get married and keep house, and the overbearing school board do nothing but obstruct any attempts to encourage the girls to think for themselves. There follows an unoriginal but touching story of various characters finding their true paths.

Is that all I have to say? Where's my usual scathing condemnation? Either that or my unbounded adulation, surely. Suggestions that I am incapable of anything resembling a happy medium are undoubtedly well-founded.

Surprisingly enough, I am, for once, stuck at neither extreme.

Wellesley College made me feel nothing if not incredibly uncomfortable. The warped, narrow-minded characters that it and upper-class society de facto churned out during this period produced in me a sickened reaction almost physical in nature.

Having attended an elitist girls' school for the despicable last two years of my school education, the movie hit unhappily close to home. It seems so obvious to the modern western world that a woman should have a choice to do more than sit prettily at home. That a young girl's life should not revolve around finding an appropriate husband and then holding on to him long enough to build a comfortable home to which to tie him. Women can and should be more than that, and any institution surely thoroughly undermines its own prestigious doctrine of academic accomplishment with any suggestion that to expect anything more from life is at the best "subversive."

What upset me so much, is the disgusting feeling that nothing very much had changed. Perhaps this is a testament to the director's achievement in creating environment and characters that many in a modern audience can relate to in at least a small way, whether they have relevant personal experiences in their past or not. The core aim of these estabilishments may have followed the revolution and evolution of women's rights over the years but their methods and attitude is not markedly different.

Such places assume the necessity to be the best. Unsurprisingly, most parents support this. Individuality is encouraged only within understood bounds, and girls subjected to this system from the earliest age never question this. As long as an activity will assist in the procurement of a place at a well-respected university and a secure high-powered job, it is respectable and encouraged. Anything else - scandal. The holy grail that was a husband has been replaced with much sought-after popular university places, and the atmosphere surrounding their pursuit remains as stifling as ever. Indeed, even if a particular extra-curricular hobby is approved, it is unlikely to be supported unless a student can produce the requisite flourish and promise of notable achievement.

Personal enjoyment isn't even a factor. Sometimes I doubt whether girls bred through this system even know how to enjoy something without being particular adept at it.

Where does this come from? This ridiculous pressure, both self-imposed and welcomed external, to succeed? The answer does of course lie with the parents. Most students not coming from an overtly upper-class family instead hail from a home in which at least one parent is some form of business-suited professional. They grow up being shown how to succeed, and given no reason or excuse to do otherwise. Growing up, they live in such an environment that they are sheltered from anybody suggesting they do anything but follow the carefully mapped out route of success assigned to them. When most finish school, they will not know a single peer that is not going on to higher education, allowing for gap year variation.

Anyone not going to one of the more respected universities is obviously either mediocre or a slacker, and those not going to university at all are clearly stupid, or deficient, and doomed to a life of menial labour. These paragons of educated thought are there to do the thinking for the lesser masses, and is it any wonder that they are often initially incapable of doing anything but patronising, pitying, and judging? Opinions are fashionable but rarely gleaned from personal experience, thought, or investigation, and General Studies lessons are the latest forum for affected and impassioned debate, the poses echoing eerily of the Elocution and Poise lessons so seriously satired by Mona Lisa Smile.

For me, Mona Lisa Smile showcased nothing but the heralding of the wave of new ideals and thoughtless goals rather than any more substantial overthrow of traditions. The women coming out of the modern-day Wellesley Colleges are just as blindedly rooted to their culture's definitions as the characters of the 50's. The Katherine Watsons of this world did nothing but change the instruments the band were holding; the music played remains the same.

Centres of academic excellence shouldn't automatically be presupposed to be marching hand-in-hand with snobbery and odourous elitism, but I believe often the two are closer than we should be comfortable with. If there are parents in relevant situations reading this, I would appeal to you to consider remarkably carefully the environment in which you wish your child to grow up. Intellectual children in less achieving schools may feel somewhat isolated for a while. But among the mass of unhealthy motivation to be found amongst the striving "academic elite" there lies nothing but the promise of a callously warped perspective on life, leading to a stress-dominated lifestyle reflective of that, and leaving only the unexploited potential for personal development. Exactly the same potential, if not somewhat lessened, as when the individual first entered the school. Academically, intellectually, a safe option, perhaps, but socially an almost inevitable condemnation.

The sixth-form school I attended that I hated so much was, to put it mildly, unwise to accept me, and dafter still to offer me a scholarship. I attended 8 (9 if you count junior-senior school transitions) different schools prior to my entrance to this last one, and most of these were state-owned, none in even the same league in either acheivement or prestige as the last. Most of the girls I encountered there made me cringe every other time they opened their pretty athletic mouths, and I wish I didn't know that such a culture of pure attainment existed. But I do, and if I had my way I'd probably outlaw all institutions encouraging such a one.

So I suppose it's probably a good thing that it's not up to me, my reaction is undoubtedly far from objective. I couldn't possibly tell you if Mona Lisa Smile was a good movie or not.

Posted by Missiedith at March 14, 2004 1:02 AM | TrackBack