Lucas Wick
Professor Michael Miller
Argument and Persuasion in Humanities
12 March 2015
Working Girl’s Negative Outlook of Marxist Theory

Working Girl, directed by Mike Nichol, recalls a rags-to-riches story in a modern society where the class divisions are precisely sharp. Set in the 1980s, the film provides a historical situation of inequitable distribution: this inequity sways all the characters’ behavior. Though Tess McGill and Jack Trainer spark up a romance, it is Tess’ acquisitiveness that make the romance sizzle. In order to impersonate the bourgeoisie, Tess undergoes an extraordinary transformation. Tess, a proletariat, learns that if she wants to get ahead, she has to act, talk, and dress like the bourgeoisie. The film …show more content…

Tess learns that Katherine is using her idea for Trask’s merger with a small radio company after being told it would not work. While Katherine is in the hospital for two weeks due to a skiing accident, Tess impersonates the appearance of a successful businesswoman to land the deal with Trask Industries. She colludes with Jack Trainer to get help from a legitimate businessman who works in a firm handling mergers and acquisitions. When Katherine discovers Tess’ plan, she disrupts a meeting Jack and Tess have arranged with Trask himself. Katherine informs Trask, as well as Jack, that Tess is nothing more than a secretary and has been falsifying details. A consummate business man, jack tells the assembled group, “The players my have changed, but the game remains the same.” (94) Once Trask discovers the underlying facts regarding the original creator of the idea; he offers Tess a position working for his company due to the high risk Tess exhibits. Tess, believing she still needs to climb the ladder, is stunned after Alice, Tess’s assistant, explains that her desk in in the office. Tess’s monumental climb from the proletariats to the bourgeoisie exemplifies a negative example of the Marxist theory, because it searches out the inequalities of a society and exposes the bourgeoisie for their injustice. Tess discloses her former superior, Katherine Parker, of her unfairness to Tess. The