1. WOMEN, WORK, MOVIES

2. NEW HOLLYWOOD
Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae is one of the last movies of the «Hollywood Renaissance» or «American New Wave,» a deep redefinition of the movie industry brought about in the 1960s and 1970s at all levels by young directors such as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Michael Cimino, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Alan J. Pakula, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Sydney Pollack, Sam Peckinpah, Hal Ashby, and Europeans like Roman Polański and Miloš Forman. Besides renewing cinema language on the formal level, New Hollywood addressed a number of issues that until then had remained in the background of American cinema: the anxieties of the younger generations (Five Easy Pieces, Taxi Driver), “deviant” female sexualities (Gangster Story), new ways to conceive love relationships (Harold and Maude), women’s conditions in American society (A Woman Under the Influence, An Unmarried Woman, The Rain People), a deep critique of American imperialism past and present and of the logic of war (Little Big Man, Soldier Blue, M*A*S*H, The Deerhunter, Apocalypse Now), and the life of the working class (The Molly Maguires, Harlan County). What Norma Rae manages to do is conflating the representation of the predicament of the working class, ethnic minorities and women, and showing the intersectional connections of identities that are enmeshed in the contradictions and conflicts of contemporary society.

3. WOMEN AND TRADE UNIONISM
Norma Rae is based upon the true story of Crystal Lee Jordan, who was instrumental in helping to unionize the textile industry in North Carolina. Martin Ritt became interested in the story when he an article on the difficulties – physical threats, ostracism by fellow workers and community hostility – faced by union organizers. In a 1978 letter, Ritt described his initial reaction: “When I first heard about the situation in this industry, I could not believe that I was not reading a period piece, and further excited to find how many women were in the forefront of the struggle for civil and economic rights.”

4. HOME VS FACTORY
The movie sets up from the beginning a juxtaposition between the public, chaotic and de-humanized space of the cloth factory, dominated by an overwhelming noise that has turned Norma Rae’s mother almost deaf, and the private space of the home and family, represented by a series of scrapbook photographs of Norma Rae, and among them a baby picture that creates a contrast of innocence with the harsh realities of factory life.

5. A DISORDERLY CONDUCT
Norma Rae is portrayed from the very beginning as a complex figure, who has already broken a number of rules (she will also get arrested under charge of “disorderly conduct”), first of all the ones relating to the average roles of wife and mother, because she is a single unmarried mother with two children from different men (and this will later on put her in conflict even with some union organizers). Her life seems stuck in a series of dead ends – working in the factory, returning to an overcrowded home, and then going out to have affairs with married men. Things change when labor organizer Reuben Warshovsky comes to try to establish a union among the mill workers. In their first long exchange Norma comes to know that Reuben is a Jew and confesses she has never met a Jew before. When she asks him what makes Jews different, he answers, “History.” This triggers a sort of “opening up” of Norma’s view of life, that makes her even more “deviant” than what she already is.

6. FAMILY VS PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
After Norma marries Sonny, she also starts spending more time in the activities of the labor union, and her husband complains that she is neglecting the family. The conflict between family and factory is therefore replicated on the level of personal engagement in the private and public spheres. The conflict could break out in the scene in which Norma and Reuben swim naked together, but contrary to what one might expect she does not have a love affair with him and her marriage gradually strengthens when her husband starts understanding the importance of her work in the union. If the conflict between home and factory at the beginning is what is blocking any hope for a different and better life, Norma’s fight for the workers’ rights is what allows her to make her private life more meaningful and also somewhat happier. Work itself, according the logic of capitalist exploitation, is represented as alienating and even dangerous for one’s personal health, but working for the workers has the opposite effect.

7. THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
The climactic scene of the movie is the one in which Norma Rae, who has just been fired for copying a notice from management designed to incite whites against blacks, gets up on a table, writes UNION on a piece of cardboard, and holds it up for all the workers to see. One by one, the workers shut off their machines in a show of support. The woman worker and labor organizer is represented as the center of the world of factory life, labor unionism and ethnic relationships.

8. A HAPPY ENDING
Contrary to many American movies and novels that often show the workers’ struggle as somewhat doomed to inevitably fail, due to the overwhelming power of capitalism, Norma Rae end with the establishment of the union in the mill factory, and Reuben leaving Norma to manage the further fights for the workers’ rights.