Don't Take It Like A Man: Take A Stand!
The Theme of Ethical Redemption In "North Country"


Edmund Burke observed, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Director Niki Caro's 2005 film treatment of the nation's first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit takes that ball and runs with it. Whether women should be treated as equals or enjoy protected status in the workplace may be the not-so-burning question posed by the film. The conventional answer provided is, of course, "both." There is a great deal of literature regarding the need for protection for minorities rights against the tyranny of the majority in free market milieus. Thus, I won't waste time trying to argue either for or against the need for workplace protections. Those protections have been a de jure fact of life for quite some time now. The wisdom that shaped them is grounded in experiences too common to have been anything but symptomatic of gross repression. Besides, equality in the workplace is the law.

The de facto situation since the establishment of protections, however, has been quite different for women for a number of reasons. I won't pretend to be able to list all such factors, however the film does suggest some poignant answers. Beyond its tendency toward melodrama and preachiness, the film does offer a nice snapshot of the destructive, misogynist male dominated culture coming into contact with new economic and social realities. Its seductive style and artistic integrity takes one inside a an economic microcosm completely dominated by a single employer. Other films such as John Sayles' excellent "Matewan" have already successfully mined this ethical territory from the repressed worker perspective. However, never has a feminist perspective been presented with such rich sense of pathos.

The recency of the events makes it hard to believe that such things can and still do go on in America. However, the point driven home is that sexual harassment is not merely a dyadic predatory situation. It is also a social ill that is driven as much by good intentions as bad ones. Specifically, not speaking out is the evil at which the film takes aim and it leaves one squirming with moral indignation over how thin the veneer of goodness is in otherwise perfectly decent neighbors. In other words, sexism takes a village.

The central character, Josey Aimes, is loosely based on a real complainant in the seminal 25-year legal ordeal behind Jenson v. Eveleth, the first successful sexual-harassment class-action lawsuit, in which female iron miner Lois Jenson battled misogyny in the iron mines of Minnesota's North Country. I say loosely because the producers of the film chose intentionally to dramatically alter the facts to heighten the emotional impact of the events. (This is a studio product here, after all, not an indie documentary). Apart from the artistic manipulation, many of the appalling incidences of harassment and violence portrayed in the film are not in dispute. Were the story a work of pure fiction, there would still be much to learn from the complex interrelationships of the characters and where the story arc takes them. The story presents an intricate patriarchal web of long-standing roles and relationships that glues the cold, Northern Minnesota community together.

Josey plows headlong into this web and finds it not at all to her (or to our) liking. This is where the film tends to get a little preachy, since she had us at hello. We are all on board with this feisty single mother simply trying to eke out a decent living and do right by her children. When she is attacked, revulsion is the natural reaction for all but the most hardened misogynist. Of course, one cannot help but despise the Neanderthal attitudes of the miners and the slimy manipulation of corporate big shots and reptilian trial attorneys. Thus, the inevitable clash between the corrupt homosocial good old boys network and the young, virtuous upstart is somewhat predictable. What are interesting, however, are teetering family and peripheral community relationships that are stressed to beyond the point of breaking during the conflict. There is a sense of history that is built up scene by scene that slyly pulls one into the place and time, whether it be memories of Christmases past or a father's silent smoldering meltdown over a cup of coffee. This film is not about set pieces or titanic revelations. Rather it is more about what it means to stand up when confronted by entrenched evil. Furthermore, it is about the remarkable bravery of the pioneers of new social orders, in this case the sex neutral workplace.

The two central relationships that form the emotional core of the story are between Josey and the two men closest to her: her miner father Hank and her teenage son Sammy. Josey has been more or less estranged from her father since high school after having Sammy out of wedlock, an unpardonable sin to many in the town, including Hank. This shame has been passed down intergenerationally to Sammy who harbors a grudge against Josey for his lot. His anger causes Sammy to take sides against his own mother as the spark of misogyny flashes in his heart.

Hatred and injustice are very much inherited. They are learned behaviors modeled by parents, teachers and heroes--those whose opinions are most valued. Their personal failures become endemic in the next generation. Sammy's loyalties are thus torn between his subjective need to support his mother under attack, and the easily-manipulated mania for conformity that is so symptomatic of adolescence. He is conflicted because he also has been stigmatized for her actions and tries to distance himself from her.

Meanwhile Josey's father, an iron miner who has come to assume the worst about his daughter, is bitter with disapproval over Josey's choices. To him, this was another in a series of challenges to his authority over her, bringing up residual resentments from Josey's stormy adolesence. When he sees her being drawn into the pit of industrial horrors at the mine, he characterizes it as an lesbian-driven affront to manhood that will come to no good end. The longtime social order of the town is under attack in his view. Indeed, he and other union miners see it not only as a feminist feint, but also as mine management's cynical ploy to undermine the union by introducing radical elements into the workforce, divide-and-conquer-style. A weakened union is good for shareholders. Management, perhaps wanting to update its image as more progressive, was hiring young, virile females as a second generation attempt to meet the legal requisites for equal opportunity.

Josey was hired, ironically, based on her gender, exactly what equity is ultimately a struggle against. Feminists want to be given the same chances as males and treated as economic equals. At the same time, they demand to be treated differently socially when it comes to workplace protections and basic amenities. Thus, while the mine's owners may have some subjective sense of responsibility to join the zeitgeist and become more progressive on some level (whether motivated by greed or not), they also had no choice but to make a good show and meet pressing objective responsibilities to the law with regard to hiring practices. Myopically, they chose imprudently to ignore serious legal prohibitions against condonation of sexual harassment. Hank sides against Josey until he realizes the destructive maelstrom she has unleashed threatens to utterly destroy what is left of his relationships. By ignoring his responsibility to protect Josey, he is headed down a slippery slope toward chaos and dissolution, while playing right into the hands of management. When he eventually sees these truths, his humility and moral outrage are inspirational. This was the part of the movie where even I cried. This thoroughly dour and disloyal man becomes the male role model of the film and an example of how to act responsibly in the face of cruel injustice and misogyny when no one else would.

He and the other males in the film are faced with an ethical dilemma to either downplay the nature and the scale of the misogyny or to challenge it at great personal risk to themselves and their families. The threat for them is fairly well implied: If they choose not to "go along to get along," they will become pariahs and suffer much the same fate as the victims. The male miners, of course, don't have quite as much at stake the females who are challenging the status quo--after all, they are unlikely to be raped.

Nevertheless, no one speaks up for these female miners, not even Josey's own father who all but tells her that she is asking for trouble. Meanwhile, the female protagonist is advised repeatedly by the moral proverb to "take it like a man." One encounters this rationale from antifeminist rhetoric fairly frequently: "they want their cake and to eat too!" This narrow mindedness is also encountered in film. In other words, no one can avail themselves of equal rights and special protection of rights at the same time, which is patently absurd. Of course they can. A classic rule of progressive government states that "equals should be treated equally, while unequals should be treated unequally." No one would reasonably suggest, for example, that the rights of African Americans cannot enjoy both equal status with their Caucasian brethren and yet still enjoy special legal protections against discrimination. They do under law.

For many victims of discrimination and systematic oppression, protection, whether through laws, regulations, company rules, or the courts, is the ONLY effective means toward de facto equality. That is what makes their experiences so vital to forming effective political and social responses to injustice. Furthermore, when the need for those protections is so utterly blatant and urgent as portrayed in the film, it would be morally indefensible to make a case against them.

The courts are often the last resort to both shape and maintain the rights of protected groups such as women and minorities. Even in situations where politicians are unwilling and/or unable to act ethically in response to social injustice, lawsuits offer a last resort to right society's horrible wrongs. Though reactionaries may rail against the abuse of civil law as a form of tyranny of the minority, the fact is that many progressive protections that we now take for granted as citizens were first established by judges who defied conventional wisdom and were not afraid in their proper roles as Constitutional officers to "legislate from the bench." Later these protections were codified into law by less-imaginative legislators and timid executives who were unwilling to do what is so obviously right were it not for all of the political sniping and grandstanding.

Likewise, the film makers place the onus on individual citizens, particularly all persons in positions of higher social status, to speak out against sexual harassment and discrimination whenever they encounter it. Though this message is implied, one can clearly see it in Hank's journey from bad father to good. It is also visible in the film on the faces of many of the other miners, male and female alike, who are clearly uncomfortable with the status quo, but reticent to speak honestly about their disapproval. The viewer cannot help but cheer them on to take responsibility for the situation, for it is theirs just as much as it is the key players.

There is Glory, Josey's mentor and first generation female miner who shows her the ropes at the mine. When she learns of Josey's plans to sue the company, she loses all hope and a great deal of faith in her friend who seems to be spending all of Glory's hard-earned social capital with the men. Her dilemma is whether to work for change within the system incrementally with the male miners whom she trusts and whose grudging respect and trust has had to dearly earn; or, on the other hand, she can do the right thing for her friend and for female miners in general by joining the class action. Her courtroom statement that she stands with Josey, even when horribly paralyzed, inspires the other female miners to take a clear stand for justice. Sherry, Josey's co-worker, needs her job to support a dying father. Practical matters such as that prevent her from pursuing justice for her own cruel mistreatment by male miners. Hers is the swing vote, the pressure point at which the suit can become a class action. Inspired by Glory's support she is able to stand up as well. By allowing for the class action, that one statement of support sets the courtroom rocking, the ripples from which spread outward in society from a Minnesota mine shaft to the boardrooms of New York--indeed, throughout the entire social fabric of the United States.

Then there is Josey's mother who goes from dutiful resignation, to moral crusader in one gigantic leap when one day Hank comes home to find she has packed her bags and checked into a local motel. She could no longer countenance her husband's disloyalty to her child and her grandchildren. "She had a baby, Hank! She didn't rob a bank." she had shouted at one point, clearly at her rope's end. She had then warned him he would soon find himself doing his own laundry. By rock Hank's ethical boat, she manages to set the whole town rocking, for Hank is the touchstone. He is old school and a long-time insider. If he could make that ethical transition from capitulator to collective conscience, then anything was possible and she precipitated it. Even more conflicted is serial harasser Bobby Sharp. His long dead romantic relationship with Josey is resurrected, albeit in a horribly mutated form, upon Josey's hiring. Their triste ended suddenly in high school when Bobby witnessed Josey's vicious rape at the hands of a teacher that results in her pregnancy. After fleeing the scene and refusing to help, Bobby had deteriorated to a shadow of himself. But for occasional flashes of humanity, he had become a monster. His shame had become manifest as violent misogyny. When his sin, revealed Hollywood-style on the stand, dashes management's evil scheme to discredit Josey, he suddenly becomes a kind of pathetic hero, redeeming himself when his shame for not helping his friend finally overcomes his need to save face and avoid legal penalties for all of his crimes against Josey and others. Even the worst that is among us, by this example, can find absolution by turning to justice.

By simply seeking the same respect accorded to men as required by law, Josey transformed the lives of the people around her and changed the perceptions of her community at large. However, it is only through collective action that the problem can be addressed. Refusing to "take it like a man" applies not only to female victims of sexual harassment, but also to anyone exposed to it. The tendency to downplay the negativity and bad intentions associated with harassment do nothing but encourage it through misplaced tolerance. Males and females alike must stand up and rock the boat from time to time if, for no other reason, than to maintain a sense of personal integrity.

Moreover, if belief in the principle of equal opportunity for minorities holds any kind of water, we as co-workers and family must do more than pay lip service to it. It is a burden as well as a privilege that we ignore at our own peril, for tomorrow it may be our own wife, or daughter or friend who is the victim. Thus, we are all the lesser for simply doing nothing. When confronted by evil, in Josey's words, "Take a stand!"