EOC Week 3: 9 to 5

1. The film was developed from just a concept "Secretaries want to kill their bosses". What market research techniques were used to develop the screenplay? What specific processes that are in the book or discussed in class were used?

Jane Fonda, who wanted to make a movie about real life experiences, chose to look at an issue that was facing women of the 1970’s. It was equal treatment in the workforce. What Jane actually did was interview real-life secretaries about their feelings while at work. Many of them said that they hated their bosses, and fantasized about killing them. She thought this would not only be a funny subject, but an important one to cover. This method is comparable to a focus group. They used Descriptive Research to determine who purchases a product, portray the size of the market, identify competitors' actions, and so on. Descriptive research addresses who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. Descriptive research, as the name implies, describes characteristics of objects, people, groups, organizations, or environments. Put more simply, descriptive research tries to “paint a picture” of a given situation. What Jane did was look at the lives of these women, and paint a picture of what it might be like to walk in their shoes, and what it would be like to deal with their struggles.

2. What ethical issues were parts of the plot line of the actual film? Although we did not watch the actual film, there were many ethical dilemmas referenced. What were they? How were they resolved?

Dilemmas within the movie include sexism and discrimination, gender issues, and the balance of power. The sexist boss in the office used his advantage of having control over all the women in order to manipulate them or harass them. The women could not refuse or complain, because the boss would just fire them. They also felt like they had no outlet to fix the issue, because there was no way for them to complain about grievances. The way they attempted to resolve the problems was to kill their boss. Obviously, this creates an “ethical dilemma” for these women. They hate their boss, but they are not inherently bad people, they have just hit their breaking point. From the looks of the documentary, it seemed as if they were not successful. But by the end, maybe a lesson was learned, or an understanding reached.