Controlling the narrative: on Jane Fonda’s Third Act

ABSTRACT

This article centres on what Fonda herself has called the ‘Third Act’ f her career in her 2006 memoir My Life So Far. After 15 years in retirement, she came back to acting in 2005. I argue that the memoir is a key piece of her makeover, a return to public life and to acting that displays a striking continuity with the key traits that defined her career since the 1960s: sexuality, politics and family; each of which is always engaging with her acting. Each element is given a new twist in her Third Act and the different strategies to achieve such a makeover will be illustrated with examples from three works that were released in the six months between late 2017 and mid-2018, as well as the companion piece to My Life So Far, Susan Lacy’s documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts, which opened in Cannes in May 2018. Like many roles in her Third Act years, the films and the TV series are full of echoes of her previous career and engage with her persona, sometimes boldly, sometimes movingly. The range of strategies used by Fonda points towards her drive to control the narrative and, ultimately, the meaning of her public persona.

KEYWORDS:

• Ageing
• biography
• persona
• feminism
• performance
• sexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Capitalisation as per Fonda’s own writing, here and in Prime Time (2011).

2. See also Kinney (2003).

3. This distinction is explicitly made in the casting of Book Club, in which the Keaton character is shown as insecure about romance whereas the Fonda character is, at least at the beginning, more interested in the purely sexual.

4. For Fonda’s controversial take on feminism see Fonda (2009). Jerslev (2018) wonders whether Fonda’s feminism and ‘her individualism and body-surveillance, self monitoring, and sexualization in old age (…)’ could not be perceived as ‘supported by the neoliberal ethos attached to successful ageing’ (2018, p. 6).

5. An ironic remark by ex-husband Roger Vadim on her changing nature can be found in Anderson, 2014, p.126.

6. For controversies raised by the Fonda persona circa 1973 see Lembke (2010).

7. The scene was referenced in the first Variety review (31 December 1977) and by other contemporary reviewers such as Roger Ebert (‘a scene of great tenderness, beauty and tact’, he wrote in his 1 January 1978 review) and Molly Haskell in her negative 27 February review in New York Magazine. It has since been regularly included in compilations of memorable cinematic sex scenes, such as a 2016 Indiwire survey of the ‘20 best sex scenes’ (https://www.indiewire.com/2016/02/20-great-movie-sex-scenes-for-valentines-day-272476/, accessed 12 February 2019).

8. Fonda came to regret aspects of her behaviour during that trip. For her final statement on the topic see her blog entry ‘The Truth About My Trip to Hanoi’ (https://www.janefonda.com/2011/07/the-truth-about-my-trip-to-hanoi/, Accessed 10 August 2019).

9. See also Anderson (2008), Kinney (2003) and Pramaggiore (2010).

10. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJY-xSKaq64&t=241s Accessed 15 July 2018.

11. The motif is also present in the second season of Grace and Frankie (02x09), where she has sex in a hotel with Phil, played by Sam Elliot, with whom Grace was in love but turned away on account of being married. Notice the resonances between the character of ‘Phil’ and the way she describes her feelings towards Redford.

12. Jermyn (2012). On the ways fandom is encouraged through this strategy in a slightly different context, see Jerslev (2018).

13. Figures according to www.boxofficemojo.com Accessed 15 July 2018.

14. For an insightful argument on this newly discovered demographic see Jermyn (2018).

15. See https://www.janefonda.com/a-quick-catch-up/Accessed 15 July 2018.

16. See for instance Fonda (2005, p. 570).

17. She mentions this at the start of Jane Fonda in Five Acts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alberto Mira

Dr Alberto Mira teaches Stars and Audiences and Film Styles for the BA Film Studies degree at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author or editor of ten volumes including Historical Dictionary of Spanish Cinema, 24 Frames: The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, Miradas insumisas (on gay and lesbian engagement with cinema) and De Sodoma a Chueca, the first history of Spanish gay cultures. He has also published numerous articles and book chapters, with topics including spornosexuality and Spanish star Mario Casas, Pedro Almodóvar and the reworking of biography, performance artist José Ocaña and reception of Brokeback Mountain in Spain. Currently he is working on a volume on queer childhoods in European Cinema, curating an exhibition on Valencian counterculture and developing a project on the pop musical.