Upon completion of the series I felt that I gained a greater insight into the struggles of working women of any kind as well as a greater understanding of the struggles of minority and oppressed groups at the time also. The working woman throughout the series was most-strongly embodied by Gyllenhaal in her performance as Candy. The show at first appears to portray how Candy revolutionized the industry of pornography by performing, directing and producing films with her previous experience as a sex-worker in New York City. However, through all of this her attempts to be taken as a series director and producer by investors and other producers of her company would instantly be overlooked or shunned by those men almost every time. By the end of the series you will see Candy put in so much effort and back-stepping to get the funding together for her first non-adult, “real” film to have it reach virtually no audience. It was not until after her death that this film was recognized for the testament to the experiences of the working woman in The United States at the time that it was.
Candy’s story was not the most impactful of the series in my opinion though. Few series’ come together full circle and give the audience such an understanding of messages like this as the story of Lori (portrayed by Emily Meade) does in this show. You will see Lori begin in a similar situation as Candy, both being sex workers on the streets of NYC, yet these characters could not be more opposite through their similarities than they are. You will see these characters grow vastly different on their individual journeys throughout the overall story, yet regardless of how different they became (I won’t spoil Lori’s ending and it’s meaning for you but the wait is worth it to fully understand it, I promise) their endings were still very similar in many ways as well. It is then you will begin to fully understand the message that regardless of anything and everything they do, the only thing the rest of the world saw of them was that they were women.
While this series is full of reflections upon the working woman’s experience, you will also see what it meant to be impoverished, a person of color in various facets of life, as well as to be queer, and the ‘underground’ scene that had to take place all leading up to the HIV pandemic of the 80s, at the time. Nearly all of the characters in this series are considered impoverished, or at least immersed in impoverished community and the community they have built truly feels communal in a way only the series ‘Shameless’ has also given an audience. Despite every story told and its importance in the overall telling of the series, they all find their abrupt end when the city decides to gentrify the area which all of these events took place. This wasn’t just any “neighborhood development” program, however, this was the gentrification of all gentrifications. This was the building of Times Square.