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Convent clichés are all over our screens. But some nuns break the habit
There’s so much more to nuns and convent education than what shows up on screen. Why do the clichés persist?
First off, let’s kneel at the altar of Whoopi Goldberg. Her role as a nightclub singer hiding out in a convent in Sister Act (1992) set the template for how nuns are portrayed on screen. She may well have inscribed it on two stone tablets. Thirty-two years on, even those who’ve never stepped into a convent believe they know what Catholic nuns do.
Apparently, all nuns do is lead choir, get comically strict, be stingy with praise but generous with corporal punishment, and speak English like Julie Andrews. In Indian shows and movies, nuns get bonus features. They also butcher regional languages, wear oversized crucifixes and address grown men as “my child”. They catch students red-handed having harmless fun, look livid for 10 seconds, before joining in the in the fun in a twist everybody saw coming.
All schools have rules. But apparently, prestigious convent schools revel in theirs. Hemlines should be just this high. Shoes must be shiny. Socks must never droop. No shuffling when walking. No treading loudly on the wooden stairs. No left-handed writing. Even curly hair is frowned upon, as if it is a deliberate choice.
Some of these may be true; others may have been, at some time, but , especially on Indian TV, both nuns and convent schools seem more tightly wound than usual.
In Udaan (2010), when a student is caught watching porn outside the premises, he is expelled from boarding school . The Family Man (2019-) depicts Srikant’s daughter studying in a convent. The headmistress schools even the girl’s father about not spending more time with his daughter and being distracted by his phone when she’s complaining about the student to him. The nun is such a stickler, he makes an excuse to cut the meeting short and flee. It doesn’t end there. The nun complains to his wife, getting him into trouble at home.
It’s supposed to be funny. But no one who studied under real nuns will laugh. There’s more to convent-school life, obviously. And more to nuns. The Mexican show, Pact of Silence (2023), takes a brave step away from the stereotype. It shows a nun helping out a group of girls, one of whom is pregnant from rape. Lady Bird (2017) featured a nun who thankfully didn’t make strictness her entire personality. Sister Sarah Joan picks up on Lady Bird’s performative streak before anyone else does. She doesn’t explode when the student vandalises her car. Nuns so rarely are shown to see students as individuals.
The Indian drama Big Girls Don’t Cry, which started streaming in March, gets Pooja Bhatt to play the headmistress of a girls’ boarding school in the hills. She’s not a nun, but the cliches are all there, even the steely resilience with which she minds teens who are keen to explore the world and orient their own moral compasses.
To digress, there are detective nuns – The Sister Boniface Mysteries (2022-) follows the investigations of an English nun who’s a school teacher, but also has a PhD in forensic science. The best part? She makes her own wine. Nuns have starred in their own slasher horror movies – terrible ones such as the childish The Nun (2018) and the even more infantile 2023 sequel.
Finally, if any nun is resetting Whoopi Goldberg’s template, let it be Siobhán McSweeney, aka Sister Michael in Derry Girls (2018-2022). The headmistress of a girls’ Catholic school in 1990s Northern Ireland revels in the stereotypes even as she breaks them. She’s fond of a baby Jesus statue, but she’ll also roll her eyes at the morning assembly. She rents out nun habits at Halloween, sips whisky, but also says the rosary for Ireland to win during a football game. She’d probably cringe if she had to join choir. But like Goldberg’s fake Sister Mary Clarence, she’s doing what she can to survive convent life.
More of this on screen, please!
From HT Brunch, May 18, 2024
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