Whalen Films, “A Question of Habit”

This short film is narrated by Susan Sarandon and is about women religious in the United States.  Here’s the description from the film’s website:

In the February 23, 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey made a
seemingly serious case for Hillary Clinton as president, arguing that we
shouldn’t mind if she’s a bitch because “bitches get stuff done.” Fey went on
to bolster her argument with the following observation: “That’s why Catholic
schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old
clams, and they sleep on cots and are allowed to hit you. And at the end of the
school year, you hated those bitches, but you knew the capital of Vermont.”
How did nuns become part of this discussion? And how did they get reduced
from the historical reality of their significant contributions to such a narrow
and nasty caricature?

Enter “nun” on Ebay and you’re likely to get over 800 items ranging from the
old to the new, expensive to not, devotional to hostile, nostalgic to edgy,
historical artifact to caricature, tasteful to kitsch. Examples include an “
antique French nun’s linen dress”, starting @$531.00, a DVD of a film entitled
Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine, starting at $18.99, and “vintage ceramic nuns
playing baseball….CUTE!,”starting @$1.00.

A Question of Habit explores popular culture’s fascination with all things “nun”
and dives into the real stories behind the women religious in the United
States from the battle field medics of the Civil War to the creators of the first
HMO in the Country to the political activists fighting against capital
punishment.

More info here.

H/T Erin McKinney

-Bridget Crawford