The Good, the Bad, and the Girls in Uniform

Written by Emilia Meenakshi Emmrich
Edited by Noor Khan
Cover Image by Linda Xu

When you first set your eyes on Mädchen in Uniform, you are immediately struck by how the film looks. Not “looks” as in how you perceive the film, the black-and-white visuals, or cinematic shots of pristine, imposing architecture and crisp, clean uniforms. Rather, you are struck by how the camera gazes at its subjects. Mädchen in Uniform, German for “Girls in Uniform” unsurprisingly has a lot to do with girls, and it is the way that the camera watches these girls that makes the viewing experience so intriguing. We see them getting ready for bed, joking in changing rooms, dreaming about all the delicious food that they are longing to eat. In a media landscape still predominantly held in the shackles of the male gaze, this viewing experience is oddly jarring. Strangely enough, we are given the opportunity to watch these girls as people in whom we can see ourselves. 

Mädchen in Uniform is a German, queer, coming-of-age film released in 1931, two years before Hitler was sworn in as the Chancellor. Despite being wildly popular at the time of release, the film was officially banned and burned by the Nazis and only survived through the wide distribution of copies outside of the country. Mädchen in Uniform is set at a girls’ boarding school and chronicles the trials and tribulations of a young girl named Manuela as she strives for love and self-expression. The story does include a relationship between Manuela and one of her teachers that is admittedly quite messed up, and this is absolutely a major fault of the film. Still, the captivating part of the story is that it is not really about a particular romantic relationship but, rather, about the relationship between Manuela and the systems of power that surround her. 

At her school, Manuela is banned from sending letters, denied decent food, and told that her feelings and desires are shameful and unnatural, all in the name of order and discipline. This anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist undercurrent that runs through the entirety of the film is arguably its most threatening and subversive message and likely is what caused it to be banned. In fact, the oppressive structures set in place by the headmistress and passively supported by the other teachers are actively disrupted by the student body, which rallies together behind Manuela in her darkest hour. This unity is placed in contrast to the rigid, carefully constructed unity of the school environment and is, instead, presented as an instance of solidarity between students, between the disenfranchised, and between young queer women. 

The portrayal of girls’ schools and the portrayal of queer women in film have always been closely intertwined, probably because they offer rare instances in mainstream media where women and girls are allowed to maintain their own spaces. One aspect of Mädchen in Uniform that, almost 100 years after release, can still feel quite radical, is the complete absence of male characters and the openness with which the students discuss their crushes on other girls. While “all-girls” spaces such as schools have long been subject to fetishisation, particularly when queerness comes into the mix, director Leontine Sagan used the location of a boarding school to craft a space that sets aside the male gaze. This freedom from the social norms that often weigh young girls down, particularly in 1931, gives the female characters of Mädchen in Uniform an unfiltered sincerity that has only started to become widespread in cinema within the past few years. 

However, far from being a paradise, the school is delicately portrayed as both a safe space and a fundamentally flawed one. While it offers a respite from the male gaze and provides Manuela with a community through which to better understand herself, it also reproduces the very same oppressive social structures that exist in the outside world. Historically, girls+ schools such as Havergal and the boarding school of Mädchen in Uniform have been vital for the uplifting of certain marginalised genders, and yet they are inextricable from their societal contexts. In the case of Mädchen in Uniform, it was the rise of Nazi-fascim in Europe, and for Havergal, it’s a country still shaped by racism, heterosexism, and colonialism. It is impossible to overstate how vital girls+ spaces are for aiding liberation, but as Mädchen in Uniform shows, we can’t naïvely presume that they exist outside of the very same systems of racism, heterosexism, and colonialism that we are trying to liberate ourselves from.

Obviously, Mädchen in Uniform has its issues. Any movie made 91 years ago is bound to have aged at least a tad. While the film does end with Manuela’s friends standing up to the headmistress, the movie has been criticised for emphasising the altering of small-scale school rules over dismantling misogyny and heteronormativity as a whole. Still, just as the film takes both the joyous and repressive aspects of schools hand in hand, perhaps we can acknowledge Mädchen in Uniform for both the dated and the revolutionary. If anything, maybe we can take a moment to see reflections of our identities and experiences suspended in time, whether it be as people of marginalised genders, as queer people, as revolutionaries, or as girls in uniform.