Yesterday I had lunch with a couple of colleagues at a local “Capt’n Nemos,” a Chicago-based restaurant featuring the fabulous Chicago Style Sandwich (traditional Italian bread loaded with meats and cheeses). At every booth in the restaurant there are painted wood cutouts of various characters. When you slide into the seat of the booth, it’s like you are sitting with Grandma and a punk rocker, a friendly police man, or the Blues Brothers and the infamous nun, Sister Mary Stigmata — better known as “The Penguin” (played by Kathleen Freeman).
The painting in the restaurant has Sister Mary Stigmata between the two brothers, an ear of each held firmly in hand. Of course you can’t mistake her as a nun: she’s in full habit. Nor can you mistake her sinister demeanor. She looks angry, mean, and downright scary. Having not seen the movie (I was not even 10 years old when it came out), I could tell by the caricature alone that the portrayal of nuns in that movie was not going to be pretty.
- The nun is repeatedly referred to as The Penguin. Why? because the black and white habit resembles penguins that are black and white from head to toe (flipper?).
- The nun is portrayed as the mean nun who runs the orphanage in which Elwood and Jake are raised. Here’s how she is described in reviews: fussy, ruler-wielding, strict, supernatural, “a very strict disciplinarian,” tough, crazy, scary.
Unfortunately, it is movies like this that cement in people’s minds really bad stereotypes of nuns. Granted, the movie is a classic and people seem to love the portrayal of Sister Mary Stigmata. But the problem is that, since many people don’t know real live nuns or sisters, they automatically assume that nuns are categorically this way. When people find out that I am a nun (as I do not wear a readily obvious habit), most times their main source of comparison is with a badly stereotyped nun character in a movie like the Blues Brothers. “I guess I can’t lie to you because you are a nun.” — yeah, I’ve heard that; now I know where it comes from. “Do you sing and play guitar?” — not on your life; thank you Sound of Music. I sigh and tell them to go see Dead Man Walking for a more accurate movie portrayal of a real live nun — Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ. (More on Helen Prejean later.)
Archived Comments
- March 31, 2007 at 9:57 am
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You see sister, that even in the “mean” sister the point is happening. Much the same in the past . These boys go do good. Don’t worry , all happens for the good of God’s glory.
- March 31, 2007 at 11:57 pm
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It is interesting to see how you reacted to the portrayal of a nun in the film “The Blues Brothers”. Although the character of the Sister Mary Stigmata is clearly over the top, and intentionally so, I did not react to her as a negative stereotype so much as a clownishly overdone characterization of actual pre Vatican II nuns. I suspect our different perceptions result from the different times we grew up in.
The nuns of my youth could be friendly, they could also be extremely strict, to the point of sadistic. It depended a great deal on the luck of the draw what nun you ended up with. I was punished in class for my congenital failure to pay attention by being required to hold my hand out palm up and not flinch while being smacked with a ruler. Flinching resulted in the punishment being repeated until I mustered the will power to remain still. That was a common punishment, I saw it inflicted frequently. As near as I can tell it was the standard punishment in those days.
Yes, there were nice nuns who would never hurt a fly. But the cruel ones were the ones we all remember.
- April 2, 2007 at 1:27 pm
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I am enjoying hearing what you have to say. I had twelve years of Catholic school, and of course, I have vivd memories of being hit by the [Sisters A] (grades 1-8) and [Sisters B] (grades 9-12) nuns who taught us. On a good day, we were hit only across the knuckles with a stick, or with a hand across the face; on bad days, we were grabbed by the hair, shoved into the blackboard, and occasionally, thrown across the room (I promise, I am not exaggerating). I was not a poorly behaved little girl; I simply could not do my math calculations quickly enough to suit my teachers. I tell you this because oddly enough, there were many nuns in my educational experience whom I loved and admired. I almost became a nun myself! Instead, I married, and today I teach English at a small college. So I suppose the nuns really did teach me something!
- April 2, 2007 at 2:01 pm
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I’m so sorry that you experienced such abuse at the hands of your teachers. While people say that in those days that kind of treatment (not just by nuns) was “acceptable” I have also had people tell me how, when they were kids, they had thought that the Sisters would protect them instead of participating in such abuse. Thanks for sharing your experience.
- April 4, 2007 at 8:33 pm
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I was born in 1951 and taught by nuns and priests through 12th grade. I came from a poor family and did not have all the opportunities my peers were exposed to.Some nuns were indifferent but many were sadistic as they exposed and mocked my inadequacies.I left the church in my heart as a teenager because of the nuns and priests.
- April 6, 2007 at 11:50 am
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This is all very interesting to me, because I did not grow up with any particular religion instilled upon me. Without having my own experiences around nuns, my perspective has been formed by other people’s experiences and the way society portrays them. Usually I find that either they are portrayed as saints or sadistic, neither of which seems very realistic today. Just like all people in positions of power, some choose to abuse their power and some choose to help. I would very much like to hear stories from an every-day nun’s life without all of the stereotypes. I think abuse was more accepted in the past than it is today, thank goodness, and hopefully it will continue to diminish in our society as our awareness grows. I have fantasized about becoming a nun before, but am afraid that the reality of conforming to any particular religion would not resonate with me. My spirituality feels so personal to me that I do not think I could ever label it. I do think of rules and regulations when I think of nuns. Many of the portrayals I have seen look very self abusive to me. I wonder if nuns are free to feel, if that makes any sense.
- April 16, 2007 at 2:17 am
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I think there’s a new sort of prejudice nowadays – the hippie/feminist nun. At my (extremely conservative) Catholic college, a good number of the nuns wanted to be priests, there was one who would bake her own bread for Communion using ingredients like honey and oats that aren’t approved, several nuns were vocally opposed to the Magisterium on important issues, etc. And at my (extremely liberal) Catholic high school, the nuns endorsed Mary as equal to the Trinity (I think this was called Mariology), allowed ‘goddess’ altars to be set up in the chapel, taught about contraception and abortion in sex ed, etc. I hear from a lot of my Catholic friends that nuns are mostly man-haters or wannabe priests. Definitely better than sadists, but far from ideal.
- April 16, 2007 at 7:34 am
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During the second Vatican Council, the Church had called religious communities (women and men) to return to their charism and to experiment with ways of living their religious life so that they were more in tune with the modern world. This was a very good thing, however not all experiments were successful. In addition many in the Church began looking at Catholic theology to see what it meant in light of the second Vatican Council. Again, this was a good thing and stimulated much creative thinking, but it wasn’t always easy to harmonize with the Church’s tradition. All this has contributed to the new prejudice/stereotype about Sisters that you so aptly name “hippie/feminist nun”. Are there some nuns who feel called to the priesthood or who are exploring different ways of doing theology? Sure. Does it mean that all nuns are therefore “man-haters or wannabe priests”? Absolutely not. This is a very bad distortion of who women religious are. I know you are pointing out the stereotype, but I must say, placing women religious a step above sadists is an insult to all women religious and to the Church we so dearly love.
- July 11, 2008 at 11:38 am
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Stumbled across this site after looking up nun in Blues Bros. movie. The aberrant behavior noted above by nuns teaching in elementary and secondary schoools must have something to do with being in that environment. I witnessed and received a number of “corporal” punishments in my time. (As young as the 2nd grade!) The biggest offenders were mean spirited and spiteful. I actually don’t recall having one nun teacher who I can say left a really positive impact on me in the first 8 years of school. Later in life I met and worked with some wonderful women of faith and none of them taught school. Maybe they felt frustrated back then because they played second fiddle to the priests and had to deal with kids whether they wanted to or not. I will say their discipline kept most in line and probably benefitted more than a few later in life but some of the incidents are still vivid in my memory after almost 40 years.
