Topher Tracking Issue 11: Mona Lisa Smile
Plus industry + life updates!
I love back to school season. It’s a period of new beginnings and academia-core Pinterest boards. A time of year when a scrappy art history teacher can shake up a conservative women’s college, or similarly a scrappy HR professional/improvisor can shake up the internet with her musings on Mr. Christopher John Grace. #shepersisted
Today we’re talking Mona Lisa Smile (2003), but first, here’s everything that happened while I was away:
Both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have been on strike, meaning we won’t be blessed with new Topher project until The AMPTP mans up and agrees to pay actors and writers a living wage. Topher is NOT a scab.
Meanwhile, season 3 of The Other Two featured a joke where a woman says she dated Topher Grace for 3 weeks in the 90’s. I love how he’s the go-to pull for Y2K B-list celebs.
In other industry news, look at our boy doing his cute little bit!1
Finally, I got married and I’m over the moon!
Between you, me, and the Russian hacker who has to read this for work, it’s a little daunting committing the rest of my life to one person. Luckily, my husband has promised that if he ever gets a terminal illness, I can exploit his disease to meet Topher. Who says romance goes out the door when you’re married!?
Now that I’ve covered everything that’s happened in the last six months, onto the main event! Reader, you're not required to write a paper; you're not even required to like it. You are required to consider Mona Lisa Smile, the best movie about women at Wellesley College ever written by two men and directed by another man.
Based on this movie’s Letterboxd reviews, I want to start by saying welcome to members of the lesbian community stumbling across this newsletter for the first time! Although Topher Tracking is horny for one man specifically, I imagine Topher Grace was a foothold for many of you toward realizing you’re not straight. So come on in, the water’s fine!
Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) arrives at Wellesley College, aka “the most conservative school in the country,” in the Fall of 1953. She is a young Californian who hates marriage, even though it’s the 1950’s — famously a decade where people got married a lot.2 This is her first teaching job and you just know these East Coast academics are going to eat her alive like a skinny jeans-wearing pastor.
Sure enough, Katherine’s first class is a bust. All her students have already read through the entire syllabus and believe she has nothing left to teach them.3 We’ll see about that! Also, her class is full of characters (or should I say, charact-HERs):
Betty (Kirsten Dunst) is the sadistic bride-to-be who snitches on the school nurse for giving students contraception and is cruel to pretty much everyone she meets. But she gets her comeuppance by suffering a loveless marriage and is forgiven by everyone by the end apparently.
Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a slutty slut who sleeps with everyone because she’s damaged. If I had to guess, I’d say Maggie Gyllenhaal is a big reason queer women like this movie. Lesbians, sound off in the comments! Did I mention she’s slutty?
Connie (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the “ugly” one who suffers near-constant emotional abuse from Betty, but forgives her in the end because [???]. Connie does end up with Cousin from The Bear, getting a happy ending thanks to
male validationself confidence.4Joan (Julia Styles) is a brilliant pre-law student who is going steady with a certain Harvard Sweetheart™ played by Topher Grace. Also, she speaks in a weird, WASP-y way that makes her sound like Samantha Jones pretending to be Annabelle Bronstein at the SoHo House.
But enough about these ladies, you came to read about a MAN! Topher plays Tommy Donegal, a sweet, dumb boy who’s head over heels for Joan. Joan’s friends joke that she does his homework, but he’ll probably end up making more than her by suing Mark Zuckerberg one day.
Katherine asks Joan if she’s applying to law school, seeing that she’s pre-law and all. Joan confesses her dream school is Yale Law, which generously leaves five spots open each year for women.5
But RECORD SCRATCH, she is planning to marry Topher, and there’s no way she can both be married and be a lawyer. Question: weren’t like microwaves supposed to solve this for women? Historians, sound off in the comments!
Betty continues her reign of terror by waking Joan up in the middle of the night to inform her that Topher’s looking at engagement rings. Honestly, this could have waited. If you’re waking me up in the 1950’s, it better be to tell me to duck and cover.
Betty then lays out a terrifying future where she and Joan get married at the same time and have babies at the same time, thus bonding them together forever. Probably the greatest perk of not getting married at 22 is not feeling obligated to hang out with your toxic friends from when you were 22. Escape to New Haven while you still have a chance, Joan!
Betty has her wedding, and naturally invites all of her teachers, even the famously anti-marriage art teacher she’s had two classes with. Topher is pumped to meet Katherine, and reveals that Joan deeply admires her.
Later, Topher and Joan visit Betty and her shitty distant husband to go rub their love in their faces. Joan reveals to Betty that she’s been accepted to Yale Law, but hasn’t told Topher yet. “I can do both, I can!” she chirps, clearly not believing it herself. Girl, wait until you hear about the microwave.
At a school dance(?) Topher asks Katherine to dance, and then drops the bombshell that he got into Penn for grad school and plans to move to Philadelphia with Joan in the fall. He says he is proud of Joan for getting into Yale, but obvi she won’t be going since “that’s an awful long commute to get dinner on the table at 5 o’clock.” Julia Roberts flares her nostrils so hard you can see her brain. Feminist gremlin mode fucking activated!
ps apparently while rehearsing for this scene, Topher stepped on Julia Roberts toes. Feel free to step on my toes anytime, sir!
Katherine runs over to Joan’s house with a list of law schools in Philadelphia that she can still apply to, but Joan shuts her down by revealing that she and Topher already eloped. Then she delivers an “empowering” speech about how getting married was her choice and Katherine is a bad feminist.
I admire the men who made this movie for trying to grapple with the struggles of being a woman in the 1950’s, but ultimately Mona Lisa Smile boils down to scenes like this, with characters essentially saying to each other, “Actually, you’re the sexist one.”
A much more compelling take would have been having Katherine and her students stand up to “the most conservative school in the country,” and fight to prevent a nurse from being fired. Or getting involved in politics to elect representatives who would vote to make contraception legal. OR expose the Italian professor who is openly sleeping with students (oh I forgot to mention the Italian professor who is sleeping with his students. Apologies for the male erasure).
That movie would probably be more representative of Wellesley students in the 1950’s.
Rather than showing its female characters standing up to the repressive 1950’s society, Mona Lisa Smile settles for them squabbling amongst themselves and ultimately confirms that Joan can’t do both, actually.
But I’m just cranky because Topher doesn’t appear again for the rest of the movie.
Happy Labor Day weekend! We are this much closer to HOT TOPH FALL.🔥
Once again, I get the sense that Topher controls his own instagram.
It occurs to me too late that I should’ve opened with my thematically-relevant wedding instead of the sweaty back to school thing, but it’s not like you can edit a Substack post. The internet is written in ink!
See what you can accomplish without TikTok, kids!?
If anyone’s keeping track on their TT scoreboard, Topher has also appeared in films with Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, AND Ginnifer Goodwin. Let me know if I missed anyone.
Six spots would be absurd, like having six women on the Supreme Court!