Bad Mothers – Bitch Flicks

They’ve Made a Huge Mistake: Motherhood in ‘Arrested Development’

This is a guest post by Artemis Linhart.

Now the story of a wealthy family who’s literally lost it and the two mothers who had no clue how to keep it all together. It’s Arrested Development.

When it comes to parenthood, there is little to be learned from the Bluth family other than how not to do it. There are bad parenting choices all over the place. Moreover, when it comes to parenthood, discussions usually focus on the mother as the central character involved in the matter, sidelining the dads, which has to do with the antiquated gender roles our society is still prone to perpetuate. It is due to this habit that when talking about bad parenting, it is the mothers who are judged a lot more harshly than the fathers. When a mother neglects what is still often believed to be her natural role of the nurturing individual in a child’s life, she often faces scrutiny and reproach. Acknowledging this inadequacy, this article will nonetheless concentrate on the mothers of Arrested Development. Let the record show, however, that the fathers of the Bluth family are just as bad, if not worse.

Lucille Bluth, the matriarch of the family, has managed to raise her kids to resent her. The four (later to be five) siblings don’t usually agree on much. All the more telling is the fact that they readily agree on one thing: that their mother is a horrible person.

She has, however, maintained the love and loyalty of her youngest son, Buster, by strictly repressing his independence. The two of them have an inappropriately codependent relationship which, at times, reaches disturbing levels.

Lindsay Bluth has handled her daughter in the exact opposite way. She rarely knows Maeby’s whereabouts, nor does she seem to care at all. She prides herself on her liberal parenting style and all the freedom she is giving her daughter, when in reality, she simply fails to take notice of her.

While Maeby does enjoy the pleasures of a laisser-faire upbringing and the ability to take control of her own life as she pleases, she is also deeply hurt by her parents’ neglect.

All of this, however, is, in all its awfulness, used – and works perfectly – as a comedic device.

Stay-in-bed Mom

Not only does Lindsay forget Maeby’s birthday every single year, but she oftentimes fails to acknowledge, or even forgets, that she actually has a child. Thus, over the course of the previous four seasons, Maeby goes through a whole series of attempts to shock or spite her parents, none of which are successful, as they go completely unnoticed. This is already established in the very first episode when she tries to teach her parents a lesson about how their family ties are so loose that she doesn’t even know her own cousin, by kissing George Michael on the mouth – consequently sending him into a spiral of awkwardly improper feelings for her.

Her parents’ disinterest in her life reflects in her performance at school. Lindsay doesn’t care what grades Maeby gets, nor does she even know what grade she is in. This does work to Maeby’s advantage when she decides to quit school and work as a fake but highly successful movie executive instead.

Interestingly enough, Maeby’s constant need to rebel against her parents takes after Lindsay to some extent. After all, the whole reason Lindsay married Tobias was to spite her parents who, as they make perfectly clear, will never like nor accept him.

Lindsay does not like to think of herself as a mother. Whether it has to do with her negative feelings about her own mother, or the fact that it might make her seem old (or, quite possibly, a combination of both), it becomes very obvious that she does not seem to feel comfortable in this role. When she refuses to take Maeby to the Bluth company’s Christmas party, she argues: “You see, if I show up with you, it’ll just make me seem like I’m a mother.” As Maeby replies, “I’ve never thought of you that way,” which speaks volumes in itself, Lindsay is flattered and responds, “That’s sweet.”

Season 4 illustrates quite clearly the relationship between Lindsay and her daughter. In the two episodes dealing with Lindsay’s experience, Maeby is not a part of the plot. This is foretold metaphorically as Lindsay deems her framed photos of Maeby unnecessary baggage and leaves them behind, because her suitcase is too full. As a matter of fact, Maeby only appears in these episodes disguised as a shaman, which isn’t revealed until later in the season. This can be seen as an apt metaphor for Maeby’s struggle of being around all the time but never being seen. The episode centers around Lindsay, who, when asked by said shaman whether she has kids, instinctively says no.

Maeby’s Season 4 episode, on the other hand, deals exclusively with her trying to get her parents to notice that she is flunking high school – unsurprisingly, to no avail. As it turns out, Lindsay and Tobias have sold their house and gone their separate ways, abandoning Maeby, who they both believe they had sent to boarding school. While she is visibly disappointed by all of this, she is clearly not at all surprised. This goes to show just how badly she already thinks of her parents and how well she blends in with the Bluth family, where oblivion is king and no one has any respect for anyone.

One thing Lindsay deserves some credit for, though, is that by not caring about Maeby, she is also very accepting of her. Lucille, on the other hand, is highly critical of her children, especially focusing her verbal disapproval on Lindsay. Her looks and weight in particular are what Lucille loves to dwell on. When Lindsay declares that she “doesn’t feel like being criticized around the clock,” Lucille’s harsh, yet hilariously nonsensical reply is: “I don’t criticize you. And if you’re worried about criticism, sometimes a diet is the best defense.”

In fact, Maeby does learn to appreciate her mother’s aloofness when she briefly befriends Lucille, who quickly starts subjecting her to the same rebuke about her physical appearance. She subsequently even tells Lindsay that she’s glad to have her as a mom.

Another thing that sets Lindsay apart from her mother Lucille is that she is not a control freak. Lucille who, incidentally, sometimes happens to be out of control due to her excessive drinking, keeps tabs on all the goings-on in the Bluth family. In a way, she is the evil puppeteer of the family, monitoring her children’s every move and manipulating them not only into doing things for her and getting her what she wants, but also into turning against each other for that very purpose.

Her fear of her children ganging up on her is another reason she pits them against each other. In Season 1, for instance, she tells Lindsay that Michael thinks of her as a stay-in-bed mom – when it was really her, who coined this ever so fitting description of her daughter.

Maeby pretending to move out of the model home, in an effort to outrage her parents. Lindsay, meanwhile, is sound asleep.

A run for their money

Despite their differences (of opinion and in general), Lucille and Lindsay share quite a few (appalling) characteristics.

While they both have a very hands-off parenting style, they certainly have a very hands-on attitude towards the family money. When it comes to finances, both are hugely irresponsible. They have grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle and are not willing to relinquish it in the face of their going broke. In a family where no one cares about anything but themselves, they take whatever they can get their hands on, mostly by lying to everyone about everything – that being another character trait the Bluth family has collectively perfected.

Not unlike the rest of the Bluths, they are both entirely out of touch with reality. Whether it’s Lindsay’s pretend interest in political causes and desultory fundraisers, or Lucille’s bizarre appraisal of the world (“I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars?”), it becomes very clear that money is a non-issue for them. This does not change in a time where it should be and is very much of great concern, seeing as the company is in jeopardy of going out of business.

With the goal of maintaining her luxurious lifestyle, she uses her children as pawns in order to maneuver her way around her son Michael’s policy of handling the company money responsibly. What matters to her is that she gets her way. Her disregard of other people’s feelings also shows in how overly vocal she is about disliking her children, especially GOB. Out of her four biological children she clearly harbors the most disdain for him. After her “baby,” Buster, Michael seems to be the one who she is the fondest of. The way she phrases this demonstrates not only her inability to say something nice to her children, but also how much of a burden she seems her children to view as: “You are my third least favorite child.”

However, this fondness might have to do with the fact that he handles the family money. A case in point is the following conversation in Season 1:

Michael: “I don’t have the money, alright, Mom?”

Lucille: “Then why are you here?”

Not only does she not make a secret out of not liking her children, at times she even goes out of her way to be mean to them. For example in Season 1, when she deliberately tries to hit GOB with her car, which she later blames on an unsuspecting Michael. In order to prevent him from remembering what really happened that night, she repeatedly hits him over the head with heavy objects, all the while pretending to be the caring mother figure who just wants the best for her son and is there to nurse him.

Speaking of nursing…

When George Sr. goes to prison, Lucille’s grip on Buster tightens. For fear of being all alone, she relies on her youngest son to be there for her. This works well for poor, brainwashed Buster, whose affection for Lucille knows no bounds.

As the overbearing mother that she is to him, she dresses him, gives him baths and decides what he can and can not do. In return, he does what he can to serve and please her, which grows more absurd as the series progresses: From the fairly harmless zipping up of her dresses to the unsettling practice of a mouth-to-mouth ritual when Lucille takes up smoking and Buster inhales the smoke from her mouth and blows it out the window, because she refuses to get up to do this herself.

Despite all this closeness and codependence, their relationship is subliminally based on a mutual hatred of some kind. His constant presence, as they can no longer afford to send him off to postgraduate studies, annoys Lucille and she starts to resent Buster.

Small, yet very real insults are exchanged behind each other’s backs. Lucille says about him, “His glasses make him look like a lizard,” whereas Buster speaks his mind to his siblings, who regularly badmouth their mother themselves: “She gets off on being withholding.”

Aside from being terrible at parenting, Lucille is an alcoholic. While she is usually heavily “under the influence,” the whole family is subject to and under the influence of her insane whims.

Her drinking might also help explain why Buster seems a little bit strange in general. When he unwittingly drinks alcohol for what we believe to be the first time, the narrator clarifies: “It was the first taste of alcohol Buster had since he was nursing.”

Clearly, theirs is a love of many a troubling detail. There are little clues dropped here and there that shape up to an image of an unhealthy, sheer unbreakable bond between mother and son. It is a slippery slope from Buster’s remarks such as “This is not how my mother is raising me” (note the present tense) to Lucille admitting in Season 3 that she has only just quit taking her post-partum medication, 32 years after having Buster. Michael gently suggests “cutting the cord,” but Lucille isn’t having any of it. “He needs me” and “he’s weak” are her excuses to keep him under her wing.

When ultimately he does break free from Lucille’s dominant parenting, he literally doesn’t get very far: He gets involved with Lucille’s best frenemy, Lucille 2, who lives across the hall, and quickly moves in with her. In a way, she takes on the role of a mother-substitute while also being Buster’s lover, the lines of which seem to be a big blur for Buster as it is, as is often insinuated throughout the seasons of the show, but especially in season 4.

For the first time, Buster is free from Lucille and greatly enjoys his newfound liberation (with the other Lucille). He wants to experience life and do all the things his mother never allowed him to do.

Meanwhile, a jealous Lucille, who has never lived alone, is initially terrified and tries to break up Buster and Lucille 2. However, it doesn’t take long for her to also explore her freedom, and soon she is found dancing drunk in her apartment, smoking a cigar and singing along to “Mama’s all alone, Mama doesn’t care, Mama’s lettin’ loose” blasting on the stereo.

As the two of them are living it up without each other, it becomes clear that this is not a long-term solution. Buster eventually breaks up with Lucille 2: “I’ve already got a Lucille in my life!”

However, Buster is not the only one to seek a replacement for the other. Lucille needs the security of taking care of “her baby” and takes whoever is convenient to her at the moment.

Lucille’s trust in Buster is shaken and she gets an adoptive child who she believes to be named Annyong (“Hello”). She uses him to make Buster jealous as a type of revenge for him leaving her for a different Lucille. Though she is deeply annoyed by the kid who hardly ever speaks a word other than “his name,” she still keeps him with her as a way of showing Buster how little he is needed.

When Buster goes off to the army, she admits that if anything were to happen to him, she would be lost.

She instantly pulls George Michael close to her and declares, “You’re going to have to be the baby of the family” and with a kiss on the cheek she commands, “You’re never going in the ocean. You’re my baby, I’m never letting you go!” as she holds him in a tight embrace.

Undoubtedly, she is not thinking clearly in this state of emergency, because usually, Lucille isn’t one for showing her affection. In fact, as she once hugs Michael, he seems startled and confused as to what is happening.

What is remarkable about the Bluth family is that, considering all their resentment toward and estrangement from each other, they are exceptionally close. They see each other every day or speak on the phone and while those are rarely friendly interactions, they are still very involved in each other’s lives.

All the overwhelming chaos and the myriad of issues create a wide array of feelings – and where there are feelings, there is certainly a bond. In the end, they can count on being there for each other, even when bribing is usually involved.

Lastly, it remains to say that Jessica Walter is brilliant in the role of the detached, alcoholic mother. For all those who can’t get enough of the wonderful and hilarious Lucille, there is always the adult animated TV series Archer, where Walter voices a character that bears an uncanny resemblance to Lucille Bluth.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9EiV3EPLy0″]

Artemis Linhart is a freelance writer and film curator with a weakness for escapism.

Bad Mothers: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Bad Mothers Theme Week here.

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers by Deborah Pless

They’re complicated women who have both scarred each other over the years, and there’s no getting past that easily. But they both try. And in trying, we get a better picture of who they are as human beings. Like I said in the beginning, there’s something so valuable in seeing a character like Emily who is, unequivocally, a bad mother also be a good person. Because she is a good person. Sometimes. Mostly.

Grace: Single Mothers, Stillborn Births, and Scrutinizing Parenting Styles by BJ Colangelo

Eventually, Madeline is pushed to the absolute limit in protecting her child and kills those trying to take her daughter from her…and feeds them to her. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is explored to the nth degree as the blood of those trying to destroy the mother/daughter relationship are then utilized to keep baby Grace alive.

Michiko to Hatchin: Anime’s Newest Mom Has Some Issues by Robert V. Aldrich

Throughout the course of the 22-episode series, Michiko abandons Hatchin to get laid, lets Hatchin work a part-time job rather than pay for shoes she herself stole, leaves Hatchin with an abusive orphanage (more on that in a second), lets her run away half a dozen times, all while the two bicker constantly about often incredibly petty matters. All of this rolls up to establish that Michiko is, well, basically just a terrible, terrible mom.
And that’s pretty amazing.

The Accidental Motherhood of Gloria by Rhianna Shaheen

Every woman is a mother? Yeah, no thanks. If Gloria is a “mother” to Phil then she’s also a lifetime member to the Bad Moms Club. In the beginning, Jeri, Phil’s real mom, calls on Gloria to take her kids. She tells Gloria that their family is “marked” by the mob. A gangster even waits in the lobby. Jeri begs her to protect her kids to which Gloria bluntly responds: “I hate kids, especially yours.” Despite her tough-talk, this ex-gun moll, ex-showgirl reluctantly agrees.

The Killing and the Misogyny of Hating Bad Mothers by Leigh Kolb

Vilifying mothers is a national pastime. Absent mothers, celebrity mothers, helicopter mothers, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, mothers with too many children, mothers with too few children, women who don’t want to be or can’t be mothers–for women, there’s no clear way to do it right.

“The More You Deny Me, the Stronger I’ll Get”: On The Babadook, Mothers, and Mental Illness by Elizabeth King

Most people I talked to and most of the reviews that I read about The Babadook concluded that the film is about motherhood or mother-son relations. While I agree, I also really tuned in on the complicating element to this whole narrative, which is that the mother is mentally ill.

Mommy: Her Not Him by Ren Jender

I went into Mommy, the magnificent film from out, gay, Québécois prodigy Xavier Dolan (he’s 26 and this feature is the fifth he’s written and directed) knowing that Anne Dorval, who plays the title character, was being touted in some awards circles as a possible nominee for “Best Actress” in 2014 (she’s flawless in this role, certainly better than the other Best Actress nominees I saw)–as opposed to “Best Supporting Actress.” But this film (which won the Jury Prize at Cannes) kept surpassing my expectations by keeping its focus on her and not the one who would be the main character of any other film: her at turns charismatic, obnoxious and violent 15-year-old, blonde son, Steve (an incredible Antoine-Olivier Pilon).

Gambling for Love and Power by Erin Blackwell

These two characters’ inability to see each other as anything other than personal property emerges as the compelling dramatic engine of unfolding events involving far more sinister agents, who eventually exploit the fissure in the mother-daughter bond.

The Babadook and the Horrors of Motherhood by Caroline Madden

Amelia didn’t need to be possessed to have feelings of vitriol towards her son; they were already there, lurking inside her at the beginning. Rarely, if ever, is a mother depicted in film this way. Mothers are expected to be completely accepting and loving towards their child 24/7, despite any hardships or challenges their child presents to them.

Viy: Incestuous Mother as Horror Monster by Brigit McCone

For women, male anxieties over female abusers combine great risk of demonization with great opportunity to forge connection. Men, like women, understand boundaries primally through their own bodies and identification. Rejecting one’s own abuse teaches one to fight against all abuse; excusing it teaches one to abuse.

Splice: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist by Mychael Blinde

Splice explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.

Ever After: A Wicked Stepmother with Some Fairy Godmother Tendencies by Emma Kat Richardson

As an orphan of common origins, Drew Barrymore’s spunky protagonist, Danielle de Barbarac, is forced into a life of servitude to her father’s widow, the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, and the Baroness’s two natural daughters, Jacqueline and Marguerite. As Baroness Rodmilla, Anjelica Houston is equal parts breathtaking as she is fearsome, as cruel as she is oddly sympathetic.

Bad Mothers Are the Law of Shondaland by Scarlett Harris

It’s fascinating that all four of Shonda Rhimes’ protagonists have strained relationships with their mothers… Shondaland’s shows work to combat the stereotype that if you don’t have a functional family unit, replete with a doting, competent mother, you’re alone in the world.

Spy Mom: Motherhood vs. Career in the Alias Universe by Katie Bender

This conflict drives Sydney’s arc and establishes a recurring question at the heart of Alias: can you be both a mother and a spy? … Sydney’s own mother Irina figures powerfully into this conflict. … Yet Irina’s arc throughout Alias is the tension between her desire for a relationship with her daughter and her independence as a spy.

Riding in Cars with Boys and Post-Maternal Female Agency by CG

The Strange Love of Mildred Pierce by Stacia Kissack Jones

Elements of Mildred Pierce play on the maternal sacrifice narratives that made films like Stella Dallas (1937) and The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) so powerful, and updates them for a more cynical era, positing that her sacrifice has not saved her children but ruined them…

We Need to Talk about Kevin‘s Abject Mother by Sarah Smyth

The film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Is Kris Jenner a Bad Mother? by Scarlett Harris

When their lives are out there for all the world to see, it’s easy to judge the Kardashians.

Controlling Mothers in Carrie, Mommie Dearest and Now Voyager by Al Rosenberg

These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. …These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways.

Controlling Mothers in ‘Carrie,’ ‘Mommie Dearest,’ and ‘Now Voyager’

These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. … These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways.

This guest post by Al Rosenberg appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Mothers who abuse their children, abandon them, or neglect them are easy to spot and label as “bad mothers.” Then there are the subtler forms of “bad mothering.” For these types it all comes down to control; control through religion, respectability, or ambition. It is in these three arenas that the Mommie Dearests of the world push their daughters to the breaking point. These three “bad moms” fashion themselves the Moirai, the Fates, the three women in control of everything on earth. These types of manipulation in the extreme are the things of nightmares, or of the big screen.

The insidious part is that it is meant to seem like this behavior stems from a slight corruption of maternal love, of wanting the best for your child. In the case of Carrie (1976), Margaret White (Piper Laurie) wants better for her daughter than she had for herself. Throughout the course of the film it’s revealed that Carrie was conceived after her mother was raped by her own husband, and now Margaret wishes constantly to cleanse Carrie of this sin through cruel and overbearing religion. After Carrie is tormented by her fellow students for finally getting her period, and having no idea what it is, her mother locks her away for prayer and reflection.

Of course, it being a horror movie based on a Stephen King novel, the outcome is not so simple as a terrifying “religious cleansing.” When Carrie and Margaret finally have a heart-to-heart it’s the biproduct of the telekinetic teenager having just murdered a good percentage of her high school. Margaret cannot suffer to let this witch live, and attempts to end her daughter’s life, a final act of ultimate control, and ends up on the wrong end of Carrie’s new found powers.

Movies have been curious about this maternal tension since the get-go. While Carrie may have had the super skills, all three of these mothers have very realistic power over their offspring. In Now, Voyager (1942), Bette Davis plays rich, mousey Charlotte Vale, a woman whose life is entirely dictated by her mother (Gladys Cooper). Mrs. Vale does not push Charlotte into closets, or chant biblical passages at her. In fact, this matriarch barely moves throughout the film. Instead, Charlotte’s life is controlled through her mother’s emotional manipulation. Like Carrie, Charlotte was an unwanted child and Mrs. Vale makes sure she knows it. She tells Charlotte what to wear, how to talk, whom to associate with, all in the name of ladylike propriety.

Through therapy and travel Davis’s character finds her own voice (and was a babe-in-disguise, perhaps one of the earliest films in that trope as well). When the two women meet again they’re at a stalemate. What is a controlling mother without a child to control? Mrs. Vale’s demise is more similar to Margaret White’s than one might expect from a “weepie” film, finally leaving Charlotte to be her own woman.

Hollywood would like us to believe that this kind of parent is just one bad turn away in everyday life. And maybe that’s true: Mommie Dearest is based on the memoirs of Joan Crawford’s (Bette Davis’s biggest rival) daughter. It’s the tale of Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) tormenting her adopted daughter Christina in bizarre, abusive ways. Again an unwanted child, but this time not by her mother. Though Joan chose Christina, it becomes clear that it was all an act, like much of Crawford’s life in this film.

Eventually Christina makes it onto the big screen herself, perhaps due to years of her mother’s ambition being shoved down her throat. But when she’s too ill to make it to set, Joan, a much older woman, takes the role from her. Joan doesn’t join Margaret White and Mrs. Vale in the Killed-By-Our-Daughters afterlife, but Christina did wait until after the death of her mother to publish these memoirs and, hopefully, find some resolution.

These films were just the start of audiences’ obsession with controlling mothers. We continue to see these tropes replayed in a multitude of ways. Carrie (1976) was recently remade for the second time, Carrie (2014). Though this time it offered a slightly more sympathetic view of both mother and daughter. Audiences may not have loved it as much as the first attempt, but it was still the Halloween pick for many movie-goers.

Mommie Dearest’s fame-driven mother finds a spiritual successor in Natalie Portman’s mother in Black Swan (2010). Portman is driven to the brink of insanity by her own ambition, but couple that with her mother’s drive and it’s just too much for the young ballerina. You can also watch moms incredibly similar to Crawford and her drive for success in any of the many seasons of Dance Moms available on Lifetime. Or watch the beginning of “no more wire hanger” relationships in Little Miss Perfect, and, my personal favorite, Toddlers & Tiaras. Audiences seem to love to hate the controlling pageant mom.

Mothers are important, they guide children through life in a multitude of ways, but some children get stuck with the women who never wanted them. Perhaps these mothers, raped, or widowed, or abandoned, see too much of themselves in their daughters and push too hard. Perhaps the real life version of these mothers deserve more of our sympathy than to be turned into monsters of the big screen in a multitude of ways. But these three mean moms? Maybe they got the ends they deserved.

Al Rosenberg is the Games Section Editor of WomenWriteAboutComics.com, a reviewer at Lesbrary.com, a Chicagoan, and a general nuisance. Follow on Twitter: @sportsmyballs

‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’: Is Kris Jenner a Bad Mother?

When their lives are out there for all the world to see, it’s easy to judge the Kardashians.

This guest post by Scarlett Harris is an edited version of a piece originally published on The Scarlett Woman and is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

She’s constantly on Khloe for her weight, Kim to prioritise her money-making appearances with family and love, and Kourtney to get married before she has another child. Not to mention that she neglects, according to them, Rob (who hasn’t been seen on the show in or public with the family for a while), Kendall and Kylie in favour of her older daughters. (Although with Kendall’s earning power as a supermodel and whatever it is that Kylie now does, Kris may have an increased interest in her younger offspring.)

But is Kris Jenner a bad mother because of this?

One could argue that she spent her early days of motherhood raising her six kids (not to mention step-parenting Bruce’s four other children from previous marriages), and is rewarded by earning 10% from their business endeavours as their momager.

But some of the things Kris says and does arguably aren’t in the best interests of the well being of her children. Or is that just how they/she choose/s to portray her/self on Keeping Up With The Kardashians?

In the first season of Khloe & Lamar, Kris berates Khloe for her size, saying it’s not cohesive with her other sisters’ frames, nor with QuickTrim, the diet supplement the Kardashian sisters promoted at the time. In other episodes of the KUWTK franchise, Kris was on Khloe’s back to have a baby during her marriage to Lamar.

Kris also doesn’t approve of Kourtney’s boyfriend and baby daddy Scott Disick, and in earlier seasons of the show, who could blame her? But even after Scott made a 180° turnaround in his behaviour after his children were born, Kris still struggles to accept him.

Kim, the head moneymaker of the Kardashian clan, can usually never put a foot wrong in her mother’s eyes, but every now and then Kris will get upset with her for being so uptight. So do her sisters, for that matter.

In a damning article published by The New York Times a couple of weeks ago, the dichotomy of Kris as mother and businesswoman is dissected:

“… in The New York Times review of the show’s first episode, Ginia Bellafante wrote: ‘As a parent, Ms. Kardashian’s mother, Kris Jenner, was concerned for her daughter, she explains. But as her manager, she thought, well, hot-diggity.’”

The article goes on to assert that the lack of public comment from the Kardashians/Jenners regarding Bruce’s transition isn’t about being respectful to the family patriarch’s privacy, but to milk Bruce’s coming out for all the world to see… on their E! special, of course.

I’d like to think I’m less cynical about Kris and her cohort of children’s success, but we also know that reality TV is far less rooted in actuality than it purports itself to be. Kris says:

“‘It doesn’t mean that we’re always looking for more or that we’re greedy… There’s a lot of people that have great ideas and dreams and whatnot, but unless you’re willing to work really, really hard, and work for what you want, it’s never going to happen. And that’s what’s so great about the girls. It’s all about their work ethic.’”

When their lives are out there for all the world to see, it’s easy to judge the Kardashians. If Kris is guilty of one thing, it’s working her children too hard and not allowing them to make mistakes. Kim’s sexual escapades were caught on film in a way that might mortify many people, but she and her mother took them to new famous-for-being-famous heights. Kendall and Kylie have had cameras in their faces since they were 12 and 10, respectively, and have been working on book, clothing and beauty lines for almost as long, so it’s no wonder Kylie behaves older than her 17 years. The controversy surrounding her lips and relationship with an older man who also happens to be a father are begrudgingly touched on this season, scarcely shedding light on the family dynamic that would allow and encourage a 17-year-old to do these things. It remains to be seen if such actions mean Kylie’s heading off the rails, but other young stars could stand to have such a strong work ethic instilled in them.

Say what you want about Kris and the Kardashians, but they’ve managed to carve out an entire genre of entertainment that Paris, Nicole and the Osbournes could only have dreamt about. Their money shouldn’t protect them from criticism, but I do think the Kardashians cop a lot more flak for capitalising on their existence in a world that we watched them influence than other, arguably worse, public figures. The Kardashians seem to be relatively happy, healthy and challenge the notion that your past defines you. Whatever the case, Kris and company are laughing all the way to the bank while we labour over thinkpieces about them.

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based writer, broadcaster and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter here.

‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’s Abject Mother

The film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Western society and culture fears mothers. Through her grotesque leaky body and the ambiguous division of the mother/child during pregnancy, patriarchy marks the mother as strange and mysterious. She is nature, opposed to the “proper” masculine position of culture. So prevalent a fear within Western society, the mother is the ultimate embodiment of abjection. In this piece, I will use the theory of abjection in order to examine Lynne Ramsay’s exquisite 2011 film, We Need to Talk about Kevin. In doing so, I hope to locate the film within a post-feminist framework, demonstrating the ways in which the representation of abjection plays into our notions of maternal and female achievement. Ultimately, I argue that the film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

The poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" — The poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin”

The theory of abjection is most powerfully put forward by Julia Kristeva in her book, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. Here, she discusses the abject as the grotesque, the repulsive, as that which we want to expel and dispose of. Particular examples of this include bodily waste such as excretions, secretions, vomit and menstruation, rotting food, and corpses. The significance of these abject moments and the reason we fear them so much is, as Kristeva says, not due to their lack of cleanliness or health “but what disturbs identity, system, order”: “What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”. It is, then, the uneasy position between boundaries that causes or repulsion and rejection of the abject: death and life, clean and unclean, healthy and diseased.

Film academic, Barbara Creed, developed Kristeva’s theory of the abject to suggest the ways in which the maternal body, as particularly represented in horror films, embodies abjection. So obviously and relentlessly fleshy and visceral, the maternal body is linked to the “natural” world of birth, decay and death. Menstruating, lactating and gestating, the maternal body embodies this very ambiguous abject space. The boundaries of her body become blurred, setting her apart from the patriarchal world which continually attempts to remain “clean and proper”. For Creed, many classic horror and science fiction films including Alien, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and Carrie play on this idea of the monstrous abject maternal function. In all of these films, the pregnant woman, or the potential pregnant woman as represented through menstruation, provides the horror of the film through the very abjection of their female body.

Website, Ain't it Cool's poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" plays on the original poster for "Rosemary's Baby" suggesting the links between the two films — Website, Ain’t it Cool’s poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin” plays on the original poster for “Rosemary’s Baby” suggesting the links between the two films

Although We Need to Talk about Kevin is not explicitly a horror film, it uses many of the tropes of the genre to create feelings of unease and fear around motherhood. Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s successful novel, the film focuses on Eva (Tilda Swinton), a travel writer, and her relationship with her (sociopathic? disturbed? evil?) son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). The film is told in a series of flashbacks as we learn that Kevin is somehow involved in a terrible criminal atrocity. As we discover what Kevin has done, the film also reveals the relationship between mother and son, posing the continually fascinating question: does familial and social upbringing wholly inform a person’s moral and ethical values or are some people just born evil?

As the film unpicks this question, it deconstructs traditional conceptualisations of the abject and identifications of the monstrous. For Eva, great pleasure is taken in the abject. During one of the first scenes in the film, Eva travels to La Tomatina festival in Spain. Through the shots of Eva wading through the semi-naked bodies and the vivid red tomatoes, the film emphasises Eva’s pleasure or even jouissance (a kind of excessive, orgasmic pleasure) in the visceral, bloodlike, grotesque experience. The film makes clear that Kevin disconnects Eva from these experiences she so craves. She’s not able to travel, and eventually winds up at a menial job in a travel agency. In one particularly painful moment, she finishes decorating her own room, her special room, with rare maps, which Kevin then destroys with paint. But not only is Eva unable to travel, write or occupy a room of her own, crucial activities for the active, challenging, and independent woman as Virginia Woolf so passionately advocated. She is also particularly separated from the physical and emotional experiences of pregnancy. The film gestures towards her pregnancy through an extreme close-up shot of cells splitting. Later, after childbirth, Eva sits quietly and almost mournfully in a cold, clinical hospital as Franklin (John C. Reilly), her husband, coos over the baby. The film presents her pregnancy through a scientific and technological lens, far removed from the abject experiences of pregnancy put forward from the previously mentioned films.

The wide angle of this shot suggests the physical and emotional distance Eva experiences towards her pregnancy and her child

Most radically, however, in a reversal of gender, Kevin primarily embodies abjection within the film. He throws, smears and expels food, leaving it to rot and become covered in ants. He refuses to become toilet trained but shows an extraordinary level of control over his bowels as he defecates just after being changed, frustrating his mother greatly. When he’s older, Eva catches him masturbating but rather than feeling embarrassed or chastised, he menacingly holds eye contact with her until she hastily shuts the door and walks away. What’s interesting about these moments is the manipulation of the traditional abject mother-child relationship. As Creed points out, the mother not only embodies the abject body. She must also police the abject body; it is the mother’s job to map and uphold the “clean and proper” body of the child before he/she enters the paternal and patriarchal world of language and culture. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva refuses or is unable to exert this maternal authority in order to keep Kevin’s body “clean”. She doesn’t clear up the food Kevin throws. She cannot potty train or exert any kind of control over Kevin’s bowel movements. She is unable to extend any influence over Kevin’s masturbatory habits. As Sue Thornham claims, “Kevin denies [Eva] control, refusing her transformation of the unknown into an exercise of mapping, of motherhood into a teaching relationship. Instead, his behaviour insists on the messiness of the body, on the fleshy, the organic, the abject – and insists that Eva recognize this, together with her own rage and fear at her entrapment”.

Kevin's not at all concerned that his mother's caught him masturbating... — Kevin’s not at all concerned that his mother’s caught him masturbating…

The film’s deconstruction and blurring of the abject roles examines and challenges the post-feminist ideas and ideals of motherhood. In Unruly Girls; Unrepentant Mothers, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn writes that post-feminism purports to celebrate intensive mothering as the liberated woman’s enlightened choice when, in fact, it both replaces subservience to a husband with subservience to the child, and naturalizes motherhood as an essential part of womanhood. By refusing to embody her traditional position as the abject mother, Eva and, indeed the film, challenge the idea that every woman must become a mother, that every woman will find fulfillment in being a mother, and that every mother must take up her position as the abject figure in this patriarchal society.

In all, We Need to Talk about Kevin is not a misogynist depiction of the feared maternal figure. Rather, it is a feminist revelation of the fears mothers have themselves; that they may not love their child, that they may not fulfill the so-called ultimate expression of womanhood and femininity, and that they may, in fact, release the monstrous potential of themselves and their child through the very abjection of their maternal function.

Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

The Strange Love of ‘Mildred Pierce’

Elements of ‘Mildred Pierce’ play on the maternal sacrifice narratives that made films like ‘Stella Dallas’ (1937) and ‘The Sin of Madelon Claudet’ (1931) so powerful, and updates them for a more cynical era, positing that her sacrifice has not saved her children but ruined them…

This guest post written by Stacia Kissick Jones is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

“A mother’s love leads to murder!” announced advertisements for Mildred Pierce (1945), the box-office smash that was Hollywood superstar Joan Crawford’s comeback vehicle. The world had changed in the two years Crawford had spent away from the silver screen; her final film with MGM had been released during the height of World War II, while Mildred Pierce wasn’t released until well after VJ Day. Crawford’s career portraying strong women seemed, on the surface, the exact thing that would make her perfect as Mildred, a divorced mother of two who worked hard at both love and her career. In the post-war climate, however, independent women were seen as a threat, and the American media was encouraging women to leave the jobs they had held during the war and return to the domestic sphere.

In Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir, Sylvia Harvey notes that the reaction to the wartime change in traditional gender roles was often expressed in the “underlying sense of horror and uncertainty in film noir,” and that Mildred Pierce, “woman of the world, woman of business, and only secondarily a mother, is a good example of [the] disruption and displacement of the values of family life.” It’s true that Mildred Pierce is commonly seen as an early example of Hollywood’s move toward portraying self-reliant women as disruptive, though there is hardly a consensus on whether the film means to be a cautionary tale against the subversion of traditional gender roles, or whether the movie, mostly through its sympathies with Mildred, slyly expands the boundaries of those gender roles.

In a particularly unsubtle promotional photograph, Mildred offers up her famous pie.

When Mildred Pierce opens, Mildred is safely ensconced in the kitchen, pretty in her apron and baking apple pies. But as we soon learn, her baking provides the family’s sole income, as her husband Bert (Bruce Bennett) has no job and no prospects. It seems innocuous enough to our modern eyes, even quaint, but in 1945 the fact that Mildred was turning the domestic world of the kitchen into the social world of business was a real threat. Later, when she opens her own restaurant, she is giving her domesticity to anyone who will pay for it, not reserving it for her husband and kids, making her even more volatile and dangerous.

But long before Mildred even thinks about opening a restaurant, Bert seems to instinctually understand that Mildred’s determination to provide for her family is a threat. He’s sore about that, but about life in general, too, and as Mildred insists their daughters Veda (Ann Blyth) and Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe) are the most important things in her life, Bert’s insecurities flare. He’s certain that piano lessons are spoiling his daughters; Mildred is certain he has taken up with the widow Mrs. Biederhof (Lee Patrick). Mildred has had enough and tells him so. He leaves, not stopping to tell his daughters goodbye.

Teenaged Veda, preternaturally cool and aloof, is unconcerned about her father’s disappearance. She’s a snob, really, and in the James M. Cain novel on which the film is based, much of her attitude is explained by the fact that Mildred actively encouraged Veda’s haughtiness, believing it to be a sign that her daughter was a superior individual. Similarly, Bert had once been rich and had no desire to work for a living, and Mildred was initially far too proud to work in the serving class, the only jobs open to her.

It’s understandable that none of this made it into the film — the husband could hardly be cast a villain in the post-war climate, and movie star Joan Crawford would never play such an unsympathetic character — but how did Veda develop such a classist ideology? The Mildred of the film is grateful for her job as a waitress, while Veda is mortified that her mother is so low class as to wear a uniform. As the film continues, it becomes clear that Mildred is right when she says money is all that Veda lives for. Still, there is nothing in the film to explain the origins of her attitude; omitting the complicating factors from the novel mean Veda’s greed and coldness are mostly unexplained. The implication, primarily through studio advertising rather than the text of the film, was that Mildred was responsible. “Please don’t tell anyone what Mildred Pierce did!” said one poster, while ads referred to “trouble” that Mildred “made herself.”

Despite having only one lover in the film — the man she would eventually marry — advertising portrayed Mildred as a fast woman who slept around. — Despite having only one lover, advertising portrayed Mildred as a fast woman who slept around.

There is also the heavy implication that Bert — philandering, lazy, useless Bert — was right when he said Mildred spoiled Veda. All Bert knew when he uttered those lines was that Mildred paid for dancing and piano lessons and bought the girl a dress she didn’t really need. We’re meant to think Bert was prescient and knew that Veda was in danger of becoming so desperately needy that she might do something terrible, and when the inevitable happened, it was because Mildred spared the rod and spoiled the child.

But as Proverbs 13:24 says, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” Mildred’s devotion to her daughter is extreme enough that hate could easily be one component of it, and her final act of “spoiling” — paying rich playboy Monte (Zachary Scott) to marry her so she can give Veda a fancy home — is filled with a bubbling hostility underneath. But if Mildred hates Veda, she never expresses this outright; it’s her gal pal Ida (Eve Arden) who vocalizes just how supremely irritating the young teen can be, and always humorously. “Veda’s convinced me that alligators have the right idea,” Ida famously tells Mildred. “They eat their young.”

In order to create a melodramatic character that was the perfect Joan Crawford star vehicle, the film had to prevent Mildred from becoming too angry, too irrational, or too obsessed; instead, they made her both sympathetic and level-headed. The film then, perhaps accidentally, suggests that Veda’s snobbishness has less to do with parental nurturing than with cultural nurturing. In the absence of any family members to blame, her attitudes must have come from society at large, perhaps from the heavily commercialized media of the day. As Jacqueline Foertsch points out in American Culture in the 1940s, popular culture was the most commercialized it had ever been. Appearance and affluence were becoming increasingly important, and Veda’s intense materialism reflects this. Mildred Pierce seems to be saying that, sure, Mildred made mistakes, but society made more.

It’s that sort of world-weary cynicism that helps place Mildred Pierce firmly in the film noir cycle. Based on the novel by James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce shares many of the traits of a typical Cain noir, but with one notable difference: the female lead is not the femme fatale. Mildred uses men, they don’t use her, and she’s always the one with power. She’s the breadwinner and head of household when married to Bert, she exerts more control over business partner Wally Fay (Jack Carson) than surely any other woman has in his life, mother included, and when she doesn’t win the love of the land-poor Monte, she buys him like he was a tool in a hardware store.

Just like any good noir antihero, Mildred has a sidekick and considers her career the most important thing in her life. And just like any good noir villain, she likes to spoil her girl; it’s just that, with Mildred, that girl is her own daughter. As her desperation to make Veda happy increases, she eventually buys Monte, but it’s only after years of practice buying Veda’s affections, an uncomfortable parallel to some money man in a noir buying a pretty girl, setting her up in a nice apartment and asking her to call him “uncle.”

In Cain’s novel, Mildred’s inappropriate attentions toward Veda are explicitly laid out, but a film in 1945 could never suggest such a thing. It does quite a good job of hinting at it, though, by creating a Veda who is no sexy girl in the typical Hollywood fashion, but who alternates between masculine and sexless. Blyth plays this perfectly, especially in her later scenes: she’s gorgeous but stone cold, looking more like a beautiful statue than a human. She’s ambitious, ruthless, critical, and expects to receive what she feels is her due, both socially and financially, but without the usual tit-for-tat sexual exchange required of other female characters of the era. Some of the difference is due to her age, certainly, but it’s notable that even after she becomes a legal adult singing racy songs to soldiers in a riverfront dive, her affect is curiously neutral.

In a literary sense, the Freudian idea of boys and men separating from, or even outright rejecting, their mothers leads to masculinity; therefore Veda, by rejecting her mother, takes on masculine traits. When she latches on to Monte, just as she had with the rich young boy she falsely accused of having made her pregnant, she seems to have almost no intent beyond the acquisition of money. This culminates in a finale in which, in solid film noir tradition, she symbolically becomes the man when she guns down Monte, at the same beach house he first bedded Mildred in.

At times, it’s almost as though Mildred was simply unlucky enough to have a psychopath for a daughter, but as E. Ann Kaplan notes in Women in Film Noir, luck would have nothing to do with it: the Freudian model would place the blame squarely on Mildred, her maternal sacrifice being the root cause of unhealthy psychological issues. Elements of Mildred Pierce play on the maternal sacrifice narratives that made films like Stella Dallas (1937) and The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) so powerful, and updates them for a more cynical era, positing that her sacrifice has not saved her children but ruined them, killing her youngest daughter and turning the eldest into a murderer.

This played toward men’s post-war fear of women refusing to return back to the home, too. Media took to radio and the big screen to remind women that their only jobs should be as wife and mother. Magazine articles, news stories and films were produced that were little more than thinly disguised instruction manuals on how women should raise their children. Mildred Pierce is frequently cited as one of the first of many examples of what was essentially peacetime propaganda.

Mildred is grilled at the police station after Monte's murder. — Mildred is grilled at the police station after Monte’s murder.

There is a curious visual signifier that undermines that theory, however. Leading with Monte’s murder and told in flashback, Mildred Pierce features a beautiful, glamorous, well-lit past, almost entirely filled with clear and sunny days. It’s the present that becomes dark and cold, even a little surreal when Mildred is at the police station, the chief detective both gentle and cruel to her, telling lies in the same sentences as the truth. He means to humiliate and confuse her, punish her, make sure she knows it’s not the past anymore. He sends her away, the morning sun managing only a light gray haze, casting shadows on the cleaning women straining their backs to scrub the station floor by hand.

By the finale, men in authority, from Bert to the police, have arrived to clean things up by breaking the mother-daughter bond. At the same time, visually, it’s as though the film is looking back wistfully to the days when a working woman was not only accepted but patriotic, a time when women had a voice in their relationships, when it wasn’t a sin to sacrifice for their children because it was their primary mode of sociocultural power. The kind of strength and verve the U.S. hoped to recruit into the war effort just a year prior was now dangerous, which was why, for the good of society, the independent and successful Mildred had to be stripped of everything, even her children, by the end of the film. As she leaves the police station, it’s a bleak future ahead, those final stylized images she walks through almost Kafkaesque. And to make sure the message was fully received, Warner Bros. launched an ad campaign directed at returning U.S. soldiers, declaring the film the “big date” movie of the day. “Oh boy!” the poster shouted. “Home and Mildred Pierce!”

A freelance film critic and writer for the better part of a decade, Stacia Kissick Jones also plays classical guitar, reads murder mysteries and works tirelessly to consume all the caffeine in the world. Her work has appeared at Next Projection, Press Play, ClassicFlix and more.

Emily Gilmore and the Humanization of Bad Mothers

Three generations of Gilmores: Rory, Emily, and Lorelai.

This guest post by Deborah Pless previously appeared at her blog, Kiss My Wonder Woman, and appears now as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers. Cross-posted with permission.

It’s sad, but it’s true. When we talk about “bad mothers” we almost always limit our discussion, intentionally or not, to talking about mothers from lower income families, single mothers, mothers of color, and other women whose motherhood is deeply impacted by the difficulty of their ability to provide for their children.

Most of the “bad mommies” we’ve seen depicted on television fit this trend too, being disproportionately women of color with low incomes and frequently without a parenting partner. It would be really easy to look at the media, especially television, and come to the conclusion that the only real kind of bad mother is a poor one.

It’s arguably even more rare, though, to see a depiction or discussion of a woman who is a bad mother but not necessarily a bad person. A woman who, for all of her faults and genuine failures as a parent, is still a human being with wants and needs. In other words, sometimes women can be bad at being mothers but halfway decent at being people. We accept this readily when talking about fathers, but when it comes to mothers, it’s like we all freeze up. A bad mother must be a bad person. End of story.

Naturally, this isn’t true.

Lorelai and Emily at a Mother-Daughter fashion show. — Lorelai and Emily at a mother-daughter fashion show.

The truth is that reality is much more complex and difficult to understand than we like to admit. It’s so much easier to frame little bubbles of belief around ourselves and only pay attention to the narratives that affirm our understanding of the world. Motherhood is disproportionately valued in our society, which leads to an understanding that women are evaluated on the basis of whether or not we are mothers. If we are mothers, then we seem to think that our value is determined by whether or not we’re good at it. We are the products of our uteruses, and apparently nothing else.

But this misses the vast complexity of human experience, and, clearly, devalues women into walking incubators. And when all we see are narratives that enforce this, narratives that equivalence good motherhood with valid personhood, it’s hard to shake the idea that women are only good if we are good mothers.

So, with all of that in mind, let’s talk about Emily Gilmore, a fictional women who, glory of glories, managed to be both a bad mother and an interesting person, all without losing her genuine humanity. While much ink has been spilled over the years about Gilmore Girls and the unconventional relationship between mother and daughter Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) Gilmore, the undiscovered country of the show is in the characterization of Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop), Lorelai’s mother.

Emily Gilmore hits rock bottom on the rocks.

Emily Gilmore could have very easily been a caricature of a certain type of society matron, but she’s saved from that fate by the excellent writing of Amy Shermer-Palladino and the fantastic acting of Kelly Bishop. An upper class woman concerned primarily with image and status, Emily’s not a very nice person when we meet her in season one. She’s angry and bitter and cutting and devious, the sort of woman you would back away from slowly at a party. A running joke is made out of her inability to keep a maid employed (because she keeps firing them for tiny infractions), but the reality is that Emily Gilmore is a deeply unpleasant woman to be around.

The premise of the show actually makes it very clear that Lorelai has no real intention of pursuing a relationship with her mother. The first episode tells us that Lorelai hasn’t spoken to her parents in 15 years or so, having run away at 16, shortly after giving birth to her daughter. Lorelai has been living in isolation from her mother simply so that Emily could not control her life. The only reason she goes back to her parents is because her daughter, Rory, has been accepted to a prestigious private school, and Lorelai lacks the financial resources to pay the tuition.

This in and of itself is a pretty stark statement about the level of their relationship. Lorelai will only speak to her mother when the only other alternative is letting down her own child. That’s bad. It’s also understandable. The show never lets Emily off the hook or tells us she was secretly an amazing mother. While it does make clear that Emily has always cared about Lorelai more than Lorelai perhaps realized, it also gives us lots of evidence that Emily was an awful parent. She was manipulative, controlling, overly critical, and tried to micromanage her daughter’s every move.

What makes Gilmore Girls a great show, though, is that it gives us Emily Gilmore in all of her flawed parental glory, and doesn’t try to excuse or redeem it. Instead, it shows us a story where Lorelai and Emily come to appreciate each other for who they are. Emily doesn’t magically become a better parent, but she does become more and more aware of how terrible a parent she is, and she starts to want to change.

In other words, it’s not so much that Emily Gilmore is a terrible mother that I like, it’s that she’s a terrible mother who realizes she is. And, upon realizing that she has no relationship with her daughter at all, seeks to fix that.

It’s not an easy road, and the show, to its credit, does not give Emily much slack. She has to work for that relationship. Lorelai does too. They’re complicated women who have both scarred each other over the years, and there’s no getting past that easily. But they both try. And in trying, we get a better picture of who they are as human beings. Like I said in the beginning, there’s something so valuable in seeing a character like Emily who is, unequivocally, a bad mother also be a good person. Because she is a good person. Sometimes. Mostly.

At the very least, she’s a fully realized person. Emily Gilmore has all the faults and foibles that real people have. She has enemies and friends and flaws and spectacular good qualities. She yearns for a closer relationship with her husband but has no idea how to get it. She desperately wants to be a good mother, but utterly lacks the tools or understanding on how to relate to her child. She’s complicated, and I love that.

The Gilmores gather to celebrate Rory’s graduation.

It is also worth mentioning, however, that our understanding of Emily Gilmore really does come down along class lines. While it’s considerably less common to see a depiction of a white, upper class woman as a bad mother, it is more common to see women like Emily Gilmore given the benefit of the doubt, both by society and by the media. Still, that doesn’t make the show any less valuable as a depiction of the complexities of motherhood. Just, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

The main thing I want to get at here is simply this: women are not defined solely by our ability to parent. Some women are bad mothers. They just are. Whether because they are too proud to seek help or lack the emotional capacity or simply don’t see how their choices are affecting their children, some women are bad at being parents. And that’s important to admit. If we can’t see that, then we can’t understand women fully as people.

But more than that, if we can’t understand that a woman can be both a bad mother and still a valid, valuable human being, then we have no right to say that we understand the humanity of women. Characters like Emily Gilmore can help us see this, but ultimately it’s up to us. We have to admit the complexity of the world around us if we want it to get any better.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and the search for gluten-free baked goods.

‘Riding in Cars with Boys’ and Post-Maternal Female Agency

‘Riding in Cars with Boys’ showcases a humanity to women who are mothers that our media lacks. Women are constantly punished and depowered for their sexuality, and their motherhood status is often used as another way to control in media.

This guest post by CG is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Being a woman in today’s society means following a particular script. You are to: be a quiet, pleasant child. Discover boys by puberty. Get good grades, wear a sparkling prom dress. Have a college boyfriend. Marry said college boyfriend. Be a quiet homemaker, be pregnant, raise your children accordingly. But rarely, if ever, do we get a glimpse into what life means outside of this script – particularly after motherhood. What happens to these women who follow the script, who find themselves the proper example of what the script can mean – and what happens to those who choose to forge their own path, and mix life in with the order of the script?

It’s rare to find that there is life for women beyond motherhood. For this, I turn to one example that has shown the full humanity of post-maternal female agency. This is 2001’s Riding in Cars with Boys.

Riding in Cars With Boys is a journey story, first and foremost. Radical even today, the story follows Beverly “Bev” Delfrino (played by Drew Barrymore) as she stumbles her ways through life. Even at eleven, Bev displays her zest for life and the zing of excitement. She wants to be a writer. She wants to go to college and rub elbows with the elite. And most of all, she wants to be desired…by boys.

In one of the first scenes, Bev’s father is flabergasted as she tells him that what she really wants for Christmas isn’t a bike, but a bra, to impress a classmate that she likes.

This kind of boldness is cemented into Bev’s character as she grows older. Even when she is rejected at a high school party by yet another classmate she is pining over, she finds comfort in Ray, a guy who really doesn’t have much going for him but comforts our heroine. She then has unprotected sex with Ray in the backseat of a car.

It isn’t long before Bev finds herself pregnant. And while most stories would end here, or move the heroine to find some meaning in her pregnancy and motherhood, Bev rejects this. She continues being the same selfish, flamboyant lover of life that she is at the beginning of the film, despite the constant pressure from others in her life (particularly men) for her to conform. Her father, with whom Bev has a close relationship with, not only rejects her but kicks her out of the house when he finds out she is pregnant. Ray, who Bev marries out of necessity, remains a static character as well. He is a well meaning individual whose irresponsibility outweighs Bev’s. Between forgetting basic essentials to falling into a haze of drugs, Ray’s unreliability mirrors the same gender roles that move along the film.

It seems odd to praise a film like this, where the mother figure is such a notable “bad mother”, but that in lies the beauty of this film. Riding in Cars with Boys doesn’t negate or try to water down Bev. She remains an individual first and foremost, and the role of mother becomes secondary to that. And there are far and few media representations that allow women to embody themselves fully like this.

Bev is surrounded by men in the film – her father, Ray, her son Jason – and they all embody some part of the responsibility and gender roles that Bev is fighting against. Jason ends up being the voice of reason in the film, growing up feeling resentful and grateful for having Bev as a mother. In one of the final climax scenes of the film, we see Jason’s frustration bubbling over as he tells his mother “I raised you!” Bev’s reaction? To pout and throw a temper tantrum.

Do you see how great this is?

Riding in Cars with Boys showcases a humanity to women who are mothers that our media lacks. Women are constantly punished and depowered for their sexuality, and their motherhood status is often used as another way to control in media. We see this in everything from Scandal to Flowers in the Attic to Lizzy Bordon Killed a Man. Rarely are women granted that full spectrum of emotions and flaws in the way that men and men who are fathers are allowed to be. Bev Delfino proves that there is life beyond motherhood, and that a woman doesn’t stop being who she is once she has children.

Though this film came out in 2001, I still hope that more people can watch Riding in Cars with Boys and can see the importance of post-maternal female agency in our media.

CG is a writer, blogger, and fangirl from New Jersey. Most of her online writing can be found on her site (blackgirlinmedia.com).

Spy Mom: Motherhood vs. Career in the ‘Alias’ Universe

This conflict drives Sydney’s arc and establishes a recurring question at the heart of ‘Alias’: can you be both a mother and a spy? … Sydney’s own mother Irina figures powerfully into this conflict. … Yet Irina’s arc throughout ‘Alias’ is the tension between her desire for a relationship with her daughter and her independence as a spy.

This guest post by Katie Bender is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Irina: “You should know something, Sydney. I never wanted to have a child. The KGB demanded it. They knew it would ensure [your father’s] allegiance to me. You were simply a means to an end. And then when the doctor put you in my arms and I looked at you, so fragile, all I could think was, how could I have made such a terrible mistake. And at that moment I was sure of one thing. I couldn’t be an agent and a mother. I’d either fail at one or both. And I chose to fail at being a mother. In time you’ll learn…you can’t do both.”

Sydney: “Watch me.”

—“Maternal Instinct”

In setting up the story of Sydney Bristow, grad student/covert CIA officer, J.J. Abrams’ television series Alias hit a lot of the usual spy-story stand-bys: glamorous locales, top secret missions, high-tech gadgets, and for the main character, a measure of isolation. Sydney’s friends and fiancé are unaware of her double life, and with parents out of the picture (mother dead, father estranged) she has no family around. Then her fiancé’s casual mention of children raises the inherent conflict between Sydney’s career as a spy and her potential future as a mother. This conflict drives Sydney’s arc and establishes a recurring question at the heart of Alias: can you be both a mother and a spy?

Irina Derevko: “You must have known this day would come. I could have prevented all this, of course. You were so small when you were born. It would have been so easy.”

—“The Enemy Walks In”

Sydney’s own mother Irina figures powerfully into this conflict. The revelation that Irina is not only alive, but a former KGB officer who abandoned her family by faking her own death, shatters Sydney’s idealized view of her mother. Irina’s reunion with her daughter is anything but tender – she ends their interview by shooting Sydney – and from her first lines she makes it clear that she chose a spy career over motherhood a long time ago. For Irina, motherhood and espionage are mutually exclusive, regardless of her personal feelings for Sydney.

Irina Derevko: “I need you to understand, I was eighteen when the KGB recruited me. For a woman to be asked to serve her country it was a future. It meant empowerment, independence. I was a fool to think that any ideology could come before my daughter. Sydney…”

—“The Abduction”

Yet Irina’s arc throughout Alias is the tension between her desire for a relationship with her daughter and her independence as a spy. As she becomes a larger part of Sydney’s life, she makes genuine attempts to forge a connection with her daughter, even expressing regret at the things she missed in Sydney’s childhood. She acts with concern for Sydney’s well-being, shows pride in her daughter’s accomplishments and, in a few rare moments, allows a flicker of vulnerability to show. Perhaps most significantly, despite her acknowledgement of her decision to pursue espionage over motherhood, she consistently self-identifies as Sydney’s mother and asserts that relationship repeatedly throughout the span of the show.

Sydney Bristow: “You orchestrated the whole thing, because you wanted this. And when… When you couldn’t torture it out of me, you came to me as my mother.“

Irina Derevko: “I am your mother.”

—“Maternal Instinct”

But while Irina may be seeking some measure of redemption in her daughter’s eyes, she’s not looking to change. Each time the choice between motherhood and her life as a spy recurs throughout the series, Irina invariably prioritizes espionage over her daughter. Her attempts to connect with Sydney, sincere though they are, serve an additional purpose of allowing her to acquire classified intel which leads her to abandon her daughter a second time. She risks her freedom to deliver Sydney’s baby, but reaffirms her choice to Sydney in dialogue. Irina’s ambiguous morality throughout the show makes her a fascinating character, and in watching her fight to build a relationship with her daughter in spite of her choices, it’s hard not to have a measure of sympathy for her.

Irina Derevko: “You’re too forgiving, Sydney. Don’t pretend I’m something I’m not. I’ve never been a real mother to you and… you don’t owe me a second chance.”

—“A Free Agent”

Still, in the end, the show determines that Irina’s choices have placed her beyond saving. As her choices are portrayed largely through the lens of Sydney’s experience, every decision Irina makes that elevates her own desires above her relationships is viewed as a failing. Ultimately, her choice of her lifelong ambition over her daughter proves her downfall. Her failure is driven home in the series finale as Sydney is shown surrounded by her own children, about to set off on a mission – the picture of a successful spy mom having it all. Perhaps, as the show suggests, Irina’s decision between espionage and family was a false dichotomy all along. Or perhaps it is through Irina’s struggle that Sydney is able to discern her own path as both spy and mother.

Katie Bender is a musician and writer in the Seattle area, where she collaborates with her co-author/ruthless editor Jennifer Hughes.

Bad Mothers Are the Law of Shondaland

This guest post by Scarlett Harris is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

If ever there were a TV universe replete with bad mothers, it’s Shondaland.

Of course, not all Shondaland shows exist in the same fictional world, which allows bad mothers such as Ellis Grey on Grey’s Anatomy to be reincarnated as a reprehensible Vice President of the United States on Scandal. (But don’t let the different fictional worlds fool you: Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Private Practice consistently used actors from the former to play different characters in the latter.)

It’s fascinating that all four of Shonda Rhimes’ protagonists have strained relationships with their mothers when Rhimes herself (from what we commoners can see) couldn’t be any further from that trope, having adopted three daughters as a single (and seemingly awesome) mum.

The first, and most obvious, of these Mommy Dearest connections is Meredith Grey and her aforementioned mother, Ellis. Throughout 11 seasons of Grey’s, we see Meredith’s internal struggle with the distant mother she simultaneously strives to live up to while resenting her for putting her career above her daughter and her early onset of Alzheimer’s which resulted in her death in season three. Ellis continued to haunt Meredith from beyond the grave when it was revealed that Meredith had yet another sister, Maggie, who Ellis put up for adoption when Meredith was a child.

With the sustained appearance of Meredith’s copious family members and the adoption (shout out to Shonda!)/birth of her own three children, the struggle to be a good mother and, thus, a good person is at the forefront of Grey’s Anatomy, whether it’s always palpable or not.

The somewhat forgotten Shondaland creation, Private Practice, also featured a strained mother-daughter relationship between Addison Montgomery and her mother, Bizzy, who committed suicide when her partner died. Of course Rhimes painted a more nuanced picture than this, but I imagine it’s pretty hard to forgive your mother for committing suicide and leaving you to fend for yourself, no matter your age. (Ellis also tried to kill herself when Meredith was a girl, right around the time she found out she was pregnant to Richard Webber with Maggie.)

Scandal, perhaps the crown jewel in the Shondaland empire, has a truly evil mother (and father!) in Maya Lewis/Marie Wallace, an alleged terrorist and murderer. Proving some people are never meant to be parents, last week’s season four finale showed Olivia continuing to be used as a pawn in her parent’s power games, with Maya/Marie choosing freedom over helping her daughter and Rowan/Eli thwarting Olivia’s attempts at revenge at every bloody turn.

Mellie is another Capitol Hill resident that struggles in her motherhood. Sometimes portrayed as ruthless and vindictive, it is Mellie who expresses sensitivity when daughter Karen has a compromising video taken of her and who wallows in grief after son Jerry is murdered. Mellie is perhaps a less rigid characterisation of motherhood than Maya/Marie as she is permitted to express a range of emotions that I imagine one would experience as a mother.

Finally, we see the mother of Annalise Keating rear her head towards the end of this year’s first season of How to Get Away with Murder. In what I think is arguably the most fascinating dynamic since Meredith and Ellis, Annalise’s mother Ophelia (played by Cicely Tyson) first comes across as rigid, unfeeling and old school, guilting her daughter (formerly Anna Mae) into remembering her humble beginnings and the sacrifices Ophelia made for her. Annalise resents Ophelia (someone write a thinkpiece unpacking that naming choice!) for not protecting her from being molested by her uncle and, while Ophelia is combing her daughter’s hair, she reveals that she did indeed seek revenge by burning their house down with Annalise’s uncle inside. Talk about protecting your children!

Like her fondness for mistresses, you have to wonder whether Rhimes is dealing with some mommy issues of her own when she writes bad mothers so often. (Even her debut screenwriting gig featured a bad mother.) What Rhimes really excels at, though, is writing real, nuanced people who happen to be mothers. On the season 11 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, Maggie finds out her adoptive parents are divorcing while Amelia, the black sheep of her family, is still struggling with the death of her brother. Meredith, already a mother to three, takes Maggie and Amelia by the hands in a rare demonstration of something other than contempt, with the final scene being the sisters three dancing at Richard and Catherine’s wedding.

While we all have mothers in some incarnation, Shondaland’s shows work to combat the stereotype that if you don’t have a functional family unit, replete with a doting, competent mother, you’re alone in the world.

‘The Killing’ and the Misogyny of Hating Bad Mothers

The Killing promotional still.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

In AMC’s The Killing, “bad” mothers have been woven throughout all three seasons.

It would be easy to see this as a failing on the show’s part; instead, I think we can see it as a realistic depiction of how we treat mothers in our culture represented in both in the fictional world of the show and in critics’ responses to the series.

In the first two seasons of The Killing, the plot centers around the murder of Rosie Larsen, a 17-year-old girl. Her grieving parents–Mitch and Stan–have a difficult time (understandably) in the aftermath of her death and in the investigation. Mitch (Michelle Forbes), in the midst of a breakdown, leaves her two sons with Stan and her sister as she hits the road to try to heal or find something to ease the pain.

Mitch Larsen: bad mother.

In last year’s “The 10 Worst Moms on TV” on Yahoo TV, Mitch Larsen was featured as one of the worst. The critic wrote:

“Her daughter may or may not have been a prostitute or involved in some illegal doings at a casino. And she ended up dead seemingly because of it. But instead of hunkering down and paying more attention to her remaining children, Mitch left her sons to be raised by a depressed father and their hooker aunt while she went off to live in a motel and act creepy around wayward runaway girls.”

Mitch’s interaction with the runaway girl was a direct response to her feelings of inadequacy about her failings as a mother to Rosie. She was attempting to heal and grow. She mothered the runaway girl the best she knew how and was still abandoned and hurt. Mothering is difficult and complex–it’s not a simple equation of just being there all of the time.

In season 3, the victim pool has grown substantially–a number of teenage girls are found murdered, and the suspect appears to be a youth pastor at a homeless shelter.

One of the missing girls who is still unaccounted for, Kallie Leeds, has a terrible no-good single mother, Danette Leeds (Amy Seimetz), who seems to prioritize cigarettes, beer and getting laid over her difficult relationship with her daughter. Her neglect and indifference are seen as central to Kallie’s victimization.

Danette: bad mother.

As Danette and another mother of a missing girl sit next to each other at the police station, Danette notices that the other mother has a binder full of photographs and composite photos. She seems uncomfortable, as if she’s understanding the depth of her neglect. She recognizes that Kallie’s life trajectory closely mirrors her own, and the weight of that is pushing down on her. She was being the kind of parent she knew how to be, and she didn’t know how to be June Cleaver. Most mothers don’t.While these supporting characters’ relationships with their daughters are troubled, and it would be easy for the audience to “blame” the victimization of the daughters on their mothers, it wouldn’t be correct. We are so used to complex, fallible male characters that we are also conditioned to see them as complex and fallible, not good or evil. When we’re presented with women with the same depth of characterization–especially mothers–we don’t know what to do except what we’ve been conditioned to do: criticize them and blame them.

This is blatantly obvious when we consider the show’s protagonist, detective Sarah Linden (played by the amazing Mireille Enos).

Linden has consistently been portrayed as a terrible mother in critics’ reviews of the series. She is a realistic female lead character–she is good at her job, works tirelessly and struggles with her failings in her personal life and professional life. Complex female characters are a good thing, and The Killing consistently delivers them (it can’t hurt that the show’s producer and many of the writers are women).

In the first two seasons, Linden had custody of her young teenage son, Jack. Her work means long hours away from him and dinner from vending machines. Linden herself was a foster child and has difficulty negotiating her upbringing and being the kind of mother that she’s supposed to be, but cannot. In the third season, Jack has moved to Chicago to live full-time with his father–he’s thriving, and living with his father. That’s good, right? No, Sarah Linden is evidently still a piece of shit mother.

Sarah Linden: bad mother.

In reviews of The Killing, writers often take an acerbic tone when mentioning her as a mother.

For example, this reviewer seems to think taking a jog makes her a bad mother:

“We all struggle with the work-life balance thing, and detective Sarah Linden is hardly an exception. Finding time to mother her son, for instance, seems to be a challenge. Jogging, however, she manages to squeeze in. And it’s a good thing, too. Because Linden (finally) got a major break in the case this week, and it’s all thanks to the fact that she prioritizes cardio over sleep, parenthood, marriage, friendship, or updating a sweater collection that appears to have been sourced from Dress Barn circa 1997.”

This reviewer fails to make the connection that she’s preoccupied by an intense case, so she needs to stay in Seattle (or maybe the fact that she’s putting her career first figures into this assessment):

“But she’s still the World’s Worst Mother — her son lives in Chicago and she won’t visit because, well, he’s the only person she knows there. Wow, Linden. Just, wow.”

In a Salon review from last year (which, remarkably, denounces The Killing for not being “fun” enough), the reviewer slips in, “Yes, it’s still raining, and Linden’s still a bad mother…”

Even the New York Times, in a review from the first season, comes to the conclusion that the “scariest aspect” of the show is the theme of absent motherhood. Crooked politicians, murders, prostitution… those don’t hold a candle to bad mothers.

“Sarah Linden refuses to accept that her inattentiveness is gravely affecting her son until she is forced to reckon with her absence around him. And in Mitch Larsen (Michelle Forbes) we bear witness to a character who is present in her daughter’s life and yet still positioned at a significant remove from the darkest secrets of her adolescence. In the end, of course, this is the scariest aspect of all.”

And in the aforementioned Yahoo TV list, Linden gets first place. The manifesto against her begins: “She’s not actively trying to kill her son, but she may end up doing so anyway.”

OK then.

I’m not going to try to defend Sarah Linden’s parenting. That would be ludicrous–she doesn’t need defending. She’s a complex, realistic character with real issues.

At Bitch Flicks, Megan Kearns posted in the first season how it was “refreshing” to see this kind of character trying to navigate her different roles, and that “the lead character is an accomplished single mom striving to keep her son out of trouble all while maintaining her demanding career.” She manages to do that by the third season, but it’s still not good enough.

Instead, audiences and critics alike focus much too closely on the female protagonist’s failings as a mother. We do not do that with male protagonists. (OK, six seasons in, after an episode highlighting parenting, Jezebel posted about how Don Draper was a “shitty dad.”)

Is Dexter a good father? What about Rick Grimes? Walter White?

Certainly there are lists of “bad dads” in TV/film, but the tone is different, more tongue-in-cheek. And a focus on these characters’ fathering abilities doesn’t run throughout conversations about the show, especially not with the same venom we see about Linden. When there’s a bad father in the mix, it’s just a poignant piece of a Joseph Campbell hero’s journey. Bad mothers, however, deserve to be burned at the proverbial stake.

There is a dearth of female antiheroes in film and television. The response to Sarah Linden shows why this is. When audiences see female characters, they think primarily in critical terms, especially about their roles as mothers and wives. (Of course this extends past fictional characters; there’s consistent and persistent hand-wringing about real-life women working too much and not being good enough mothers.) Women aren’t perfect (especially within the narrow confines of perfection that our society has put in place). Female characters shouldn’t be perfect.

My son is doing fine and my sweaters are warm and comfortable, assholes.

Linden’s role as a parent, girlfriend and ex-wife is just one small part of the grand scheme of the show. Her partner, Stephen Holder, has a girlfriend this season. He forgets Valentine’s Day and is never home. He is not painted as a villain, because he’s out getting shit done. He’s doing his job. That is what is important in The Killing. So when critics focus (in depth, or just in passing) on how terrible a mother Linden is, that further erodes what should be good about having strong, complex female characters.

Sarah Linden may not be a full-time mother. But she’s a bad-ass mother, and that is what should matter the most.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Call For Writers: Bad Mothers

Few human beings are quite so stigmatized as bad mothers. Despite the fact that motherhood is demanded of women as an intrinsic part of the female experience, women who struggle with motherhood are seen and depicted as the worst kind of scum. No failure, it seems, is as great as that of a woman who is bad at being a mom…or, worse yet, who decides after having children that she no longer wants to be a mother.

Our theme week for May 2015 will be Bad Mothers.

Despite the fact that it’s commonplace and borderline acceptable for a father to abandon his children, all manner of blame and shame are heaped at the feet of the smothering, neglectful, or the abandoning mother. The cultural narrative would have us believe that she is the cause of serial killers (Dexter, Psycho), all forms of misogyny, wars, and even the collapse of the heteronormative nuclear family. While woman are defined by motherhood and shoulder intense, unrealistic burdens, there is little appreciation or acknowledgement for the role itself and the women who inhabit it.

Not only that, but the trope of the “wicked stepmother” is one of the worst kinds of stereotypes for motherhood. The stepmother is villainized as an unnatural simulation of a mother who can’t be trusted because she isn’t the real thing. Disney has proliferated this damaging trope, insisting that giving birth to a person is the only way to truly claim motherhood.

Though few and far between, there are some nuanced and even sympathetic representations of women who struggle with the ceaseless demands of motherhood. The Babadook is a fantastic example, and The Hours…tries.

Help us illuminate the stories of women who are bad mothers. Let’s dissect this cultural narrative that scoffs at and punishes women for their transgressions against the seemingly sacred institution of motherhood.

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, May 22 by midnight.

The Killing

The Babadook

Precious

Carrie

American Horror Story

Beloved

Dexter

Psycho

The Grifters

Bates Motel

The Graduate

Cinderella

Ever After

Game of Thrones

The Shipping News

Once

Throw Mama From the Train

Revenge

The Darjeeling Express

The Hours

Snow White

Grey’s Anatomy