Child Abuse – Bitch Flicks

‘The Violators’ and ‘Wildlike’: Two Films Deal with the Trauma of Child Abuse in Different Ways

[Trigger Warning: for discussion of child abuse, incest, rape, and sexual assault] To what extent are filmmakers obliged to depict scenes of rape and the sexual assault of women and girls — a pandemic-sized problem in real life — in accurate and illuminating ways?

This is a guest post written by Holly Thicknes.

Trigger warning for discussion of child abuse, incest, rape, and sexual assault.

Wildlike and The Violators: two independent films released on festival circuits to rip-roaring acclaim. Both are debut features from Frank Hall Green and Helen Walsh respectively, and both deal with the uncomfortable subject of the sexual abuse of teenage girls. Yet the two films left me with very different impressions.

To what extent are filmmakers obliged to depict scenes of rape and the sexual assault of women and girls — a pandemic-sized problem in real life — in accurate and illuminating ways? If ever we are to believe that films can influence society for the better, surely we must look for critical self-awareness along with satisfying storytelling (where abuse is more than just a tool of the narrative that progresses the story). The guise of the art house genre has a history of being perceived as absolving films of the representational issues of rape as spectacle, as if the festival-to-independent-cinema distribution package amounts to an automatic stamp of approval (perhaps anyone seeing Gaspar Noé’s Love will take a moment to cast their minds back to the bitter experience that was his Irreversible, shown at Cannes in 2002). But explicitness — or as some might view it, uncut realism — in representing the sexual exploitation of women in itself is problematic if it serves no purpose other than the pleasure of spectacle. And so it is a delicate balance which filmmakers must strive to strike: an honest representation, made — crucially — for the right reasons.

Green’s Wildlike premiered at the Hamptons Film Festival in October 2014 and was the winner of over 40 Best Film awards at various other festivals. The film promises a scenic hike across Alaska, an unlikely friendship of substitution between a teenage girl and an older man and a tense chase by an abusive, ominously unnamed uncle. It delivers all three with invigorating authenticity: the photography and performances meld together to perfectly tow the line between documentary-inspired art house flick and melodramatic Alaskan road movie. The script and Green’s direction soar in moments of transition, where all the action is embedded in the faces of the characters (articulated with faultless performances all around, namely by Bruce Greenwood as male lead Rene) or else the gruff, ever-changing landscapes, and the contemplative essence of the story feels overwhelmingly all-encompassing. There is an endearing sweetness in the father-daughter friendship being cultivated with very little words but plenty of weighted glances. All the substance is there, evidently so, affording it its success and status as a breakthrough debut.

But for all of Wildlike‘s strengths, what I simultaneously can’t forgive it for nor realistically expect of it is the fact that the guesses feel clumsy around the depiction of the central female character’s abuse. They feel second hand, peripheral, flat.

In blatant contrast, The Violators is uncompromisingly captured from 15-year-old female protagonist Shelly’s perspective, and centered around the effects of the sexual exploitation she suffers. It is a film lovingly cultivated by acclaimed novelist and writer/director Walsh, who turned her hand to filmmaking for the first time with the kind of surety that relevant experience for the subject at hand affords you. She reached back into her childhood, where she grew up on the periphery of Cheshire, England, on the same streets and dockland walks we see depicted in the film, and drew out a story about a community of people suffering from the cyclical nature of abuse that forever seems to renew until someone or something finds the strength to break the cycle.

Through the eyes of Shelly, played by acting revelation Lauren McQueen, we see the people of this community play a daily game of chance with the hand they have been dealt. Exploring, as the story does, violation, no one person is made to claim all the blame and no one is absolved entirely, epitomized in Shelly’s complex character role of both sensible mother figure and misled, reckless child. Walsh hints at the details of an abusive father, in jail but possibly being paroled soon, to her and her self-sufficient siblings, and the prospect of it hangs like a spectre over everything so that current moments of violence feel grounded in her damaged past. True as the film is to real life, abuse does not change the centre of gravity of anyone else’s world, but instead informs the path that particular victim takes for the worse.

This perspective is where Wildlike falls down on the representational front, making it into a paternal film about a father-and-daughter-type friendship ever blooming in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness that sidelines the protagonist’s abusive experiences. To be fair, there is nothing insensitive about Green’s portrayal of MacKenzie (Ella Purnell), whose angsty teenager status is drawn onto her face with the filmic trope that is black eyeliner, but beyond this rightfully possesses no superficial traits that simply pigeonhole her character. The scenes of abuse are deliberately not treated as spectacle, but with impressive restraint and disgust-inducing visceral sound effects that imply rather than show (a storytelling technique that Green applies with great success throughout). But the effects of the incidents are observed from the outside, in manner of a concerned father who might look on at his daughter going through her troubled teenage years with genuine concern but bafflement. We are never invited into MacKenzie’s personal space to understand her motivations, and are instead left to second guess how messed up she must be from her experiences. Consequently, when she does break her sullen silence in a burst of emotion, the dialogue feels clumsily roped together in a bid to sound spontaneous but which comes off as whiny.

Unsurprisingly it is much easier to sympathise and identify with Rene, the recently widowed middle-aged male hiker that MacKenzie latches onto, firstly at the whiff of a meal ticket but then being tentatively drawn towards a kind and understanding father figure. Bruce Greenwood is a dream in the role, who we are introduced to in a moment when his defenses are down, in the rue of privacy whilst lying in bed, reminiscing about his late wife, without knowing that MacKenzie is actually hiding under his bed having snuck into his hotel room to nap for the night during her journey to Seattle. His male vulnerability in the wake of the manipulative uncle figure from whom MacKenzie is running is an instant catch: he is afforded an intimate look that we never get to see of her. A few silhouetted crying scenes do not cut it by any stretch.

Green has never claimed, as far as I know, to have made a film directly commenting on the lasting effects of sexual abuse on an underage girl in the hope of enlightening his audience. The meeting point of the two films is their examination of the resilience of vulnerable people in the face of attack. Wildlike does this beautifully — arguably more successfully than The Violators. But having seen both films at film festivals this year with directorial introductions, the contrast between representational intention is blatantly stark. Should films ever sideline child molestation? Should the primary victim’s account ever feel viewed from a distance? And should the issue even ever be used in a film by a male writer/director, one with undeniable storytelling skill, which gets the film into a bunch of festivals with its indie look, but uses the sensitive issue to invoke drama? It’s for everyone to individually make up their minds, but for my part I’m left with the uncomfortable feeling of having watched a film about teenage molestation and incest told superficially from the perspective of the female victim but in reality from the perspective of a man.

Holly Thicknes is a freelance film critic and editor of female-focused film blog Girls On Film. She lives and works in London, studies printmaking, and helps organise themed short film events for Shorts On Tap. She is particularly interested in the ways in which films help people carve out spaces for themselves in an increasingly lonely society. You can follow Girls On Film on Twitter at @girlsonfilmLDN.

‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’: Childhood Is The Pits

The heroic journey of Short Round is the catalyst for both Willie’s and Indy’s own growth and transcendence, as Willie becomes proactive and Indy becomes responsible.

Ke Huy Quan as Short Round, facing the pits

Written by Brigit McCone.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the coolest kids’ movie ever made about severe child abuse. Just as Roald Dahl’s Matilda does for daughters and mothers, so The Temple of Doom affirms that the good father must empower his son, and defends the child’s right to reject and resist abusive behavior. Critics who strive to dismiss the film as the original trilogy’s “weakest” often snark about the allegedly annoying chirpiness of Ke Huy Quan’s heartfelt performance. I suspect they are actually uncomfortable that Spielberg’s film narratively centers Short Round as its protagonist, while casually assuming that an adult audience identify with him. From his hero-worship of Indy to his glee at the film’s thrill rides, Short Round’s emotional responses cue our own, including an assumed desire to break up kissing couples and see squealing girls get giant millipedes down the back of their necks.

The film embodies the sensibility of a twelve-year-old boy, wholeheartedly and without ironic distance. The mighty Indiana Jones himself is regularly “fridged,” disempowered by the mind-controlling Black Blood of Kali Ma (Mother Kali) and voodoo dolls, to further Short Round’s heroic journey. As much as Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, his Temple of Doom showcases the director’s extraordinary empathy for a young boy’s worldview, though it conjures a nightmare of parental abuse rather than E.T.‘s fantasy playmate, leading to accusations that the film is “too dark”. Validating a child’s experiences by confronting the terror of abusive parents is apparently less acceptable than Nazi torturers to mainstream (adult) viewers. Just as audiences can only fully appreciate Spielberg’s film by identifying wholeheartedly with Short Round, so Indy must learn to identify with the child’s perspective to grow into the role of good father, from careless and selfish beginnings. His newfound identification is showcased when begged to flee the hellish Thuggee lair. Harrison Ford turns, jaw set in iconic resolution, and growls “right! All of us” before battling for the cathartic liberation of every last one of the film’s abused children. Coolest. Dad. Ever.

"Left Tunnel, Indy!" - good father. Crap navigator. — “Left Tunnel, Indy!” – good father. Crap navigator.

Because Short Round is positioned as the protagonist of the film in terms of agency, I don’t read it as a conventional White Savior narrative. Indy’s swaggering Fedora the Explorer is repeatedly punished for assuming he knows better than the film’s Asian boys. As Short Round puts it, with a frustration familiar to any child, “I keep telling you, you listen to me more, you live longer!” Interestingly, the Prime Minister of Pangkot explicitly accuses British colonials of viewing Indians as children, while the Thuggee appropriate the village’s power source and indoctrinate their children like nightmare colonizer-fathers (yes, Indians are the film’s primary representatives of Patriarcho-colonialism. “Projection” has many cinematic meanings). The film’s paternalist Brits monitor and stifle, but fail to figure out what’s really going on until it’s too late. Only the holy fire of Short Round’s torch, that awakens Indy as Indy’s fiery wrath awakens the Sankara stones, can defeat the Thuggee menace.

Where British colonizers infantilize adults, Indiana Jones lets children drive (a powerful metaphor, if inadvisable from a vehicular manslaughter standpoint). The supernatural power of the stones confirms that Indiana Jones operates in a syncretic universe, in which the divine can manifest equally as Shiva or Jehovah, marking no culture as inherently superior. However, the failure of The Last Crusade to even mention Short Round’s fate, in its meditations on the meaning of fatherhood, reinforces the vilest stereotypes of interracial adoptees as disposable rent-a-kids. Indian culture is also caricatured and distorted by the film, even granted the disturbing true history of the Thuggee death cult. Where in Hinduism the god Shiva and goddess Kali are consorts, each representing forces of combined destruction and creation, Spielberg and Lucas create a simplistic opposition between a heroic Shiva and an evil Kali.

The historical Thuggee did kill in Kali’s name, indoctrinating young boys into their cult, but did not target women. The film’s plot, with Indy possessed by his skull-faced mother goddess and compelled to destroy his blonde love interest, therefore resembles a Bollywood reimagining of Hitchcock’s Psycho more than Hinduism. Spielberg’s Thuggee are a cult that brutally enslave children, both boys and girls. The boys are terrified that their puberty will force them to become mindless abusers themselves: “will become like them. Will be alive, but like a nightmare. You drink blood, you not wake up from nightmare”. We see no adult women among the Thuggee which, along with the attempted sacrifice of Willie, forces us to conclude that the enslaved girls have their hearts torn out and are fed to the flames when they hit puberty. The film’s vision of the Thuggee is thus a nightmare caricature of patriarchy: consuming women heart first, enslaving children and turning terrified boys into inevitable replicas of their abusive fathers, for fear of sharing the sacrificial woman’s fate (“projection” has oh so many cinematic meanings). How appropriate, then, that the surrogate family at the film’s heart – Indy, Willie and Short Round – caricature traditional gender roles. Indy is an overtly macho leader who lusts after “fortune and glory”; Willie is a squeamish, passive beauty who seeks to control violent men with sex appeal; Short Round is a colonized kid who models his whole identity on his father-figure. When Indy is forced to drink the Kool-Aid of Kali Ma, this substance abuse terrifyingly alters his personality, becoming a violent and unloving nightmare father. It is up to Short Round to break this cycle and fight back (dun-ta-dun-tah, dun-ta-daaah!)

Kate Capshaw as Willie, facing the pits of Mommy-goddess issues — Kate Capshaw as Willie, facing the fiery pits of patriarchy’s Mommy-goddess issues

Willie is a perfect deconstruction of the myth of female sexual power, and Kate Capshaw plays her with tongue firmly in cheek. She attempts to secure her position in Shanghai by her sexual power over an influential mob boss, but he hardly cares if she dies. She tries to bolster her shaky self-worth by accusing Indy of being unable to take his eyes off her, only to be humiliated as he pointedly pulls his fedora over those eyes and naps. Further outraged as Indy seems more interested in feeling up a statue than in making love to her, the objectified Willie is reduced to being farcically jealous of a literal object. After Indy becomes evil through drinking the Black Blood of Kali Ma (what is it with women and their wicked bleeding, amirite?), Willie attempts to cure him using traditionally female strategies of appeasing, pleading and crying, that are shown to be totally ineffective. The audience is lured into a contemptuous “girls are stoopid” view of Willie, that reflects the typical psychology of children in abusive families, who cope with their own terrifying helplessness by identifying with the seeming strength of the abuser, and redirecting their angry frustration at the apparently weaker, appeasing parent. If you are one of the many feminists who hate Willie, ask why you intensely dislike a woman who struggles to secure her safety nonviolently, and is out of her depth in a situation where we would be likewise. Battling to be more than some man’s Willie, Willie shows great guts, becoming a partner in adventure who courageously fights for Short Round, braving hideous bugs to free him and forcefully stamping on the fingers of the villainous Mola Ram as he climbs to get them. Willie even develops a sense of humor about being hosed by Short Round’s elephant. Coolest. Mom. Ever.

Of course, there are problems with this model. The Indiana Jones trilogy follows the usual pattern of male-authored feminist empowerment, in proposing that women can become equal to men by proving that they can be masculine, with no self-scrutiny or uncomfortable adjustments necessary in the underlying ideology of male domination. Insecurity over female sexuality pervades these representations. If a woman tries to get her way using sexual power, like Kate Capshaw’s Willie, she is ruthlessly mocked. If she succeeds in getting her way using sexual power, like Alison Doody’s Elsa of The Last Crusade, she is dropped screaming into a bottomless abyss. Only Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood, of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a truly Cool Girl, because she can drink more than men, doesn’t dress too sexy and has no problem with violence. By contrast, many Asian philosophies teach that our full humanity is a balance between the forces of shiva and shakti, yin and yang. To impose a rigid gender binary, society must code shiva/yang as exclusively male, and shakti/yin as exclusively female. Each of these exclusions, enforced by strict gender policing, serves to suppress full human potential. Yet, just as Spielberg and Lucas reject the positive potential of shakti in their distortion of Hinduism, so they reject the positive potential of femininity in their distortion of women. Through Cool Girls like Marion Ravenwood, the trilogy accepts that the female is not necessarily feminine, but does nothing to question the demonization of femininity itself.

"Kali Ma Shakti De!" - Mola Ram summons his feminine side — “Kali Ma Shakti De!” – Mola Ram summons his feminine side

As for the boy-child, Short Round is repeatedly shown humorously mirroring Indy, underlining his hero worship, which is also expressed in his contempt for Willie: “you call him Dr. Jones, doll!” Trapped in the nightmarish Thuggee model, however, in which Indy has become corrupted into a violent Thug, Short Round breaks his identification with him and, with tears in his eyes, symbolically rejects him by burning him, before fighting to save mother-figure Willie from the sacrificial pit. Spielberg’s Temple of Doom resembles a Euro-American vision of hell, that Short Round must escape by braving its fires and learning to wield them himself. The abused child’s empowerment fantasy allows Short Round to locate the voodoo doll that is controlling his parent, and remove the pin, so that Indy can be magically admirable again. Indy’s own fury, at being manipulated into a mindless slave of the wicked Temple of Patriarcho-colonialism, can then awaken Shiva’s righteous flame and destroy Mola Ram’s arch-abuser. Only through such painful awakening, not appeasement, can the cycle be broken and the nightmare escaped.

The heroic journey of Short Round is the catalyst for both Willie’s and Indy’s own growth and transcendence, as Willie becomes proactive and Indy becomes responsible. Ultimately, Indy renounces “fortune and glory” in favor of giving back to the community. A reconciliation with feminine values, after all? Since community values are represented by Shiva’s Penis… perhaps not. By breaking his chains and rejecting the abusive father, it is Short Round who single-handedly turns the film around. If Ke Huy Quan doesn’t break your heart as he croaks “I love you! Wake up, Indy!” before swinging that torch, you may need to check your pulse. Annoying? Bah! Give that kid an Oscar.

Short Round and the Father Figure of Doom

The Indiana Jones trilogy commands a rabid devotion that none of its many imitators can match, because its thrill rides cover a masculine psychological journey of archetypal power. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy must defeat his shadow self in Belloq, and reconcile with his female counterpart in Marion, by embracing humility and accepting his limits. In The Temple of Doom, he must accept the responsibilities of the father and confront his fear of becoming the abusive father. Finally, in The Last Crusade, Indy must forgive his own father, and consciously walk in the footsteps of his father’s teaching. The films have less to offer female audiences: a promise of equality through rejecting femininity, and an opportunity to overidentify with an Asian boy. But societies are defined by the freedom and dignity granted to their most vulnerable members. By unabashedly celebrating the empowerment of children, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom becomes a manifesto for the liberation of Shorties everywhere. Wake the hell up, Indy.

Brigit McCone has a lingering fondness for fedoras, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and pretending The Crystal Skull never happened.

The Beth Thomas Story: How a TV Film and Documentary Captured a Child Enraged

Tim and Julie didn’t know about the sexual abuse Beth had been subjected to as early as 19 months old by her father. They didn’t know she was suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder, a condition that surfaces from past trauma and neglect into oceans of disturbing, detached, unresponsive, and apathetic behavior. They couldn’t possibly know that a young girl could be filled with so much—that much rage.

This guest post by Kim Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls.

CORRECTION UPDATED 2/10/16: An earlier version of this article incorrectly associated the Attachment Center with the Evergreen Psychotherapy Center. We have been informed that The Evergreen Psychotherapy Center has never been, is not currently and will never be associated with The Attachment Center of Evergreen.

When I was a kid, I was introduced to a movie called Child of Rage, a 1992 CBS TV movie that would be on Lifetime after school. It gave me equal parts dread and fascination—it was about a young girl who wanted to kill her adoptive family, severely traumatized by previous abuse as a baby. What I didn’t know at the time was that the film was based on the real life story of a little girl named Beth Thomas, and that two years earlier in 1990, HBO had released a documentary about the real-life Beth as part of their America Undercover series, called Child of Rage: A Story of Abuse. In the documentary, an oppressed Beth accounts for all the moments I’d seen repeatedly play out in the TV movie, including frank and expressionless accounts of her polluted understanding of right from wrong—like murdering the parents who adopted her and the only brother she’d ever known. I marveled, and still marvel, over the power of this six and a half-year-old child who was never shown displays of love and empathy, until she was prepared to take another person’s life.

Tim and Julie Tennant adopted little Beth and her younger brother Jonathan back in the ‘80s. The couple took the sibling pair into their home, not aware of their past abuse at the hands of their biological father. Her mother, who had abandoned her and Jonathan, died when Beth was one. When Child Services found the children, Beth was screaming in her own soil and Jonathan was found in his crib with a curdled bottle of milk, his head flattened from the way he’d been positioned. Tim and Julie didn’t know about the sexual abuse Beth had been subjected to as early as 19 months old by her father. They didn’t know she was suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), a condition that surfaces from past trauma and neglect into oceans of disturbing, detached, unresponsive, and apathetic behavior. They couldn’t possibly know that a young girl could be filled with so much—that much rage.

In the documentary, a psychiatrist interviews Beth, but he’s one out of a whole team of therapists who guided Beth in her recovery. In 1989, Beth and her adoptive parents went to live with a woman named Connell Watkins, a therapist who practiced a type of “holding” therapy for children who are severely affected by RAD. That same year, a girl by the name of Candace Newmaker was born—but no one would guess that a little over a decade later, the 10-year-old would die in an accidental killing at the hands of Connell and another therapist, Julie Ponder. In that incident, they were conducting a “rebirthing” session in which they wrapped Candace in sheets and pillows to simulate a “womb connection” between Candace and her adoptive mother. Candace had been previously diagnosed with RAD after almost setting her house on fire, and years spent on medicine to keep her rage at bay—often biting or spitting at her therapists. Regardless, this session went terribly wrong. After an hour and ten minutes, the girl’s mother asked if she wanted to be born, and Candace quietly murmured “no”—her last word before dying there in that session. But this event hadn’t taken place yet, not back in 1989 when Beth was dancing the dangerous edge of child murderer and child rehabilitated. Could it be possible?

In the CBS movie, Beth’s character is called “Cat.” The new mom begins to notice Cat’s strange behavior—controlling her brother’s every move, acting jealously about any attention he receives and finding ways to seduce or manipulate adults in order to have the spotlight on her—including a highly inappropriate fondling of her adoptive grandfather. Cat’s coping mechanism for when she’s caught doing something bad includes smashing things and screaming obscenities, eventually retreating into docile panic, holding out her stuffed teddy bear like a wall of armor between herself and the adult—becoming very small and childlike, after displaying such high-strung violence. The most shocking moment in the film is when her new parents catch her bashing her brother’s head into the cement floor in the basement. It’s an eerie scene that sticks with me still, the young boy clutching his dinosaur stuffed animal, and Cat in powder pink sweatpants and tiny little sneakers following him into a corner.

However dark and disturbing, Child of Rage depicts Beth Thomas as a manipulator and seducer to a tee—we begin to see more and more of Cat’s charms and her ability to influence anyone’s move, especially when she knows their move may squash her plan. When the parents find out the truth about Cat’s past abuse as an infant, their worries seem to magnify, especially after so many incidents: Cat kills a nest of baby birds, stabs the family dog with a pin, and slices a classmate across his face with a shard of glass. She lies about her involvement or reasoning and remains sweet—with a tinge of repulsion we can’t help but see slip out from her pursed lips when she draws out, “Yes—Mommy.”

Meanwhile in the Beth Thomas documentary, as she props her head up with her small hand, her eyes widen every once in a while as she explains in detail her desire to kill. Still, it’s obvious that by now in her real-life therapy, she has gone from deceptive to forthcoming, though her remorse is hard to locate from simply observing her. She only trips up once, about the baby birds she killed. The psychiatrist asks her if she thinks the birds could fly or run away from her—she seems confused and half states/half asks, “Yes?” He then asks if she remembers them dying, and she stumbles through an account of her mom telling her that one of them had died, yes. But the psychiatrist goes straight for it—telling Beth, “Your mom told me that you killed the baby birds, Beth.”

Suddenly Beth shows traces of sad emotion that the psychiatrist seems to draw out, coddling her: “That’s OK, that’s OK,” though I don’t know that this is a breakthrough, perhaps just a child whose red-handed admission is still proof she has a long road ahead. This single event was big for Beth; it was her one killing spree. She even admits to hocking a knife from the dishwasher and stashing it in her room. When asked what she wanted to do with the knife, she chirps back at the therapist, “Kill John. And Mommy and Daddy.” She then says, “They can’t see me, but they can feel me,” when she explains why she chooses to sneak about in the shadows while her parents sleep, unaware that their small child could be lurking their hallways yielding a knife.

It’s frightening to watch a child, a real life child, so small on the sofa that her legs barely skim over the side, speaking so candidly about life and death—not to mention her traumatic sexual abuse that no child (or adult, even) can make full sense of and process in a way that any of us should feel is simple. In the film, when the parents take Cat into intensive therapy, the therapist gives them a book called Kids Who Kill by Charles Patrick Ewing, written in 1992, the same year the TV movie aired. If you look up the book, you’ll find it’s connected back to Beth Thomas through the company it keeps in the category of “books on children who kill.”

There’s a lot of speculation over what happened to Beth Thomas after her intensive therapy with Connell Watkins. In the documentary, a woman in a bright track-suit with a cheery disposition talks with hope about Beth’s recovery, while we follow Beth on her chore run around the Attachment Center in Evergreen, Colorado, feeding goats and whatnot (no animals were harmed, seriously). Her name is Nancy Thomas, and she later adopted Beth. It’s rumored that the Tennants kept Jonathan. It’s a little disheartening to think that Beth has had not one, but three mothers. Nancy now owns and operates Families By Design, an organization that provides support for parents and children coping and suffering with RAD. Essentially, it’s become Nancy’s lifework.

Even Beth Thomas herself has participated in many of Nancy’s events, including writing a book that she and her mother wrote together, Dandelion on My Pillow, Butcher Knife Beneath. The book was released in 2010, following Nancy’s previous guide book five years earlier, When Love is Not Enough: A Guide to Parenting with RAD. What Cat displays in the film really illustrates best how easily young girls who are suffering with RAD can use their sexuality in ways that mirror what they’ve seen adults display, though the end result is obvious—that the behavior for how sexuality is displayed in adults is in sometimes lost in translation. How it’s modeled in children who are, as is, sexual beings, but confounded by past trauma in developmental years, can be disturbing and uninhibited. When Cat tells her grandpa that he can be her “sweet, sweet teddy bear,” we have to wonder if baby Cat was influenced by the language she heard from her biological father—the abused taking the abusive language and integrating that into their foundation for bonding, relating, receiving something she wants, gaining total affection and love.

Look anywhere: The reviews on Amazon, web forums, personal websites, reviewers—there is an obvious split among people in support of Nancy Thomas and the practice of Attachment Therapy, and people who, as a result of the Candace Newmark case, find AT and this version of therapy to be abusive and inconclusive—even some adults who underwent said therapy have stepped out over the years to express their concerns over the therapy they were subjected to as children, but, therein lies the toughness with accurately, tangibly calculating whether or not a type of therapy that is aimed at manipulative, violent, disturbed, abused children has: long-term positive effects, or deepens PTSD because of its method.

Something to keep in mind when you watch the film (and I recommend watching the Beth Thomas documentary first, and then delving into the CBS movie last)—the 1992 movie does not mention the word rape, or sex, or vagina, or anything else sex-specific, at all. They hint at the fact that Beth was raped by her biological father through grainy nightmarish flashbacks, and in one instance when Beth shows the sexual abuse through two teddy bears. In the Beth Thomas documentary, she admits to masturbating daily, even sometimes in public, to the point of infection and bleeding and having to be taken to the hospital as a result. She also expresses that she committed similar acts on her brother Jonathan, molesting him at any opportunity she got—which is why Tim and Julie Tennant eventually had to lock Beth in her bedroom for everyone’s safety. All of this, of course, lends itself to the reason why they sought outside help.

Today, Beth works as a nurse, and continues to support her mom Nancy’s organization in Colorado, speaking out about her recovery, and even coming to the defense of Connell Watkins on the witness stand back in 2000. (Watkins served seven years of her 16-year sentence.) Beth professed she wouldn’t be here without Connell. By all accounts, those closest to Beth will attest to her dramatic change and healing. But Attachment Therapy remains the seesaw on the playground when it comes to understanding how to properly heal traumatized children. The Beth Thomas story is a reality—it’s not an afterschool special. For all we know, Beth may very well still have issues—with men, with father figures, with forgiving herself for the acts she committed on her brother, and it may be confounded by the fact that she’s a woman who hadn’t yet grown up and very well had to all at the same time. There was adolescence, teen years, periods, relationships—all of which presents foreign emotion for any girl. Imagine being Beth Thomas, having her childhood, and then facing life head-on. I want to believe in Nancy Thomas, in AT, and in little girls like Beth who “beat the odds” and reclaim life. Again, I ask: Is it possible? Or will she always just be the little child of rage?

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2-Re_Fl_L4″]

Kim Hoffman is a writer for AfterEllen.com and Curve Magazine. She currently keeps things weird in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter: @the_hoff

‘Twin Peaks’ Mysticism Won’t Save You From the Patriarchy

This guest post by Rhianna Shaheen appears as part of our theme week on Demon and Spirit Possession.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!)

I have a Twin Peaks problem. I love Twin Peaks (1990-1991). In college, I was so obsessed with the show that I animated a Saul Bass-inspired titles sequence and wrote a spec script for my screenwriting class. However, as I became a better feminist, I awoke from my stupor of admiration for the show. I began to question the dead girl trope and ask myself, what is so funny about the sexual abuse and torture of an adolescent girl? I’ll admit I was thrilled about its announced return in 2016, but I wonder if a continued story will do more harm than good. Will the show continue to pull the demonic possession card when it comes to violence against women?

In the TV series, Special Agent Dale Cooper first encounters the evil spirit BOB in a dream. However, no one seems to see BOB in real life except for Sarah Palmer, who becomes increasingly unstable and otherworldly after her daughter’s murder. Much of this is due to her terrifying visions of BOB as well as her husband’s recent, strange antics. When Maddy Ferguson, Laura’s lookalike cousin, comes to support the Palmer family she sees similar visions of BOB in the house.

In the hunt for Laura Palmer’s killer, the local Sheriff’s Department is absolutely useless. As soon as Agent Cooper turns them on to Tibetan method and Dream Logic, all serious detective work goes out the door. It also doesn’t help that the town chooses to project this crisis outside of “decent” society. According to Sheriff Truman:

“There’s a sort of evil out there. Something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want. A darkness, a presence. It takes many forms but…it’s been out there for as long as anyone can remember and we’ve always been here to fight it.”

But this old evil is within the town as well as outside of it. The show’s “quirky allure” tricks viewers into believing that Twin Peaks is different. That some places remain untouched by patriarchal evil. When we discover that it was Leland Palmer we are shocked. Leland’s mirrored reflection of BOB exposes the threat as one within the confines of the domestic space. It is patriarchy passing itself off as the loving and benign father of the nuclear family.

But what is even more shocking is that an entire community allows this to happen. In the prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) we follow Laura Palmer through the final seven days of her life. Unlike the series, Laura has a voice here. We get to see her walking, talking, and acting like a teenager. When pages from her secret diary go missing she confides in her friend Harold that “[BOB] has been having [her] since [she] was 12” and “wants to be [her], or he’ll kill [her].” Harold does not believe her. It’s an extremely painful scene, because not only do we know she will die, but we know that many real-life victims of childhood abuse are often not believed either.

Days before her death, Laura finally discovers that it is her father. At dinner, Leland torments his daughter’s dirty hands and questions her about her “lovers.” Leland then pinches his daughter’s cheek. The sheer look of horror on Laura’s face is heartbreaking as she looks into the eyes of her abuser. Her mother, Sarah All-I-Can-Do-Is-Scream Palmer, tells her husband to stop, saying, “She doesn’t like that.” He replies, “How do you know what she likes?” It’s absolutely chilling, but even then the mother remains ignorant. How can everyone be so clueless?

As viewers, the warning signs seem obvious. The only way Laura can cope with this parasitic spirit is through copious amounts of cocaine and promiscuous sex with strange, older men. Why would a Homecoming queen who volunteered with Meals on Wheels, and tutored disabled Johnny, act this way? Well, to anyone schooled in recognizing sexual abuse the answer seems obvious. As many as two-thirds of all drug addicts reported that they experienced some sort of childhood abuse. The link between prostitution and incest or sexual abuse has also long been established.

Now this brings us to the question: Who’s at fault for Laura Palmer’s murder? Was it poor Leland or the demon that possessed him?

Moments before his death, Leland confesses his guilt to Agent Cooper:

“Oh God! Laura! I killed her. Oh my God, I killed my daughter. I didn’t know. Forgive me. Oh God. I was just a boy. I saw him in my dream. He said he wanted to play. He opened me and I invited him and he came inside me.”

With fire sprinkler water pouring over him, Leland seems cleansed of his sins. Lynch paints a pretty sympathetic portrait of Leland. He is cursed and tormented rather than murderous and abusive. He is blameless for his actions. Leland gets to go “into the light” while Laura is condemned to the purgatory of the Black Lodge.

In Diane Hume George’s essay Lynching Women: A Feminist Reading of Twin Peaks she perfectly discusses the problem with Leland’s poignant ending:

“We are instructed regarding how to situate our sympathies and experience our sense of justice. But this is just another clever use of the simplistic formula by which lascivious misogyny is presented in loving detail, […] scapegoating offenders whose punishment casts off the guilt that belongs to an entire culture ethos. And that ethos, both pornographic and thanatopic, not only goes free. It gets validated.”

Things become even more fucked up after Leland’s funeral where people remember him as a victim. Agent Cooper gives Mrs. Palmer some words of comfort:

“Sarah. I think it might help to teII you what happened just before LeIand died. It’s hard to realize here [points to her head] and here [points to her heart] what has transpired. Your husband went so far as to drug you to keep his actions secret. But before he died, LeIand confronted the horror of what he had done to Laura and agonized over the pain he had caused you. LeIand died at peace.”

I’m sorry, but death does not absolve you. Horrible people die and somehow we’re supposed to forget the history of horrible things they have done? We all die. This does not erase our actions, even if you’re a white cis male.

For a minute, let’s forget that BOB is a thing (ESPECIALLY when you consider that most of the town has no knowledge of these spirits and how their worlds work). These people are celebrating the memory of Leland Palmer after (I assume) finding out that he murdered and raped his own daughter (along with Maddy Ferguson and Teresa Banks). Excuse me, is anyone else bothered by how much denial these people are in?

Like many fans, I turned a blind eye, preferring to seek refuge in the myth of Killer BOB and the Black Lodge rather than identify the clear signs of abuse in front of me. As Cooper says: “Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?”

While I no longer indulge the BOB theory, I do read BOB as patriarchal oppression. Its truth is one that women (Laura, Maddy, Sarah) see and know too well. Cooper only solves the mystery when he FINALLY believes and listens to a woman. Laura Palmer must whisper in his ear, “My father killed me” for him to finally understand.

M.C. Blakeman writes:

“While he may ultimately let Leland off the hook by claiming he was “possessed” by the paranormal “Bob” the show’s resident evil force, the fact remains that the women of Twin Peaks and of the United States are in more danger from their fathers, husbands and lovers than from maniacal strangers.”

I do believe that Lynch and Frost meant to use BOB as “the evil that men do” and as a means to understand family violence and abuse, but they jump around the issue so much that it only reflects uncertainty. The show’s inability to hold evil men responsible for their actions is too reminiscent of our own society. As soon as we answer “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” the show does its best to rebury the ugly truth that we so struggled to uncover. After that it fully commits to understanding the mythos behind it. This is troubling to me. As one of the most influential shows on television, Twin Peaks created a narrative formula that will forever shape the way this country looks at rape and child abuse. It’s important that as viewers we constantly question this, even if it is disguised as harmless, intellectual programming.

Rhianna Shaheen is a recent graduate from Bryn Mawr College with a BA in Fine Arts and Minor in Film Studies and Art History. Check her out on twitter!