Gloria – Bitch Flicks

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

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.

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.

The Accidental Motherhood of ‘Gloria’

This guest post by Rhianna Shaheen appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

In John Cassavetes’ Gloria (1980), the title character must overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle: motherhood. Well, not exactly. When the mob wipes out a Bronx family, their neighbor Gloria (Gena Rowlands) suddenly becomes responsible for their 7-year old, Phil (John Adames). It’s more like forced guardianship, but the film constantly hints at her symbolic motherhood to the boy. Even when she’s pleading for Phil’s life, her gangster ex-boyfriend undermines her argument with the inevitable mother-son formula:

“I understand. You are a woman. He is a little boy. You fall in love. Every woman is a mother. You love him.”

In her apartment, before the impending hit on his family, Gloria has difficulty relating to Phil. He’s aware that his family is in trouble, but she neither comforts nor coddles this soon-to-be orphan: “You want to play 20 questions? How about watching the TV for a while?” She doesn’t know how to talk to kids.

Neither of these characters wants to be in the same room together.

After a loud explosion, signifying the murder of his family, Phil is in shock: “I want my father! Papi! I hate you, you stupid person!” Gloria, shaken, now understands the gravity of the situation but still lacks the sensitivity to support him:

“I don’t know what to do with you, kid. My poor cat. What do I do with you? You know, you’re not my family or anything. You’re just the neighbor’s kid right?”

It’s both shocking and humorous. His entire family was just murdered, but she can only think of herself and her cat? To her defense, she didn’t sign up for this. She isn’t Daddy Warbucks. She’s a childless, single lady by choice.

Gloria loves her life. She loves her friends. She loves her cat. She saved all of her life so she could have some money. In one moment, she’s expected to just give all that away. She doesn’t want to die for this kid. Does that make her an unnatural woman? Or a rather flawed human being?

“Me, I’m not a mother. I’m one of those sensations. I was always a broad. Can’t stand the sight of milk.”

Not only does she lack so-called maternal instincts but also basic cooking skills. When she attempts to make eggs for Phil she inevitably becomes frustrated and burns them. This scene echoes a similar breakfast disaster in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) in which newly single father Dustin Hoffman attempts to make breakfast for his son. However, Gloria is a woman, and thus belongs to generation and socioeconomic background that would demand woman to know how to cook. Thus she is even further stigmatized as a bad mother.

Gloria’s first attempt at performing “motherly” duties.

Gloria also shifts between wanting to abandon and wanting to protect the child when things gets tough. At one point she tells him to run home: “Run as fast as you can.” She walks a few steps with him, and then turns around, telling him to go. Although her attempt at abandonment is awful we understand her frustration. She cannot turn him into the police, because she’s been arrested. She also cannot turn on the mob, because they’re old friends of hers.

Regardless, Phil continues to follow her. He sees her as a substitute mother even if she’s a lousy one. Then when a group of gangsters confronts them on the street, Gloria must finally make a choice. It’s an opportunity to walk away, but instead she shoots the men, forever sealing her fate with Phil’s.

It’s a heroic act that speaks more to her humanity than to her ability to be a mother. While her feelings for him are at times ambivalent, Gloria ultimately commits herself to the boy’s survival. She empties her safety deposit box, changes hotels each night, and pistol-whips gangsters all for Phil. Together on the run, Gloria acts more like a partner-in-crime than a mother. Despite his efforts to be “the man” in this pairing Phil lets go of his hyper-masculine anxieties once he witnesses the toughness of this badass woman. She teaches him how to survive in this unfathomable New York environment.

Although there seems a desire to fulfill the mother-son mythos, the film does not explore their relationship in such clichéd terms as its 1999 remake. It lacks the sentimentality but has all the heart and truth to it.

As Cassavetes himself puts it:

“[…] these characters go on the basis that there are certain emotions and rules that go beyond words and assurances. They just know. […] Even when they’re thrown together, they don’t pretend to care about each other, it’s because of their personal trust and regard.” (from Cassavetes on Cassavetes)

“It was about a woman who beyond her control stood up for a kid whom she wanted nothing to do with […]”

However, in his discussion of the film, Cassavetes also evokes the same mythos and stereotypes that Gloria attempts to refute:

“I wanted to tell women that they don’t have to like children – but there’s still something deep in them that relates to children, and this separates them from men in a good way. This inner understanding of kids is something very deep in them that relates to children, and this separates them from men in a good way.”

Despite this backpedal into maternal instinct bullshit, I think Cassavetes has good intentions. In the end, Gloria is not defined by her ability to mother or understand this child (whatever that means) but by her heroism and humanity (not that those are mutually exclusive). Her desire to protect this helpless child is rather mistaken for motherhood.

Let’s consider Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional (1994). A New York hitman shelters a 12-year old girl after her family is murdered by corrupt DEA agents. It’s almost an exact replica of Gloria except with the gender roles reversed and the cult film status. Instead of a father/daughter relationship, this unlikely pair acts as teacher/protégée. In fact, there is no mention of fatherhood at any time. Some pedophiliac undertones? Maybe. But no paternal transition.

Despite these double standards, Gloria represents an important cultural touchstone that is often overlooked. Released at the end of Second-Wave Feminism, the political relevance of this film is undeniable. It not only exposes the absurdities of gender norms but also captures the nuanced relationship women have with this idea of “motherhood.”

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

Seed & Spark: ‘Gloria’: Dancing On Her Own

As we watch Gloria’s flailing, her triumphs, her mistakes, her fun, we can’t help but be reminded (and I was just by typing all those words) of another single lady on a smaller screen and a familiar part of the feminist zeitgeist: Girls’ Hannah Horvath. Only living in Santiago, Chile, all growed up. I’ve seen a couple of Gloria reviews mention Girls, but almost always in the context of the film’s sex scenes, the sort not traditionally shown, between bodies wider audiences (or producers) aren’t generally begging to see nude. But the character similarities don’t end there. Though they are generations and cultures apart, it continues with their flighty boyfriends, with their finding themselves alone in a dress on a beach without their belongings, with their ability to be irritating and down-to-earth simultaneously, and with their love of dancing.

This is a guest post by Amanda Trokan.

This is not a review of (the life-affirming! Berlin Festival prize-winning! Dare I say glorious?) Chilean comedy-drama Gloria. No. This is a call, nay an order, no, no a call (I’m an indecisive lady, right?) for women under 50 to go see a film that depicts a woman over 50 in such a way that you just might leave the theater as excited to get old (well, older, while we’re being polite) as I did. Not despite its titular character’s spinsterhood, but surprisingly because of it.

Gloria is no kind grandma stepping in to take care of the family when the leading-lady daughter’s marriage falls apart, nor a lonely grandma dealing with an ailing husband, nor a stubborn grandma slowly getting ill herself, nor the sassy single grandma making one-liners about her granddaughter’s sex life from the periphery. All that, one might expect from Hollywood. The 58-year-old divorcee grandma in Gloria (played by the vibrant Paulina García) is the center of our story as she casually takes up dating again, but mostly just continues living. And I mean really living.

I would like to say “living it up” here, but that phrase might suggest living lavish or fabulously. And while I personally think her life falls under that definition—smoking weed, having sex, romantic weekending—I understand the subjective nature of my opinion on lifestyle choices. (I tend to see the fun, or at least “interesting experience,” in waking up solo by the sea missing a shoe after a night of gambling—as Gloria does—rather than the shame in it.) What I objectively mean is: she is existing no differently from a woman of any other age, with some age-specific issues (ex-spouses, children, gastroplasty) but mostly universal, adult ones.

In Gloria, we are swiftly pulled into Gloria’s day-to-day life as she flirts, drinks, dances, deals with the various characters in her apartment complex, gives her blessing to her pregnant daughter who’s moving abroad for love, and embarks upon a new relationship with Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), who has a family of his own to manage.

As we watch Gloria’s flailing, her triumphs, her mistakes, her fun, we can’t help but be reminded (and I was just by typing all those words) of another single lady on a smaller screen and a familiar part of the feminist zeitgeist: Girls’ Hannah Horvath. Only living in Santiago, Chile, all growed up. I’ve seen a couple of Gloria reviews mention Girls, but almost always in the context of the film’s sex scenes, the sort not traditionally shown, between bodies wider audiences (or producers) aren’t generally begging to see nude. But the character similarities don’t end there. Though they are generations and cultures apart, it continues with their flighty boyfriends, with their finding themselves alone in a dress on a beach without their belongings, with their ability to be irritating and down-to-earth simultaneously, and with their love of dancing.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not implying direct influence here. But if I must make the ubiquitous Girls connection in order for the female masses (ew?) to get out and experience this film and understand that getting older is going to be A-OK, that we don’t need to hurry up to find a partner and figure out who we are, that we don’t need Botox or lipo to get naked after 40, that we don’t need to fit into one of two categories, career woman or mom, and that we don’t need to fear being alone (and I don’t just mean single here, I mean physically alone)—well then the ends justify the means.

Here’s the thing, women over 50 should watch it, too. In the same way that I enjoy watching Girls because it gives me that thank-heavens-I’m-not-dealing-with-that-nonsense anymore feeling, the 50-pluses might get a thrill out of Gloria’s life not being their own anymore, or on the flip side it might completely resonate. Win, win! Because while it may seem like some big secret of growing old has been revealed to us in Gloria (or at least to me, a 31-year-old)—namely that we actually will still have those young brains in those old bodies—women of a similar age as Gloria might feel satisfaction seeing themselves or people they know represented more accurately on screen.

You could garner exactly none of this from Gloria, and it’d still be a really good time. But for me, it was refreshing to see a female-led film where the moral of the story isn’t the girlie best-friendships above all else, nor the incomparable bond with your mom, nor your unconditional devotion to your daughter, nor the knowing nod from your sister. It is about learning to love dancing on your own.

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Amanda Trokan is a writer turned Seed&Spark Director of Content. Watcher of many films, lover of some. Winner of 1993 West Road Elementary D.A.R.E. essay and two 2013 Oscar® pools; loser of hair thingies. Follow @trokan on Twitter for insight into her likes/dislikes/whatever.