Grace – Bitch Flicks

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.

This guest post by BJ Colangelo appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Despite humanity surviving nearly 200,000 years without mommy blogs and Dr. Spock’s baby books, our culture has become fixated on determining the “right” way to be a mother. The truth is, there is no right way to be a mother. What works for one mother and child may not work for another, and the ongoing debate of motherhood is something ugly and downright frightening. Society imagines the “right” mother to be the ones creating the crafts and cooking the meals we pin to our Pinterest boards, all while raising well-behaved and “normal” children. However, the things that we believe to be “right” aren’t always going to wind up being the best options.

Paul Solet’s feature debut Grace is a stunning insight into motherhood and the selfless love mothers have for their children. Within the first five minutes, we become witness to the way people try to dictate the parenting styles of other women. A visibly pregnant woman named Madeline (Jordan Ladd) has prepared a vegan dinner for her husband Michael and his parents. Michael’s domineering mother Vivian (Gabrielle Rose) scoffs at her meal and passive-aggressively tells Madeline that a more “conventional” diet would be healthier for her child. Madeline has yet to even deliver her baby and she’s already being swarmed with parenting advice from another person. This is a common occurrence for many pregnant women, and Grace showcases this conflict effortlessly. Shortly after, Vivian expresses her dislike for Madeline’s decision to use a midwife rather than Vivian’s obstetrician (and personal friend) Dr. Sohn. Madeline experiences complications during her pregnancy and is rushed to a hospital. Dr. Sohn arrives (at the request of Vivian) and determines Madeline needs to be induced. Luckily, her midwife Patricia shows up and challenges his diagnosis through blood work (which he has ignored) and Madeline is not induced. The life of her baby was put in jeopardy because an overbearing mother-in-law couldn’t let Madeline make her own decisions regarding her own child.

Tragedy strikes when Madeline and Michael are in a car accident that kills both Michael and Madeline’s unborn child. Madeline decides to carry the child to full term, rather than have the dead fetus removed. After delivering the stillborn child, Madeline holds her deceased child in her arms when suddenly the baby revives. It would appear that the love Madeline has for her child has “willed” her back to life. Patricia suggests that Madeline take her baby (the titular named Grace) to the hospital to get checked out, but the earlier experience with Dr. Sohn has left a bad taste in her mouth and Madeline refuses any more encounters with conventional medicine. Had Vivian not interfered with Madeline’s birth plan, a majority of the problems that she faces throughout the film could have easily been avoided. Madeline soon discovers that Grace has unusual problems. She smells strange, she’s attracting flies, her skin bleeds in the bathwater, and she is unable to digest breast milk. During an attempt to breastfeed, Madeline discovers that the one thing Grace can digest is blood.

Meanwhile, a grieving Vivian struggles with the idea that she is no longer a mother. Her only son has passed away, and her relationship with Madeline is almost non-existent. Vivian has become a bereaved parent and the loss is psychologically damaging. She begins to order her husband around as if he were a child, and during a sexual encounter, his nipple play slowly turns into a horrifying replication of the way a child would suckle on their mother’s breast. Her sorrow becomes too great to handle, and she convinces Dr. Sohn to visit Madeline in order to collect evidence proving that she is an unfit mother so Vivian can raise Grace instead.

Madeline continues caring for her child, by any means necessary. Draining the blood from meat in an attempt to feed her baby proves useless, so Madeline allows her child to continue to “feed” on her until she is left in an incredibly weak state. 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.

It would be easy to say that Madeline was an unfit mother, because she was killing people and feeding her child their blood. However, this wasn’t done with dangerous motivations. This was an act done purely out of necessity. In an extremely exaggerated sense, this is a parallel to the dietary restrictions that many people choose to explore with raising their children. Gluten free, dairy free, meat free, peanut free, etc. are all different lifestyle choices that parents believe are the best option for their children, and it is no one else’s business whether or not this is the “right” way to feed their child. For Madeline, this is her only option. Much like parents raising children with food allergies, feeding Grace human blood is the only way to keep her child alive. However, mother-in-law Vivian cannot comprehend someone successfully raising a child (let alone her grandchild) in any manner other than the way she raised her own children. The loss of her son (although an adult) has left her feeling purposeless, and she questions her own existence now that she is technically no longer a mother. Desperate to retain some of her motherhood, she clings to the only thing she feels she has left, her granddaughter Grace.

Women are often defined by their motherhood, but many women choose motherhood as the biggest part of their identity. There’s nothing wrong with this decision, and that’s what makes Grace such a fantastic movie. The interpretation of who is the “bad” mother is up for debate, when in reality…neither of these women are bad mothers. Should Vivian be scrutinizing Madeline’s every move? Of course not, but her aggression is not coming from a vindictive place, it’s coming from a place of love (regardless of how overbearing it comes off). These two women are simply two very different women trying to do what they feel is better for the most important thing in their lives, a child.

BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.

Tag: Grace

Bad Mothers: The Roundup

‘Grace’: Single Mothers, Stillborn Births, and Scrutinizing Parenting Styles