Mother Daughter Relationship

‘Stoker’–Family Secrets, Frozen Bodies, and Female Orgasms

Her uncle’s imposing presence has awakened in her at the same time a lust for bloodshed and an intense sexual desire, and she promptly begins to experiment and seek out means with which to satisfy both.

This guest post by Julie Mills appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Turning 18 is a big deal for any teenager. It’s a huge milestone on the rough road to adulthood, a time of change and discovering one’s true self. For India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska), it is so much more. Her whole world is about to be turned upside down.

Right from the beginning, Stoker pulls you into India’s own special microcosm, which is as captivating as it is haunting. This girl is highly intelligent, but introverted and socially awkward, and it is hinted that she has a mild autism spectrum disorder. She is playful and ever curious to feel, to experience, to know everything. She has been raised in a privileged, protective environment and is quiet, shy, and innocent–innocent as a baby predator before she has made her first kill.

India surrounded by her shoe collection. She gets a new pair every year for her birthday.

India has just lost her father, and the arrival of her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), who seems to appear out of nowhere and whom neither India nor her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) have ever met before, throws her life off balance even further.

Uncle Charlie is handsome, charming, and creepy as hell. He has “danger” written all over him, and Evelyn falls for him right away, seeing in him a younger version of her late husband. While expertly weaving his web of charms around his sister-in-law, Charlie also immediately starts to subtly influence his niece, deliberately provoking her and testing her reactions, following her every move with his piercing blue eyes. His moving in with India and her mother sets off a new dynamic that might have been a love triangle, but turns out to be more of a three-way power struggle.

A rare moment of intimacy between mother and daughter.

India’s relationship with her mother is distant at the best of times. In focusing all his attention on their daughter, India’s late father had severely neglected his wife Evelyn, who has turned lonely and bitter over the years. There is hardly a scene with her in it where she is not holding on to a glass of wine as if it were a lifeline. Her husband’s death might have finally provided an opportunity for the two women to bond, but their intense jealousy over Charlie threatens to drive them even further apart.

Stoker was Hollywood actor Wentworth Miller’s stunning debut as a script writer, as well as the first English-language work of South Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy), which explains why in some places the film comes across as a little rough around the edges, but on the whole is fresh and highly intriguing. As with Tideland, Pan’s Labyrinth, or Hannah, to truly appreciate the story you must allow yourself to take on the lead character’s unique perspective, to lay aside your judgment and morality and simply enjoy the disturbing yet engrossing visual ride. Just don’t expect an orgy of violence or bloodbath as can be found in some of Park’s previous movies. This is a psychological thriller, not an action movie. The pace is slow, peeling away layer by layer of deceit and building the suspense gradually like a Hitchcock film (the name “Uncle Charlie” is actually a reference to Shadow of a Doubt).

Who knew how much sexual tension can be in a piano duet?

Among other portrayals of violent women, Stoker stands out because there aren’t many stories about female psychopaths around, and because India’s attraction to violence is closely intertwined with her budding sexuality. Her uncle’s imposing presence has awakened in her at the same time a lust for bloodshed and an intense sexual desire, and she promptly begins to experiment and seek out means with which to satisfy both.

What bothered me most about the story was the fact that in the beginning India is presented as passive like a stereotypical female, waiting and longing to be rescued. Apparently she has to rely on male assistance and guidance in order to discover and awaken her full potential. Her father had, not unlike the father of TV’s Dexter, been systematically grooming her all her life, training her to deal with any “bad” feelings by keeping her isolated and taking her hunting regularly, teaching her that “sometimes you need to do something bad to stop you from doing something worse.” And after his death his brother Charlie takes over, leading India in a completely different direction, but still exerting control over her.

This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, even in the story’s universe, because India’s dark urges are presented as an inherent part of her nature (her uncle mentions the two of them sharing the same blood), yet have remained inexplicably inert. If her violent impulses had been so strong as to warrant the long lasting control by her father, she wouldn’t have needed her uncle’s encouragement to be set free, and vice versa. In contrast, Charles had discovered his lust for killing on his own, when he was just a boy. Also, when her uncle gives India her first pair of high-heeled shoes that somehow instantly completes India’s transformation into womanhood, which feels like a weird variant of the makeover trope.

BAM.

Personally, for me the most gratifying parts are when India resists Charlie and questions what she has been told, even while she is becoming increasingly infatuated with him. She sets off to seek out her own answers, going through her late father’s things and uncovering dark secrets both her father and her uncle had been keeping from her. In the end, the student surpasses the teacher. India breaks free of her uncle’s control and acts out of her own volition, leaving her old life behind.

I would just love a sequel to this, to see the story escalate from here, preferably in the style of Natural Born Killers or The Devil’s Rejects. Unleashed, India is glorious. She is a true psychopath, hurting people and killing without remorse, simply for her own pleasure. She was neither forced to become violent to fight for survival, nor is she looking for retribution for something that has been done to her in the past. It’s just in her nature.

At first glance this appears to be a classical story about a dangerous predator seducing and corrupting the innocent. But maybe India was never innocent to begin with. Maybe she was simply inexperienced.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJWrXKoTpL0″]

Julie Mills is in the process of throwing away a perfectly fine, well-paying career to become a full-time writer. At the moment she is working on her first NaNoWriMo project, which is about a female serial killer. You can find her on Twitter @_Julie_M_

“Mama’s Here Now” and Dynamics of Sexual Trauma

But last Thursday’s episode, “Mama’s Here Now,” hosted a surprising masterclass on dealing with the fraught topic of sexual abuse on network television.

Cicely Tyson and Viola Davis in 'How To Get Away With Murder' — Cicely Tyson and Viola Davis in *How To Get Away With Murder*

Written by Rachel Redfern.

SPOILER ALERT

“So let’s just roll out the complicated, inter-genertional, often racially influenced, issue of sexual assault in America in about 40 minutes and be pretty much exhaustively mind-blowing,” said How To Get Away With Murder last Thursday.

I think its been universally accepted that Viola Davis is delivering some of the best acting on network TV for her portrayal of Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder. The show itself is fun and entertaining, although occasionally falls into the trap of “so much drama,” in the courtroom and out. However, despite its flaws, the show boasts an expansive diversity in its character base: lots of female lawyers and judges, ethnically diverse cast, and LGBTQ relationships.

But last Thursday’s episode, “Mama’s Here Now,” hosted a surprising masterclass on dealing with the fraught topic of sexual abuse on network television.

Thursday’s episode opened with Annalise receiving a visit from her aging mother, Cicely Tyson. Hopefully you know Tyson from her work on Because of Winn Dixie and Diary of A Mad Black Woman. Tyson steps into Annalise’s house and we have the first scene of straight familial comfort, a mother holding her daughter: simple and powerful. But as with most mother-daughter relationships, it becomes apparent within the next few minutes that there is a fraught backstory between the two. Annalise’s mother insists on calling Annalise “Anna May,” a name that becomes a clear symbol for a life that she shed on her way to becoming a successful professor and sophisticated trial lawyer.

Parallel to the beginnings of Annalise’s family drama is the strange client that “the gang” and Bonnie (Liza Weil, from Gilmore Girls) decide to take on. The strange case revolves around a timid nurse accused of raping a male patient post-surgery.

And while Bonnie struggles through her own Annalise as “mommy” lawyer issues, Annalise begins to reveal that she was sexually assaulted by her uncle as a child, accusing her mother of knowing what happened to her and not caring.

Cicely Tyson brilliantly plays Annalise Keating's mother. — Cicely Tyson brilliantly plays Annalise Keating’s mother

During all of the personal drama is Bonnie’s courtroom case; besides the obvious similarities between the two storylines, both dealing with sexual assault, Bonnie’s case is difficult to unpack. A woman is accused of rape by man, but she claims the sex was consensual. Bonnie and “the gang” then discover that the accuser is a gay man in a relationship with hospital legal staff, in league to grab a big payout from the hospital on a falsified rape claim. I found this problematic.

Sexual assault happens to both men and women, and in an episode committed to the discussion of the ways that victims of abuse often don’t see any justice, if felt like an odd juxtaposition for the storyline. However, it could also have been read as a way of repositioning normal gender stereotypes, a switch from men as sexual aggressors to women as enactors of violence and trauma as well.

But the magic of this episode was in the complexity with which the writers and actors dove into a hugely complicated issue and emerged, not with easy platitudes of forgiveness, but rather, a more complicated evaluation of sexual (and racial) politics.

In an explosive dinner scene, Annalise–haggard and drunk–accuses her mother of not caring about what her uncle did to her. But in a surprise, Annalise’s mother delivers her mantra for the episode: “I told you, men take things! They’ve been taking things from women since the beginning of time.” She angrily lists her own sexual assault by her reverend as a child, a teacher who raped her aunt, and Annalise (and audience) sit there, horrified at the string of violence she spits out.

The obvious anger and helplessness that both of these women feel just spills out, crossing generational borders and speaking volumes to the pervasive ugliness of sexual assault. But it doesn’t stop there–Tyson continues on, revealing more about Annalise’s past with Sam, and the reasons for her occasional disdain for Annalise: “Ain’t no reason to talk about it and get all messy everywhere. Certainly no reason to go to a head shrink or for help.”

Viola Davis and Cicely Tyson in mother-daughter mode.

Sam was Annalise’s therapist; as Annalise reveals her vulnerabilities to her mother’s disgust with her daughters weakness, so many things click into place: Sam using his place of confidant and doctor to prey upon Annalise’s belief that she “belonged in a hand-me-down box.”

After Tyson’s tirade against the nature of men, their next scene together is different: softer, stronger. Annalise seems stripped down–no makeup, no wigs, her hair bunched into a more natural ‘fro, everything from her life as a lawyer pushed to the side as she sits on the floor between her mother’s knees while she brushes her daughter’s hair. For me, this was the most telling scene; not only is it an iconic image, but it also takes Annalise back into her older self, and we see her, confused, half in and half out of her old world and her new one. But despite the fancier settings than the ones she obviously grew up with, women’s problems are the same, and so are the solutions.

It is in the safe and familiar image that Tyson reveals the truth about Annalise’s uncle and what happened to him. Annalise’s mother saw the man emerge from Annalise’s room and knew what had happened, and so days later, while he was passed out drunk on the couch, she took a long match, and burned the house down, fixing the problem the only way she knew how. Tyson now repeats the refrain, “Only God can judge.”

Conclusion: Men take, women fix things?

Rachel Redfern is a traveler and teacher who spent the last few years living in Asia. Now back in her native California, she focuses on writing about media, culture, and feminism. While a big fan of campy ’80s movies and eccentric sci-fi, she’s become a cable acolyte, spending most of her time watching HBO, AMC, and Showtime. For good stories about lions and bungee jumping, as well as rants about sexism and slow drivers, follow her on Twitter at @RachelRedfern2.

‘Terms of Endearment’ IS NOT a Melodrama

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Debra Winger and Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment has a lasting reputation as a melodramatic, emotionally-manipulative chick flick. This is a film that grossed over $100 million (an even more significant benchmark in the early 80’s) and won five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for James L. Brooks, Best Actress for Shirley MacLaine and Best Supporting Actor for Jack Nicholson). If Nicholson’s performance as astronaut playboy Garrett Breedlove had been shuffled into the lead actor category (I didn’t do an exact minute count, but I’m fairly certain he appears in as much if not more of the film than Anthony Hopkins did for his Best Actor winning performance in Silence of the Lambs) Terms of Endearment would join that film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and It Happened One Night in the rarefied Big Five Sweep club.

But Terms of Endearment is now oft-cited as one of the worst Best Picture winners and an example of the Oscar’s fleeting fascination with family dramas instead of “Important” issues. 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer and 1980’s Ordinary People also make worst best picture lists, at least in part because they “unjustly” beat out Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull for those top prizes. Those also-rans are undeniably powerful films that have had a lasting impact on cinema, but is part of what made their “worthiness” of the title Best Picture their focus on men? [See also Shakespeare in Love’s much-derided win over Saving Private Ryan].

James L. Brooks, Shirley MacLaine, and Jack Nicholson with their Oscars for Terms of Endearment

The muddled legacy of Terms of Endearment, and the seeming unlikeliness that such a picture would find such box office and awards success today, supports my fear that movies focused on women are seen as inherently less important and respectable. When I was watching Terms of Endearment this week, all traces of its reputation fell from my mind as I fell into simply enjoying watching the film. It is incredibly easy to be swept into caring about the lives of Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger). Their mother-daughter dynamic is very recognizable: they are eternally frustrated with each other but nevertheless co-dependently needful of each other’s love, and can switch from delightfully supportive of the other person’s happiness to cruel about the other person’s problems and back in seconds. These relatable characters are made alive by incredible performances, and the film is generously sprinkled with the winning dialogue (“I don’t think I was treating her badly.” “Then you must be from New York.”) and memorable moments (Emma and Aurora instantaneously making up over the phone after Aurora has boycotted Emma’s wedding) that create that undeniable feeling of “movie magic.”

For a so-called melodrama, Terms of Endearment‘s plot is actually quite true to life. Emma and her husband Flip (Jeff Daniels) move to Iowa for Flip’s stalled academic career; their relationship falters as they struggle with money and child rearing and both take on affairs. Aurora has an opposites-attract fling with her self-satisfied cad of a neighbor (Nicholson), who eventually shows surprising tenderness toward her. These are the kinds of things that happen all the time in the lives of people we know but are hardly ever seen in movies. Emma’s affair with her banker Sam (John Lithgow) is presented as two people filling emotional and physical needs outside of their marriages, not as an epic romance that cannot be because of the constraints of society a la Anna Karenina and countless other works of fiction.

Aurora and Garrett in bed.

How is that melodrama? And how refreshing is it to see a wife and mother having extramarital sex be portrayed sympathetically? It’s even more refreshing to see a sexual relationship between two fifty-somethings treated as normal and—get this—sexy. They’re even played by actors ROUGHLY THE SAME AGE (contra Jack Nicholson’s next Oscar-winning romance with a woman a quarter-century younger than him in As Good as It Gets).

I’m guessing that the accusations of sentimentality mainly come about from the film’s third act, in which Emma discovers she has terminal cancer and dies. There are some very emotionally fraught scenes, like the Oscar clip reel-bait in which Aurora takes out her pain and frustration at watching her daughter die by screaming at the nurses that Emma needs a shot of pain medication. The most famous scene in Terms of Endearment may be Emma saying goodbye to her children when she knows she is dying. The scene does not hold back: her oldest acts sullen and distant, her younger son cannot hold back his sobs, and Emma finds the strength to say the exact right thing to each of them (including: get haircuts). I don’t think the choice to share such an emotionally raw scene with the audience should be dismissed as “manipulative.” It’s certainly no more manipulative than the countless examples in fiction where people just miss their chance to say goodbye.

Emma says goodbye to her sons.

Desperately attempting to find closure with a dying loved one is something that most people experience at some point in their life. Presenting a common problem with unflinching honesty is in fact THE OPPOSITE of melodrama. As such, I’m pretty sure that “Terms of Endearment is a sentimental melodramatic manipulative tear-jerker” is just another way of saying, “It can’t be good if girls like it.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa who would like to get one look at Des Moines before she dies.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: Helen Mirren Stars in Julie Taymor’s Gender-Bent ‘The Tempest’

The Tempest (2010) directed by Julie Taymor and starring Helen Mirren as Prospera

Written by Amber Leab

I like films that take risks. I like filmmakers who take risks. Even if the film ends up flawed, an interesting risk always trumps the tidy execution of a flat story.

Helen Mirren wanted to do Shakespeare, but she was tired of supporting roles. She contacted Julie Taymor (Frida, Titus, Across the Universe) and, after a year, Taymor agreed on a film version of The Tempest, starring Mirren as Prospera.

If you haven’t read The Tempest or have only a foggy memory of reading it in a class, here’s a rundown of the original plot (thanks, Wikipedia!).

The magician Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded for twelve years on an island after Prospero’s jealous brother Antonio (aided by Alonso, the King of Naples) deposed him and set him adrift with the then-3-year-old Miranda. Gonzalo, the King’s counsellor, had secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the most-prized books from Prospero’s library. Possessing magic powers due to his great learning, Prospero is reluctantly served by a spirit, Ariel, whom Prospero had rescued from a tree in which he had been trapped by the witch Sycorax. Prospero maintains Ariel’s loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the “airy spirit” from servitude. Sycorax had been banished to the island, and had died before Prospero’s arrival. Her son, Caliban, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion and their own language. Following Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by Prospero to serve as the magician’s slave. In slavery, Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his daughter. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with contempt and disgust.

The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother, Antonio, is on a ship passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Antonio’s friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso of Naples, Alonso’s brother and son (Sebastian and Ferdinand), and Alonso’s advisor, Gonzalo. All these passengers are returning from the wedding of Alonso’s daughter Claribel with the King of Tunis. Prospero contrives to separate the shipwreck survivors into several groups by his spells, and so Alonso and Ferdinand are separated, each believing the other to be dead.

Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with Stephano and Trinculo, two drunkards, who he believes have come from the moon. They attempt to raise a rebellion against Prospero, which ultimately fails. In another, Prospero works to establish a romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda; the two fall immediately in love, but Prospero worries that “too light winning [may] make the prize light,” and compels Ferdinand to become his servant, pretending that he regards him as a spy. In the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and Gonzalo so that Sebastian can become King. They are thwarted by Ariel, at Prospero’s command. Ariel appears to the “three men of sin” (Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian) as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Prospero manipulates the course of his enemies’ path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him.

In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Prospero, who forgives Alonso. He also forgives Antonio and Sebastian, but warns them against further betrayal. Ariel is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Alonso and his entourage (including Prospero and Miranda) back to the Royal fleet and then to Naples, where Ferdinand and Miranda will be married. After discharging this task, Ariel will finally be free. Prospero pardons Caliban, who is sent to prepare Prospero’s cell, to which Alonso and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Prospero indicates that he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. Prospero has resolved to break and bury his magic staff, and “drown” his book of magic, and in his epilogue, shorn of his magic powers, he invites the audience to set him free from the island with their applause.

Are you still with me? I hope so. It’s a good story, and here’s the thing: Taymor’s film adaptation only changes Prospero to Prospera. Everything else is basically the same.

Changing the gender of the protagonist is a great idea, but an idea alone doesn’t make a great film. Executing the idea, telling the story in a novel way, and making meaningful statements to support the new idea make for a great film. The Tempest succeeds at this on some levels, but falls short in others.

By giving the teenage Miranda (played by Felicity Jones) a mother, the parent-child relationship softens. No longer do we have a father using his daughter to regain his power, but a mother who looks kindly on her daughter as she watches the girl fall in love with shipwrecked Antonio. When Prospera unites the two, she does so with world weariness, essentially telling the two that the magic will disappear.

Wouldn’t you love to look so fantastic deserted on an island? Both of their hairstyles are hipper than mine.

Mirren embodies Prospera with fierceness and control, sort of like she does in every role she plays–or at least in all of her performances I’ve seen. Her books, her learning, is the source of her power. Perhaps her people in Milan had a real fear of such an educated and powerful woman, and their only way to deal with her was to get rid of her. Our society still has trouble with smart and powerful women, after all.

For all her smarts, Prospera is still capable of cruelty and harsh control over others. She had enslaved both Ariel (played by Ben Whishaw) and Caliban (played by Djimon Hounsou)–the former she kept to do her bidding after she rescued him, and the latter after his attempted rape of Miranda–and set them free only when the path is clear for her to return to her home and rightful position.

Caliban’s violent actions against Miranda are alluded to, and Prospera holds a deep grudge against him, which isn’t a surprise, enslaving him on his own island. The most popular contemporary readings of Caliban’s character are post-colonial, and I can’t see that Taymor explored how gender and race operate in the story. Since she stayed so faithful to the original text, it would be difficult to put a progressive spin on the master/slave and white/black narrative. I’m not sure what I would’ve changed, but see this as a weakness and a missed opportunity in the film.

Ariel (played by is Prospera’s other servant, except this one is not human. The figure of Ariel is often creepy, and the fairy’s CGI breasts are never the same size scene to scene. I can’t be the only one who felt, when Ariel was on screen, that I was watching a David Bowie movie from the 70s. But, as bizarre as I found the wispy special effects surrounding this character, Ariel is another character emphasizing gender. It’s nice to see a fairy that changes genders, that isn’t nailed down in the human world. Ariel sings weird, airy songs and, when you think about it, fits the movie quite well.

Although Prospera rescued Ariel from entrapment in a tree, she won’t free the spirit without numerous favors and tricks performed for her. Ariel has to really work for freedom.

The Tempest is believed to be the final play that Shakespeare wrote on his own, and is often read as an allegory of the theatre, with Prospero being Shakespeare himself. There is a nice citation of the “Shakespeare’s Sister” idea that Virginia Woolf wrote about in A Room of Her Own in turning the protagonist into a woman. Taymor’s film asks “What if?” but largely punts answering the question.

This isn’t a silly, feel-good comedy (though there are the regular clown characters)–though it is a classic comedy, a coming together–rather, it is a dark story full of murderous thoughts, magic, accusations of witchcraft, and manipulation. It is also a portrait of an artist performing a final masterpiece and setting down her tools.