mothers – Bitch Flicks

“She Called Them Anti-Seed”: How the Women of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Divorce Violence from Strength

In ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Imperator Furiosa and the five wives look down upon the Citadel

This guest post by Cate Young appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

“Strong female character.”

It’s a phrase we hear over and over in pop culture, usually in reference to a female character in an action movie who has lots of guns. “Strong female characters” know how to fight, know how to use weapons and they best all the boys in confrontation. “Strong Female Characters” are effectively measured by their capacity for violence and their competence in the theatre of war.

But what does it mean when we equate strength with violence on a cultural level, and especially in relation to women’s place in society?

In Mad Max: Fury Road the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future desert wasteland where women have been reduced to various forms of slavery and their value is determined by what their bodies can produce. Whether it be breastmilk or babies, women’s position in this world is determined by their physical utility to the oppressive system they occupy. Furiosa is the notable exception, an Imperator who has presumably worked her way up the ranks of Immortan Joe’s highly patriarchal and hyper-masculine cultish new social order.

From the very beginning of the film we see how the women of this world conspicuously and determinedly avoid violence. We are introduced to the Five Wives initially through their absence; they have run away with Imperator Furiosa leaving behind a message for their captor Immortan Joe.

“Our Babies Will Not Be Warlords.” The Five Wives not only want to opt out of the violent system but also ensure that the system does not continue

These simple messages convey two main points: that the Wives are aware of their entitlement to freedom due to their inherent human dignity, and that they acknowledge that eliminating violence not only starts with them, but extends into preventing violence in the next generation. Their first act of resistance is a direct hit against the very violence that allows the oppressive system of this world to maintain itself; removing their future children from the violence of Immortan’s world.

“We Are Not Things.” Miss Giddy defends the Wives’ right to freedom

Later in the film, we see the Wives sidestep violence once again when the War Boy Nux attacks Furiosa as she is driving the War Rig. Furiosa initially wants to kill Nux, but the Wives tell her that there will be “no unnecessary killing” as Nux is brainwashed and “kamakrazee.” Essentially, the Wives know that even though Nux seeks to do them harm, he is simply a product of a violently oppressive system that positions violence as the way to salvation in Valhalla. He is a natural result of this system and a reflection of the fate they are trying to avoid for their own children, and they elect to toss him out of the Rig instead.

This conscious avoidance of violence is replicated in what I think is one of the most powerful scenes in the film: Splendid the Angharad, heavily pregnant with Immortan’s child, uses her body as a shield to protect Furiosa from Immortan’s bullets.

Splendid the Angharad as anti-patriarchal human shield

As I wrote in my initial review of the film:

She literally uses her body, the site of which has undoubtedly been home to rape and assault at the hands of Immortan Joe, (and now a constant reminder of such) as a weapon against him. She uses her increased patriarchal “value” against the very man who rules the patriarchal system of their world. To me, that was a powerful scene because it showed that even as her body had been used against her will to perpetuate a system that enslaved her, The Splendid Angharad did not view herself as property, but as an equal human being, capable of more than breeding warlords. Furiosa’s escape with the Wives was not so much a rescue as a partnership. She and the Wives worked together to achieve shared liberation in The Green Place.

The scene was a clever subversion of the hyper-violence of the film. Angharad’s body, a site of much violence, is used to prevent more of the same, as the other Wives cling to her to keep her safe. It shows that the Wives understand their relative position in this society, the role that ritual violence plays, and their ability to use it to their advantage.

Soon after this scene, Angharad dies, having fallen from the Rig. Furiosa and the Wives are devastated but know they must press-on. After Furiosa asks Toast The Knowing to the match their remaining bullets with their corresponding guns and she informs her that they have very little ammunition left, Dag and Cheedo note that Angharad used to call the bullets “anti-seed”:

“Plant one and watch something die.”

This relates thematically to the violence done upon the very earth on which they live by the men of the world. With reliance on guns and ammunition, the men have “killed the world” and now nothing grows. The state of the earth mirrors the violence that is done to the women and their bodies. It is fitting then that the women who are seeking salvation in “The Green Place” (that they later discover is barren) and are kept by Immortan as “breeders” due to the world’s low fertility would have very little “anti-seed” available to them.

The green place of Furiosa’s youth is now a barren swamp wasteland

When we are finally introduced to the Vuvalini, Furiosa’s previous clan of “Many Mothers” we discover that The Green Place has been decimated and that they are the last members of the clan to survive. These women however, many of them in their senior years are hardened to the world and perfectly acknowledge and understand that violence is sometimes necessary to achieve liberation.

The Vuvalini understand that violence is sometimes needed to achieve liberation

In confrontation with the War Boys and Immortan Joe during their journey back to the Citadel, the Vuvalini defend themselves and the Five Wives from attack on all fronts as the men descend upon them. While many of them fall, their bravery and willingness to sacrifice themselves in some ways mirrors the blind devotion that the War Boys show to Immortan Joe. The difference here is that they die in service to a liberatory ideal and not a cult of personality. The Vuvalini’s advanced age also serves to upturn our cultural notions of what strength entails. Even in the problematic context of strong women as violent, this rarely if ever includes the old. By being portrayed as capable and willing even in their age, the film redefines strength to encompass women who do not usually fall under this umbrella. Even better, it affords the Vuvalini, (including the Keeper of Seeds, and therefore life, strength, youth and vitality) the courtesy of demonstrating that their strength runs deeper than physical violence.

Finally, in the very last act of violence that we see a woman commit in the film, Furiosa confronts Immortan Joe and rips his breathing apparatus away, killing him and removing large chunks of his face. As one of the only acts of violence that can conceivably be perceived as revenge, Furiosa not only kills Immortan, but physically removes his face and thereby his identity, much in the same way that his violence against the Five Wives removed theirs.

Furiosa denies Immortan his identity through violence

It’s fitting that not only does Furiosa kill Immortan, but in light of the desolation of The Green Place she remembers from her youth, she takes up residence with the Wives in the Citadel at the end of the film. She essentially seeks to invert the history of the centre of this world’s violence by making it the centre of redemption instead. With access to clean water and greenery, she can reestablish the environmental richness of her youth, not just for her, but for all of the oppressed citizens of Immortan’s regime.

The Milking Mothers once again provide sustenance to the citizens of Immortan’s oppressive regime

In the end, these “strong female characters” are allowed to avoid violence as much as possible, engaging only as a last resort, and still emerge victorious.

They are allowed to divorce strength from the violence that we assume is inherent to that characteristic, and in the process highlight many of the problems with this larger cultural assumption.

Cate Young is a Trinidadian freelance writer and photographer, and author of BattyMamzelle, a feminist pop culture blog focused on film, television, music, and critical commentary on media representation. Cate has a BA in Photojournalism from Boston University and is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications so that she can more effectively examine the symbolic annihilation of women of colour in the media and deliver the critical feminist smack down. Follow her on twitter at @BattyMamzelle.

King Vidor’s ‘Stella Dallas’ and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Melodrama is a film genre that can get a bad reputation: overblown emotions, sweeping musical scores, a lot of “drama.” In its heyday in the 1950s, these films were primarily marketed to women, and (perhaps disparagingly) known as “weepies.” But melodrama is also an island in old Hollywood—an island full of complex, flawed women, the kinds of characters viewers can simultaneously love and hate, dynamic creatures who inspire and who are also cringe-worthy.

For me, one of the best examples of this is King Vidor’s Stella Dallas (1937). IMDb gives this one-line summary of the film: “A low class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.” Film scholar Jeanine Basinger, author of A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960, takes a more sympathetic tone, calling Stella Dallas a “portrait of a poor girl who marries out of her class,” and notes that film icon Barbara Stanwyck’s performance as Stella is one of “great depth.” I would tend to agree with Basinger, but I must point out that the audience’s relationship to the eponymous woman is a complicated one.

Rather than an elegant, wealthy, and charismatic, Stella is a shameless social climber with no real “taste.” She comes from a ramshackle, cracker-box house and a factory-worker family, where Father and Brother both work at the local mill. Her only obvious female role model is her sallow-faced mother, who seems at once endlessly, admirably sacrificing and a woman who has had the life completely sucked out of her. Stella resists being anything like her mother. She puts little effort into making her brother’s lunch every day, and is instead invested in her looks, her clothes, and her culture (this last illustrated superficially by her enactment of reading a book—India’s Love Lyrics— as mill workers pass by her house). Eventually, Stella identifies down-on-his-luck former millionaire Stephen Dallas (John Boles) as her romantic conquest, and does everything in her power to land him for a husband who will take her away from her humble origins.

But class differences run deep. Though Stephen falls for Stella, perhaps because of her innocence and earthiness, she is unambiguous about wanting to make herself “better,” a cloudy idea she has that includes knowing the “right” people, going to the “real” places, as well as learning how to “talk like” those aforementioned people. The film makes it clear that Stella and Stephen are mismatched from the start—after their wedding and the subsequent birth of their daughter, Laurel, Stella can’t wait to get back to the River Club, and dance the night away with some high-class friends. Starting at this point, Omar Kiam’s costumes do their best to visually identify Stella as a gaudy parody of all things well-bred—she appears in all manner of spangle and print, usually together, and Barbara Stanwyck’s padded physique seems to be literally bursting at the seams of each ensemble. She is excess personified. Embarrassed by her flashiness and uncouth behavior, Stephen recoils from the relationship, finally taking a promotion that keeps him in New York City. Stella welcomes the separation, and yet one of the consequences of this move seems to be that Stella transfers her desire for upward mobility onto Laurel.

So why don’t we like her? What’s wrong with a mother wanting her daughter to have all of the best? Part of what makes Stella unlikeable is her effect on Laurel (played as a young woman by Anne Shirley). On the occasion of Laurel’s 16th birthday (for which Stella has made her daughter a beautiful, appropriate dress—why can’t she apply this savvy to her own clothes??) Stella takes a train to the city to obtain fancy party favors and table settings. She makes this trip in the company of good-hearted but loud, brash Ed Munn (Alan Hale, Sr.), who has lost some of his own formerly respectable class status through gambling disasters; as one country club attendee says, “He’s involved in horse racing.” He’s also clearly infatuated with Stella, though she rebuffs his affections and says, “I don’t think there’s a man living could get me going anymore.” Instead, she intones, all her energy is bound up in raising Laurel—both in the traditional sense of her upbringing, and in “raising” her social status above Stella’s.

Munn and Stella’s antics on the train are then observed by Laurel’s upright teacher and the mother of another girl invited to Laurel’s birthday party. Both of whom immediately pass judgment on the household, and by extension, Laurel, because of Stella’s behavior. The result is that no one attends Laurel’s party, which ends up being just the first in a series of unfortunate events, documented by Basinger in her writing on Stella Dallas, that occur when Stella’s class clashes with the class of those she strives to emulate. These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble. Class culture is indicted when viewers are asked to identify with Laurel, even when Laurel herself isn’t on screen—we understand the gap between the young woman’s intrinsic conservatism (which is deployed as a marker of upper-class behavior) and Stella’s inescapable and tragic inability to embody this value. This gap has a profound effect on how Laurel is perceived by the rest of the world, further inciting our sympathy for both women. Stella also articulates her own selfishness in several of these scenes, desiring to dance, shop, and be seen among these “right” people, before she realizes the she is not a blessing for Laurel, but a curse.

There’s a turning point in Stella Dallas that may or may not redeem Stella in the eyes of the audience. After Laurel has narrowly avoided an awkward scene with her mother in an ice-cream parlor, the two take a sleeper back to their home. As each of them pretends to sleep, they overhear other passengers talking about Stella’s larger-than-life appearance at the country club they’ve just left. The gossipy biddies agree that Laurel’s boyfriend will never continue their relationship when he’s made aware of Laurel’s lineage, and Stella slowly becomes aware that she’s a detriment to everything she has ever wanted for Laurel.

For the rest of the film, Stella forgets about her own desires and moves heaven and Earth to get Laurel away from her. This is simultaneously the best thing she could do to achieve her goal of propelling Laurel into the upper-class, and depicted as tremendously cruel for Laurel herself—another reason that, even in her glory as a “sacrificial mother,” there can exist a complicated seed of dislike for Stella. Though she eventually succeeds, it’s at the cost of sabotaging her relationship with Laurel forever, and never seeing her again. In the final scenes, we understand Stella’s plan has been both successful and monumentally hurtful for her daughter, who continues to love her mother in spite of Stella’s rough rejection of Laurel and disappearance from her life.

It’s only in the final scene of the film that we are given the green light on Stella, when we’re finally allowed to wholeheartedly admire her for what she’s done. Stella stands outside a fancy private club where Laurel is about to wed her sweetheart, gathered with other urchin-like onlookers, gawking at the beautiful couple just inside a large picture window. She begs a policeman to remain as he shoos these others away; “I just want to see her face when she kisses him,” she pleads. As the vows are solemnized, Stella’s eyes fill with tears, and she performs a signature act that has punctuated Stanwyck’s performance throughout the film—at moments when she is most conflicted, uncomfortable, and troubled, she reaches for her mouth, worrying her fingers, chipping at her front teeth with a fingernail. Here, she twists a handkerchief with her teeth as she looks on, her now much sleeker-looking physique still bursting, this time with pride. We want to applaud and weep at the same time—Stella’s sacrifice is so terrible, its goals so lofty. Finally, we can like her. But only after relinquishing nearly everything that gave her purpose.

Audiences are hard on women like Stella Dallas. Culture’s ideas of motherly perfection, class values, and models of “acceptable” behavior force them into molds they were not meant to fit in. If anything, Stella Dallas points out the most exacting of those ideals in us, the viewer, and criticizes our potential dislike of Stella. The film’s saving grace is that it allows us, and Stella herself, to leave the film not broken, but stronger for the fight.

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University. She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Patterns in Poor Parenting: ‘The Babadook’ and ‘Mommy’

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Last year, two completely different films presented two very similar mothers. Though the lead characters from The Babadook and Mommy do not look alike, their parenting styles, and subsequently their sons, are uncanny. This representation of poor parenting by ill-equipped mothers deserves a closer look.

The Babadook is getting showered with praise as one of the best horror films in decades. It is the story of a widow raising an overactive, imaginative son. Samuel is a well-meaning 7-year-old who misbehaves more than not. He throws tantrums. He builds contraptions like backpack-mounted catapults. He has frequent meltdowns. Samuel is not an easy child and mother Amelia is at the end of her rope when a strange book appears on his bookshelf. The story in the book is that of Mr. Babadook, a modern and all too familiar boogeyman. From here the film dives into Amelia’s coping with this monster and her eventual possession by the Babadook.

Mommy is not a horror film at all, though it does have a few moments that are shocking. The film follows Diana, Die, as she tries to deal with her delinquent son, Steve. Fifteen-year-old Steve has just gotten kicked out of the boarding school for problem children and Die must choose between surrendering him to the government or taking him back to her home. She chooses the latter and tries her best to parent Steve as much as he will tolerate. To say that both Steve and Die have unusual boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate is a criminal understatement, as neither of them seems capable of acting like an adult. Even with such rich characters, curiously the most interesting character in the film turns out to be their neighbor, Kyla. For the purposes of this article I won’t have time to explore her further, but it should be mentioned that there is much more subtext in the film that merely the mother-son relationship.

Before diving into the similarities between Die and Amelia, and Mommy and The Babadook, first I will point out one major discrepancy: the two women look completely different. This is not to say that the actresses have different physical attributes, but instead the conscious costuming of each woman is a polar opposite of the other. Die is a flamboyant dresser who styles herself much younger than she is. Everything she wears is tight, embellished, low-cut, and over accessorized. Her hair has chunky highlights that have grown out. Amelia dresses very simply. When she is not in her plain nurse’s uniform she is wearing either a modest sleeping gown (much of the film takes place over night) or an equally unadorned house dress. She wears no real jewelry, and her hair is always pulled back into a bun. Based on costuming alone Die and Amelia would appear to have nothing in common. But as we begin to look at their histories and character flaws, we see that Mommy and The Babadook in fact have a lot in common.

One of the most obvious correlations between the films is that that neither film is American. The Babadook has seen great success in the US, but it is an Australian production. Mommy is Canadian and is in Quebecoise with English subtitles. This is not to say that Hollywood is not capable of portraying poor mothering on screen, but it is interesting that the most striking examples of bad mothers have not come from America. We often see the evil stepmother in fairy tales, but these women are not responsible for raising the children. Also, in fairy tales these children are shown as good children who have overcome their lack of a caring mother. Here we are looking at children that are kind of jerks, perhaps due to the fact that their mothers are not good parents.

The fact that both Amelia and Die are raising sons is also of note. Casually I have heard films about sons and mothers described as horror films and films about mothers and daughters described as melodramas. Psycho and Friday The 13^th certainly support the theory; however Carrie and Mommy Dearest swiftly disprove it. Not a solid approach to examining films, but it does bring into question the unique relationship between mothers and sons. Amelia never truly understands Samuel’s obsession with building projectile devices. She supports his creativity as much as she can, but cannot relate to his mechanical talents or even his interest in war and destruction. Die herself has issues relating to Steve. She walks in on him masturbating and brushes it off with a laugh though he is clearly humiliated. Her lack of understanding how valued privacy is, especially for teenagers, is disturbing to the audience and frustrating for Steve.

To further the gender politics of their households and their similarities, both Die and Amelia are widows. Amelia’s husband was killed while she was pregnant with Samuel, a fact that he brings up to complete strangers which makes them quite uncomfortable. Die’s husband died many years earlier, however her predicament is more heartbreaking in that Steve remembers his father. He romanticizes their life together when his father was alive. What is clear about both Die and Amelia is that neither has ever moved on or accepted the deaths. Amelia is still in mourning for her husband and allows her inability to mature to impact her relationship with Samuel and everyone around her. Die is also still in love with her husband and has not moved on romantically, but she has accepted her loss as a part of her life. She is not as paralyzed emotionally as Amelia, but she is still in desperate need of therapy to deal with the loss.

Outside of their family dynamics both mothers rely on caring female neighbors to help them with their problem sons. I briefly mentioned Die’s secretive neighbor Kyla, and symmetrically Amelia also receives help from her neighbor Mrs. Roach. These women are not very good mothers, but they are both good at recognizing that they need help with their sons. Kyla helps Steve pass his exams for his GED, and Mrs. Roach takes Samuel to give Amelia a desperately needed break. These women are not capable of handling their sons on their own.

This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting. Too often women are shown as having an innate ability to be amazing mothers with little training or support from others. Rather, Mommy and The Babadook show that women are capable of being bad parents. Their maternal instinct is not strong, and their lack of connection to their sons has in turn created sons with disciplinary and behavioral issues. Women on film are frequently shown in terms of extremes: they are either sluts or saints. There is rarely a gray area for representations of women. By showing women who want to do well, but do not have the skills to parent well, it is a step in the right direction for showing women who are imperfect but fully formed characters. Neither Die nor Amelia fit into the mold of the typical mother we see in films, and the developing variety in portrayals of women is quite welcome.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for http://www.allthingshorror.com/. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.

‘Looking’: When a Straight Woman is the “Gay Best Friend”

The HBO series ‘Looking,’ which focuses on the lives of gay men (co-created by the gay writer-director Andrew Haigh who made the art-house film ‘Weekend’; two of the main cast members, including the lead, are also out gay men) occupies a ground somewhere in between, in which women do exist, though only in supporting roles–but those roles are cast and, written with an acuity that transcends their brief time onscreen.

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first seven episodes of the first season of HBO’s Looking.

No matter how much is written about the series Girls, “wives and girlfriends” could be the de facto description of most speaking roles for women on television and in film. Because women are the plus-ones in the script we’re not surprised that their parts, when compared with the male characters have fewer lines, less complexity and less variability–in age, race, body type and conventional attractiveness. The uncomfortable truth is: the only reason women are in these many of these shows and films (besides for decoration, to act as a kind of talking furniture) is to communicate that even though the male characters seem to spend most of their time and emotional energy interacting with each other– and the audience can’t help noticing the homoerotic tension between them–they’re not queer.

So what happens to women’s roles when the main male characters are queer? In some cases, like the excellent recent release Stranger By The Lake, women aren’t in the picture at all–not surprising, since the film takes place in a cruising ground. But the absence of women also reflects the strata of gay men whose social circle is made up almost entirely of other gay men, even outside of sexual situations. In the case of the execrable American version of Queer As Folk the token woman couple were written alternately as villains or annoyances: their erratic behavior providing the flimsiest of excuses to propel the storylines of the male characters.

The HBO series Looking, which focuses on the lives of gay men (co-created by the gay writer-director Andrew Haigh who made the art-house film Weekend; two of the main cast members, including the lead, are also out gay men) occupies a ground somewhere in between, in which women do exist, though only in supporting roles–but those roles are cast and written with an acuity that transcends their brief time onscreen.

The most prominent example is Doris (Lauren Weedman) who is the best friend, roommate and long ago ex-lover of one of the series main characters, Dom (out gay actor Murray Bartlett). Unlike other fictional f*g hags, Doris isn’t secretly still in love with Dom (as the Meryl Streep character was with the Ed Harris character in The Hours) nor is she a woman so desperately unhappy with her own life that she can’t stop meddling in and monopolizing Dom’s. She has a challenging career as a pediatric nurse, and although she is much less glamorous than most of the other women on television, we see her making out with Dom’s male coworker during Dom’s birthday party (though just once on TV or in a movie I’d like to see the relatively common occurence of a f*g hag going with her friends to the gay bar, picking up a woman there and going on to forge a queer identity of her own). Instead Doris plays the role usually given to “The Gay Best Friend” in a romantic comedy. She has all the best lines and an acid delivery but is also a loyal friend and the voice of reason.

When Dom wants to contact an abusive ex-boyfriend (who was, at one time, also a meth addict but has since become a successful realtor) Doris warns him off doing so, but when Dom sees the guy anyway, tells him she understands why.

Doris asks, “Did you at least ask him for your money back?”

“No,” Dom answers.

Doris then asks “Why not,” and her tone has no anger in it, just a sad compassion that seems to illustrate a long history between the two friends.

In the most recent episode (Episode 7, the penultimate of this season, but the series has just been renewed for a second season, with Weedman becoming a cast regular) we finally got to meet the mother of the main character Patrick Murray (Jonathan Groff). His mother has been something of a bogeyman since the first episode when Dom advised Patrick to stop dating only the men he thought his mother would approve of. Patrick, who designs video games, then pursued and eventually became boyfriends with Richie (Raúl Castillo) a Mexican American barber. With Richie and Patrick’s relationship, Looking is able to touch on some class and race schisms that exist in the gay men’s community–but also beyond–that other series and movies rarely show.

Richie and Patrick spend an idyllic day together

Patrick isn’t a racist exactly (his best friend is Latino–and also a main character–wanna-be artist, Agustín, played by Frankie J. Alvarez), but, except for most of one idyllic all-day date that takes up the whole of Episode 5 (directed by Haigh, it echoes the structure, if not quite the emotional sweep of Weekend) he can’t seem to stop himself from saying racially and culturally insensitive things to Richie, which nearly prevented he and Richie from getting together in the first place. Patrick’s awkwardness with Richie is a result of his moving in mostly white, affluent (or at least artist-class) circles and shows a reality rarely seen on TV or in movies: that white people, even the ones who say they aren’t racist, often have no idea how to be in interracial relationships–and aren’t very good at learning from their mistakes. The show also captures tensions within the Latino community, when college educated, Miami-raised Cuban American Agustín accuses Patrick of “slumming” with working class, Mexican American Richie.

In Episode 7, Richie was supposed to finally meet Patrick’s mother (Julia Duffy from Newhart) at his sister’s wedding, but after a morning full of disasters: spilled coffee on a dress shirt, a parking ticket, Patrick’s mother’s misplaced phone (which the hotel won’t give to Richie because, he says, “I guess I don’t look like a ‘Murray'”) Richie and Patrick argue, and Richie says he thinks it’s too soon to meet Patrick’s family. So Patrick goes to the wedding alone.

patrick-richie-psychic-looking — Patrick and Richie

Making the excuses familiar to those of us who have fought with our partners right before or during major social events (“food poisoning” Patrick says), Patrick meets up with his mother, a persnickety and perpetually dissatisfied woman (she complains about the state of the grass on the grounds of the wedding site) who calls Richie “Richard” and “friend” instead of “boyfriend.”

At the end of the festivities (scenes of cake pops, bad dancing to the B-52s and the groom removing the bride’s garter will elicit groans of recognition among any queer who has felt alienated at a straight wedding) Patrick tells his mother, “You’re the real reason Richie isn’t here,” blaming the argument he had with Richie (ostensibly because Richie suggested Patrick smoke a joint in the car to relax before the wedding) on his mother’s lofty expectations.

But Patrick’s mother herself is munching on a pot-laced Rice Krispie treat (Patrick’s family is from Colorado, where marijuana is legal) and tells Patrick, “I don’t think you can blame me for Richie. If he’s not here, that’s on you, sweetie.” She also tells him that marijuana has helped her since she went off Lexapro, which Patrick had no idea she was taking.”If you asked me how I was doing every now and then,” she counters, “you’d know.” And with just a few lines (and an expert reading from Duffy) Looking turns an “evil” and “unreasonable” mother character into a sympathetic person with wants and needs of her own. And echoes the experience of so many of us as we strive to become people different from who our mothers see us as. Our mothers change too and become different people from the ones we wanted so badly to distance ourselves from.

With Blue Is The Warmest Color, Concussion, and Stranger By The Lake, this past year has been a great one for queer characters’ stories on the big screen–and Looking has now brought that same depth and quality to the small screen. I can’t wait for Season 2.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G5Ud5A0NHg&list=UUVTQuK2CaWaTgSsoNkn5AiQ&feature=c4-overview”]

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.