Tag: Riding in Cars with Boys

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.

‘Riding in Cars with Boys’ and Post-Maternal Female Agency

‘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.

Riding in Cars with Boys

This guest post by CG is part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Being a woman in today’s society means following a particular script. You are to: be a quiet, pleasant child. Discover boys by puberty. Get good grades, wear a sparkling prom dress. Have a college boyfriend. Marry said college boyfriend. Be a quiet homemaker, be pregnant, raise your children accordingly. But rarely, if ever, do we get a glimpse into what life means outside of this script – particularly after motherhood. What happens to these women who follow the script, who find themselves the proper example of what the script can mean – and what happens to those who choose to forge their own path, and mix life in with the order of the script?

It’s rare to find that there is life for women beyond motherhood. For this, I turn to one example that has shown the full humanity of post-maternal female agency. This is 2001’s Riding in Cars with Boys.

Riding in Cars With Boys is a journey story, first and foremost. Radical even today, the story follows Beverly “Bev” Delfrino (played by Drew Barrymore) as she stumbles her ways through life. Even at eleven, Bev displays her zest for life and the zing of excitement. She wants to be a writer. She wants to go to college and rub elbows with the elite. And most of all, she wants to be desired…by boys.

In one of the first scenes, Bev’s father is flabergasted as she tells him that what she really wants for Christmas isn’t a bike, but a bra, to impress a classmate that she likes.

This kind of boldness is cemented into Bev’s character as she grows older. Even when she is rejected at a high school party by yet another classmate she is pining over, she finds comfort in Ray, a guy who really doesn’t have much going for him but comforts our heroine. She then has unprotected sex with Ray in the backseat of a car.

Riding in Cars with Boys 3

It isn’t long before Bev finds herself pregnant. And while most stories would end here, or move the heroine to find some meaning in her pregnancy and motherhood, Bev rejects this. She continues being the same selfish, flamboyant lover of life that she is at the beginning of the film, despite the constant pressure from others in her life (particularly men) for her to conform. Her father, with whom Bev has a close relationship with, not only rejects her but kicks her out of the house when he finds out she is pregnant. Ray, who Bev marries out of necessity, remains a static character as well. He is a well meaning individual whose irresponsibility outweighs Bev’s. Between forgetting basic essentials to falling into a haze of drugs, Ray’s unreliability mirrors the same gender roles that move along the film.

It seems odd to praise a film like this, where the mother figure is such a notable “bad mother”, but that in lies the beauty of this film. Riding in Cars with Boys doesn’t negate or try to water down Bev. She remains an individual first and foremost, and the role of mother becomes secondary to that. And there are far and few media representations that allow women to embody themselves fully like this.

Bev is surrounded by men in the film – her father, Ray, her son Jason – and they all embody some part of the responsibility and gender roles that Bev is fighting against. Jason ends up being the voice of reason in the film, growing up feeling resentful and grateful for having Bev as a mother. In one of the final climax scenes of the film, we see Jason’s frustration bubbling over as he tells his mother “I raised you!” Bev’s reaction? To pout and throw a temper tantrum.

Do you see how great this is?

Riding in Cars with Boys 2

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. We see this in everything from Scandal to Flowers in the Attic to Lizzy Bordon Killed a Man. Rarely are women granted that full spectrum of emotions and flaws in the way that men and men who are fathers are allowed to be. Bev Delfino proves that there is life beyond motherhood, and that a woman doesn’t stop being who she is once she has children.

Though this film came out in 2001, I still hope that more people can watch Riding in Cars with Boys and can see the importance of post-maternal female agency in our media.

CG is a writer, blogger, and fangirl from New Jersey. Most of her online writing can be found on her site (blackgirlinmedia.com).