Revisiting THE MAGIC GARDEN, or How I Plan to Keep my Girl Off the Pole
One of the great joys of parenting young children is the chance to return to activities that you enjoyed as a child. Having a child gives you license to play with toys, watch children’s television shows, go to Disney World, and to eat unhealthy shit like Nutty Sundae Cones and Chee-tos because “It’s a treat for the kids.”
However, one thing that I have noticed is that certain cherished icons from my youth have changed a lot over the last few decades. For example, as a child in the 1980s I adored my set of My Little Ponies. They were anthropomorphic for sure — but still fundamentally “horsey.” They were pretty but also demure. Clearly, these were ponies who were not yet interested in boys or parties.
When my daughter was around 2 years old, she received her first My Little Pony. As we opened the package, I was horrified. This little pony is clearly hot to trot:
So what’s different? First, the pony is skinnier. That’s right. Skinnier. Because little girls aren’t exposed to enough images of impossibly skinny women. Today even plastic ponies are paranoid about the size of their asses. Now take a look at that snout. This new breed of pony has had a nose job. Nose jobs for ponies? Rainbow Dash will probably tell you that she had a “deviated septum,” but we know the truth. Other changes: longer, more tapered legs (Pilates?), longer manes and tails (hair extensions?), and more body art (kids today love their tattoos).
Bu Hasbro isn’t the only company invested in defiling my innocent childhood memories. Let’s take a look at a Strawberry Shortcake doll, circa 1980:
I have many fond memories of playing with this Strawberry Shortcake doll and her beloved cat, Custard (they both smell like strawberries!) in my childhood bedroom. I especially loved Strawberry’s big, floppy hat, which implied that she spent her days baking delicious strawberry confections for her pals Lemon Meringue and Blueberry Muffin. There is nothing “sassy” or “fierce” about this doll. In fact, she’s sort of a dork. Just like I was at age 6 and just like all 6 year olds should be. I am very wary of “hip” children.
Now take a look at the Strawberry Shortcake doll my daughter plays with:
As with My Little Ponies, today’s Strawberry Shortcake appears to have grown up prematurely. The doll I played with as a child was a child: fat cheeks, stubby legs, lame clothes, etc. My daughter’s doll looks more like a precocious pre-teen: she’s lost her gigantic hat, she’s wearing heavy make-up, and she is dressed in the requisite preteen outfit of miniskirt n’ leggins. Oh how today’s teens love the leggins.
And here’s a nice comparison of the 1980s Strawberry Shortcake cartoon heroine and her contemporary manifestation on TV:
In her wonderful book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, Peggy Orenstein analyzes contemporary girl culture, focusing several chapters on the premature sexualization of girls. In particular, Orenstein cites the concept of KGOY or “Kids Getting Older Younger.” KGOY is the idea that “toys and trends start with older children, but younger ones, trying to be like their older brothers and sisters, quickly adopt them. That immediately taints them for the original audience. And so the cycle goes” (84). This might explain why my daughter’s Strawberry Shortcake doll is so much sluttier than mine ever was! Orenstein laments the early sexualization of girls, who develop an appetite for make up, short “sassy” skirts, and rhinestones at an early age. For another eye-opening take on this issue, read Lisa Bloom’s short piece in The Huffington Post, “How to Talk to Little Girls.”
But why is this problematic? I mean, can’t my daughter wear some lip gloss and strut around in the clear plastic princess heels a well-meaning friend bought for her? Isn’t she just exploring a role and enjoying the fantasy? In an interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm, Orenstein explains:
“We have confused desirability with desire, so that girls feel they’re supposed to be desirable. But they don’t really understand their own desire. And when I talked about that with a researcher who studies girls and desire, she said that by the time girls are teenagers, when she asks them how they felt about an intimate experience, they respond by telling her how they felt they looked. And she has to tell them that looking good is not a feeling.”
When I read these words, I actually get tears in my eyes (as should you). Why is this happening to our daughters? How can we stop it? Often it feels like a losing battle. I may not buy my daughter slutty-looking dolls or T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Pampered Princess,” but other people do. And what should I do with those dolls and T-shirts? Throw them away? Explain to my 5-year-old that Strawberry Shortcake shouldn’t be wearing make up yet? That instead Strawberry Shortcake should look inside for her true worth?
One way to counter this early sexualization in popular culture is to never let my daughter watch TV or go to Target or have a birthday party or leave the house. But that’s not very realistic. So another option is to direct her towards popular culture that has nothing to do with princesses or prettiness or lip gloss or sparkles, but that still appeals to a child’s sense of wonder and fantasy. And that is just what I did for my daughter’s 5th birthday [pats self on back]. I purchased a DVD of the classic children’s television series, The Magic Garden.
For those who were not young children in the early 1980s or did not have cable, The Magic Garden was a children’s television show produced for New York City’s WPIX station, aka, channel 11. The show aired from 1972 until 1984, and, as the cover of the DVD proclaims, it remains “the most successful regional show in the history of children’s television.” The Magic Garden centers on two women, Carole Dumas and Paula Janis, who reside in a “magical garden of make-believe.” During the course of a typical 30-minute episode, Carole and Paula will sing several songs (in beautiful harmony), perform a classic fable with the help of the Story Box, read a joke or riddle from the giggling garden of plastic flowers known as the Chuckle Patch, and teach a lesson to the show’s antagonist, Sherlock the Squirrel. There was not a lot of children’s television when I was a kid, so every show was precious to me. I have distinct memories of running into the den on weekday afternoons, panicky that I might miss some of The Magic Garden‘s glorious opening theme song (a panic my children will never know due to the DVR):
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I still feel shivers of excitement when I see this clip; I am immediately sent back to my childhood. I remember my joy at seeing the window open onto the cheesy, 1970s-era studio set (it even looked cheesy to me as a child), as the camera slowly tracks forward until it reaches the show’s harmonizing stars, Carole and Paula, sitting on swings and looking swell. As I child, I loved their fabulous hippie hair, always styled the same way: parted down the middle and tied into two long ponytails. And I loved how inviting these women were: they smiled and cajoled, but not in the syrupy sweet way that other children’s show hosts of the era did, like Mr. Rogers or Romper Room‘s Miss Molly. It didn’t feel like they were adults talking down to me. Instead they felt like the coolest babysitters ever who wanted me to come and play in the magic garden with them!
When my daughter opened up The Magic Garden DVD set on the morning of her 5th birthday, her face fell. “What is this?” she whined. “It’s The Magic Garden!” I exclaimed. “It was Mommy’s favorite TV show when she was 5!” My daughter glanced at the cover one more time and then dropped it on the table to see what else we had bought for her. I did not let on that I was crushed.
Later in the week when my daughter was about to sit down for her much-anticipated, daily 30-minute dose of “screen time,” I asked her “So do you want to watch the new DVD Mommy bought for you?” My daughter scowled, “I didn’t even ask for that!” It was not until I had to drive my two children from Greenville, NC to Charleston, SC by myself that I offered up the DVDs again. My 18-month-old son hates the car. He hates being strapped in to anything and he hates looking at the back of my head (all attention should be on him at all times, a reasonable demand). When I could not stomach his screaming any longer I decided to put The Magic Garden into my minivan’s built-in DVD player (God bless the Mensch who invented that technology). As soon as the opening strains of the theme began to play, my son stopped crying. He was mesmerized. And so was my daughter. On our return trip to Greenville, my daughter only wanted to watch The Magic Garden: not Cinderella, not The Little Mermaid, not even that perennial car trip favorite, Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom.
Currently, my children are completely enamored with The Magic Garden. This surprises me because 1) my son has never really sat still long enough to watch a TV show and 2) compared to the slick production values and high-definition images of contemporary live-action children’s shows like The Fresh Beat Band or even Yo Gabba Gabba! (which even seems to strive for a low-budget aesthetic), The Magic Garden is positively low-rent. The image transfer is grainy and blurry and the set, with it’s astroturf and plastic flowers looks like a parody of a bad public access television show. But that is what’s so wonderful about this show.
In the above Story Box segment (a feature of every episode), Carole and Paula dig through a beat up old trunk and pull out costumes made out of construction paper. Clealrly these items were put together minutes before the cameras rolled. For the story of the “Fox and the Crane,” for example, Carole’s Fox costume consists of a set of little brown ears attached to a plastic headband and the Crane is signified by a bright yellow construction paper cone that Paula holds up to her mouth. So in order to follow the story, children had to … use their imaginations!
And let’s talk about Paula’s and Carole’s wardrobes for a minute. As I recall, the women never wore dresses or skirts. Instead they always wore pants or jeans (or what my Nana used to call “dungarees”). These women didn’t look like magical fairy princesses or even cool teenagers. They looked like my summer camp counselors or my babysitters — fun women who played “steal the bacon” with me or hid under my bed during a game of hide and seek.
And how about the two puppets who regularly appeared on the show, Sherlock the Squirrel and Flapper the Bird? The prop department couldn’t even spring for glass eyes — both characters instead have either felt eyes or paper eyes with the pupils drawn in. This aesthetic has the curious effect of making it appear as if Sherlock and Flapper are stoned or at least very bored — even when their voices are animated.
But this is the charm of The Magic Garden. No CGI, no sparkles, no high heels or make up, no faux “girl power!” Instead, it’s two real women, singing in their real voices, beckoning children, to “come and see our garden grow.” The only complaint I have about this DVD set is that it only contains 10 episodes (as well as a bonus 6-song CD). When my daughter told me that she wanted to watch this show “forever,” I had to break the news to her and she was devastated. “What? That’s all there is?” There were, in fact, 52 episodes of The Magic Garden that aired between 1972 and 1984, but my guess is that the 10 that appeared on the DVD were all that WPIX had saved. After, how could they foresee the phenomenon of TV-on-DVD?
I don’t want it to seem like I am implying that by buying my daughter a collection of TV episodes from my youth that I am somehow keeping her from becoming sexualized at an early age. The Magic Garden alone will not keep my girl “off the pole” (to quote a great Chris Rock bit). Orenstein concludes her (often frightening) book in this way:
“… our role is not to keep the world at bay but to prepare our daughters so they can thrive within it. That involves staying close but not crowding them, standing firm in one’s values while remaining flexible … The good news is, the choices we make for our toddlers can influence how they navigate [culture] as teens. I’m not saying we can, or will, do everything ‘right,’ only that there is power — magic — in awareness” (192).
Preach on, Peggy.
Indeed, all I can do is make my daughter aware of what the world is like, and what traps might lie ahead as she makes her way as a young woman. I will tell her that once a woman starts wearing make up she will find that she doesn’t like her face any other way. I will tell her that while I think she is beautiful, she should never be defined by the way she looks. I will tell her that envy is a sickness and that she should therefore never compare her appearance to another woman’s. I will tell her that her body is first and foremost something that she should enjoy. I will tell her that she must love that body, because it is the only body she will ever have. And, while I wait for the day when she slams her bedroom door in my face, rejecting all of that advice, I can offer her a “magical garden of make believe, where flowers chuckle and birds play tricks and a magic tree grows lollipop sticks.” I like hanging out there too, preferably while eating a Nutty Sundae Cone.
Making Peace with my Zombies: A Personal Narrative
My husband and I have really been enjoying HBO’s new fantasy series, Game of Thrones. In fact, it’s the perfect show in that it bridges two of our most divergent TV tastes; he loves costume dramas and anything set in a castle (which I normally hate) while I love a show with an impending sense of doom (“Winter is coming!”). But one thing threatens to destroy our shared television bliss: zombies. Of course, none of the many enticingly-edited previews leading up to the April 17th Game of Thrones premiere led me to believe that the series would include zombies. No, that little surprise happened in episode three, “Lord Snow,” when young Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), bedridden after being pushed out of a tower for seeing something very, very naughty (it rhymes with bincest), asks his nurse to tell him a scary story. Old Nan complies and tells Bran, a “summer child,” all about an endless winter that happened thousands of years ago. During this winter the sun disappeared all together and mothers smothered their babies rather than see them starve. And, during this winter, the “white walkers” came. These white walkers ate babies! Babies , for crying out loud! Upon hearing this story I was all “Hell to the no!” because I had really fallen in love with Game of Thrones and I did not want to give it up just because it had a few zombies in it. You see, I have an intense zombie phobia. And like all phobias, this one is threatening to take away something I love. So I’ve decided to use this blog post to revisit my zombie phobia and to try to understand it’s hold over me. I hope you don’t mind the indulgence.
This story begins with my older brother, Adam, and his obsession with horror films. The early 1980s was a golden age for the horror film. There were numerous teen slasher film franchises, including Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Wes Craven), Halloween (1978, John Carpenter), and Friday the 13th (1980, Sean S. Cunningham). But my brother was into a very specific kind of horror film: the splatter film. In conventional horror films, like Dracula (1931, Tod Browning) or Frankenstein (1931, James Whale), the monster is foreign and threatens the characters’ way of life. Yes, there is the threat of bodily harm, but these films (due to the restrictions of the Production Code), rarely dwelled on the destruction of the human body. Victims screamed and then drifted out of the frame. Nice and clean.
But the horror of the splatter film comes from its focus on the systemic destruction of the human body. This horror cycle is preoccupied with the faithful recreation of blood, organs, skin, and bone so that it may later rip these replicas of the human form to shreds.
The splatter film takes what is usually on the inside of the body — safely contained within our skin — and reveals it to the outside. What is especially important about the splatter film is not the high body counts (leave those to Rambo), but the obsessive focus on death itself. Victims are rarely shot with bullets or forced to ingest poison. Instead, the destruction of the human body must take place at close range with weapons — clubs, machetes, knives, fingernails, teeth (shudder) — that require the killer and the victim to have intimate contact with one another. The messier, more prolonged, and more painful the death is, the better.
Yes, these were the kinds of horror films that my brother always seemed to be watching in the mid-1980s. And, naturally, as a younger sister, I wanted to be doing everything my older brother was doing. If he was going to watch Day of the Dead (1985, George Romero), then damn it, I was going to watch it too. I asked my brother about the fateful day that changed everything for me — the day we watched Night of the Living Dead (1968, George Romero) on VHS in our family den. He thinks it was somewhere around 1986, which means I would have been 10-years-old and he would would have been around 15-years-old. And while I distinctly remember him coaxing me to watch the movie by telling me that it really wasn’t that scary, my brother remembers it differently: “I don’t recall forcing you to watch it, you were into it like any kid looking for a thrill would be.” Doesn’t that sound exactly like something a drug dealer would say? Regardless of how it happened, there I sat, for 96 minutes, and watched as a series of reanimated corpses cornered and ate a houseful of people. Including a little girl, just like me. WTF, George Romero?
Looking back on this phase of my pop culture upbringing, I do wonder where the hell my mother was. The film professor in me appreciates that she didn’t do much censoring of television or movies — my brother and I pretty much watched what we wanted to watch. My Mom only started to get concerned about my brother’s horror movie fascination when Fangoria magazine began to arrive in our mailbox every month. Those covers freaked me out.
But by that time, it was too late for me. The deep damage to my psyche was already done. And the real problem? I liked zombie movies. They scared me more than any other horror film and I really liked being scared. Zombie movies combined all of my greatest fears: dead bodies (I still have never seen a dead body), being chased by an unrelenting enemy, painful, prolonged death, and the possibility of being turned into a monster. So I continued to watch zombie movies with my brother. And like any older brother worth his salt, Adam pinpointed my fear and discovered clever ways to exploit it. For example, after we watched Dawn of the Dead (1978, George Romero) together, my brother came up with a great tormenting device: he would chase me around the house pretending to be a zombie. He’d put his arms out in front of him, cock his head to the side, and hum the Muzak that was playing in the mall for most of Dawn of the Dead (see YouTube clip below). This horrible chase would always end the same way — with me locking myself into the nearest available bathroom and waiting, panting and terrifed, for my brother to get bored and lumber away (just like in a real zombie movie). To this day, when I hear generic-sounding Muzak, the muscles in my stomach tighten up.
Due to the combination of watching zombie movies at an age when I was too young to process their terrifying images and being chased around the house by my faux-zombie brother over and over again, I was plagued, for decades, with zombie-themed nightmares. In these dreams I was plunged, in medias res, into the climax of an epic zombies versus humans battle. The battle would conclude in one of two ways: either I was holed up in an old house with a group of survivors — sometimes I knew them, sometimes I didn’t — and we would bide our time, waiting for the moment when the zombies would finally burst through our hastily constructed barricade. Or (and this was the worst scenario), I was by myself, being chased by a horde of hungry zombies who were always just inches behind me. At some point during this recurring nightmare I would recognize that I was dreaming and I would have to make a decision: continue to flee the zombies (and thus, prolong the feeling of absolute terror) or allow the zombies to attack me (which would allow me to finally wake up). Neither option is really an option, you dig?
The turning point for me and my love/hate relationship with zombies happened in 2002, when I went to see 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle) with my friend, Coral. After the movie, Coral was going to drop me off at my empty house; my boyfriend (now my husband) was out of town. But I knew that sleeping alone in my empty house was going to be an impossibility. So instead I ran inside, grabbed my toothbrush and my dog, and hopped back into Coral’s car. As I lay there that night on Coral’s futon, painfully aware of the inanity of a grown woman having to sleep over at a friend’s house after watching a scary movie, I came to a decision: no more zombie movies. And I’ve kept to that, mostly. I lapsed in 2004, when I rented the remake of Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder) (which, by the way, was great). I did this when my husband was out of town and I paid for it with a night of insomnia. I haven’t watched a zombie movie since. And now I only have a few zombie-themed nightmares each year. I still get sad though, like when a group of my friends all went to see Zombieland (2009, Rubin Fleischer) and I had to say “Sorry, friends, just can’t do it!” And I know that AMC’s The Walking Dead is supposed to be great, but I’ll never know its pleasures. Instead, I try to view my zombie phobia the way a lactose-intolerant person views ice cream: you can have a sundae, but your ass is going to pay for it later.
Which brings me to the present day and Game of Thrones. Except for a brief glimpse of a blue-eyed little girl with a bloodied mouth (who I am assuming is a white walker?), no zombies have appeared in the series. But, as Ned Stark (Sean Bean) keeps warning us, “winter is coming” and with it, zombies. When they arrive, I might have to abandon this great television series, or risk giving up my dreams to the undead once again.
So, am I alone in my zombie phobia? Is anyone else out there zombie-intolerant? Or is there another movie monster that plagues your nightmares? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.
BRIDESMAIDS, Will You Be My BFF?
A few months ago I made some New Year’s resolutions. Not the kind in which I vow to be a better person or promise to call my mother more (sorry Mom). Instead, I made some popular culture New Year’s resolutions. Number 2 on my list was a promise to see more films while they are still in the theaters. I do eventually get around to seeing all of the movies that I’m interested in, once they are released on DVD. But certain films are just better when viewed in the theater: special effects-laden science fiction and action films, horror films, and comedies. The big screen and surround sound provided by the movie theater offer the ideal setting for the visual and auditory spectacle that is the raison d’être of science fiction and action films. The second two genres — horror and comedy — are all about the affect they produce in the viewer: horror films aim to horrify you and comedies aim to make you laugh. When you see these kinds of films in the theater, with an audience of excited moviegoers who are very much interested in being horrified or being amused, just like you, then the viewing experience is greatly enhanced. I scream a little bit louder and laugh a little bit harder when I share the movie experience with a group of strangers.
Although I had no one to accompany me to the Greenville Grande on Saturday night (for those keeping track, that is the Greenville movie theater that does not smell like pee), I decided that I really did need to go and see Bridesmaids. I’ll be out of town this weekend and given Greenville’s track record with films that don’t contain talking animals or exploding spaceships, I was worried that Bridesmaids might be gone before I had a chance to see it (it is a “chick flick,” after all). It was important for me to see this comedy in the theater, so I went alone. Before you start feeling bad for me, going to see a movie on a Saturday night all by myself, let me assure you: I had a great time. I am not yet in crazy cat lady territory — at least not until after the kids go to college.
When I walked into the theater, I saw that it was packed. This is key for a comedy. The more people who are in the room, the better. Also, I quickly discovered that the gentleman sitting behind me was an unapologetic movie talker. I used to really hate movie talkers. I would sit in my seat and fume away, wondering why this jerk was out to ruin my viewing experience. But now that I have two young children, going out ot the movies is a rare treat (hence the New Year’s resolution), and so I have come to appreciate all the fine nuances of the movie-going experience. And this young man was a real pro. He didn’t modulate his voice at all — his comments were as loud and clear as if he were sitting at home, watching the movie on DVD. And his commentary was completely banal. During the scene in which Annie’s (Kristen Wiig) nutty roommate, Brynn (Rebel Wilson), begins pouring frozen peas over her sore tattoo (as opposed to placing the entire bag on the swollen area), he declared “That chick’s so dumb, man!” Later, when Annie’s crappy little car finally breaks down, he informed the theater, “That car’s a beater!” Yes, Movie Talker, that car sure was a beater. Thanks for the head’s up!
With a comedy I think it’s important to set the tone early, so the audience knows what to expect. So it was fitting that Bridesmaids opened with Annie and her rich, emotionally unavailable “fucky buddy,” Ted (Jon Hamm), having very active, very unsexy, sex. I think it’s a testament to both Kristen Wiig’s and Jon Hamm’s comedic abilities that they were able to take something so inherently sexy — naked Jon Hamm having sex — and make it cringe-worthy and awful. The next morning Annie asks Ted if he wants to start dating. He shoots her down (and the tone of the conversation implies that the subject has come up before) and tells her to head home. The scene culminates with Annie leaving Ted’s opulent home and scaling the large gate at the end of his driveway (she is too much of a doormat to go in and ask him to open it for her). Once she reaches the top of the gate, straddling it like a big, white pony, it begins to move — Ted’s cleaning lady has opened it from the other side. So Annie is forced to ride the gate, in what has to be the ultimate “walk/ride of shame.” As this scene built to this wonderful visual gag, the audience was roaring, and I knew I was in for a good night.
What I liked best about Bridesmaids was the way that it mixed together different kinds of humor. Yes, it gives us Annie straddling an electronic gate, shame and humiliation radiating from her small frame. Yes, it gives us Megan (Melissa McCarthy) making fat jokes at her own expense, inviting us to laugh at her body and the possibility of its sexuality (I had some problems with this character). And yes, we see Lillian (Maya Rudolph), the beautiful bride-to-be, decked out in a gorgeous vintage wedding gown, just so that its many layers can hide her uncontrollable diarrhea. Which she makes in the middle of the street.
Beyond this easy humor (for the record, I loved the vomit/shit scene), the movie also offers humor based on the realities of women’s lives. As a mother, I enjoyed hearing bridesmaid Rita (Wendi McClendon-Covey) deflate bridesmaid Becca’s (Ellie Kemper) rosy illusions about motherhood. When Becca, a newlywed, gushes about how s “beautiful” motherhood must be, Rita enlightens her: “The other night I was making a lovely dinner for my family, and my youngest son came in and said he wanted to order a pizza. I said ‘No, we are not ordering a pizza,’ and he said ‘Mom why don’t you go fuck yourself.’ He’s 9.” Later in the film, Rita begs for a bachelorette party in Las Vegas so that she can get away from her children and wear her new “tube top.” I too have a tube top in my closet that never gets worn. Yes, this movie was definitely written by women. By funny women.
I also loved this film because it offered a great protrait of the friendships of women in their thirties — friendships that have endured so many of life’s successes and failures. In particular, the first scene between Annie and Lillian, where they sit eating brunch post-workout, reminded me of so many of my female friendships. These friendships are loud, funny, and often a bit crass. While I was a huge fan of Sex and the City and its brand of “loud/funny/crass” women, their conversations usually just reminded me that I was way less fabulous than Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda. I could covet their clothes and their apartments, but I was not one of them. But in their brunch scene, Annie and Lillian imitate a penis (brilliant!) and spread black cake on their teeth to make each other laugh. They also confide in each other and offer good, reassurring advice.
I loved this friendship and that’s what made Annie’s increasingly bizarre behavior throughout the film make sense. Annie has lost her business, her boyfriend, and her self esteem — her friendship with Lillian is the only great thing she has left. No wonder she becomes threatened when Helen (Rose Byrne) tries to step in as Lillian’s maid of honor and new best friend. I’m not saying that her freak out at Helen’s Parisian-themed bridal shower wasn’t over the top: but it was a little bit cathartic for anyone in the audience who has looked around at a wedding celebration and thought “Seriously?”
A few more highlights:
* We learn, early in the film, that Annie hasn’t really baked anything since her cake shop closed down. But we get one scene in which she painstakingly creates a cupcake masterpeice. We see her rolling out the marzipan, cutting and fashioning it into delicate petals, and then painting each leaf. The finished product, a single, perfect, flower-topped gem, is gorgeous. Annie stares at her masterpiece, without any sense of triumph or passion … and then shoves it in her mouth.
* While I was a little frustrated with the character of Megan (why must the plus size woman play the most buffoonish role?), I did adore the scene on the plane in which she interrogates a man (Ben Falcone) whom she believes to be a federal marshall. It’s not that their conversation was all that funny — they were discussing the pros and cons of concealing a weapon in one’s butt — but I loved that the man (played by McCarthy’s real life husband) was clearly amused, rather than annoyed, by Megan’s paranoid theories. Rather than angrily dismissing her, he engages her and asks questions about how a gun concealed in the butt could actually be practical. The scene could have been absurd, but it was playful instead. Someone could have actually had that conversation on a plane.
*Finally, Annie’s love interest, Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd), was just wonderful. I believed that a girl like Annie would fall for a guy like him (and if she didn’t, well, that would be okay too. The movie’s success does not depend on Annie’s heterosexual coupling). When Rhodes and Annie finally get to make out, after lots of sexual tension, he is so delighted that he declares, mid-kiss, “I’m so glad this is happening!” That scene made me feel happy for Annie.
In conclusion, it is very clear not just that women wrote this movie, but that jokes based on the specific experiences of women, are funny. So go fuck yourself, Christopher Hitchens. No really, go fuck yourself Christopher Hitchens. The reason why there aren’t more great, funny, female-focused films out there has nothing to do with the inherent unfunniness of women. It has to do with fears within the industry that a female-centered comedy will die at the box office. So I beg you, people: go see this movie. Show Hollywood that this is the kind of film that everyone, not just women, wants to see.
For more great reasons to see this film, check out Annie Petersen’s post here.
I’m also interested in hearing your thoughts: did you enjoy Bridesmaids and why? Or do you feel its overrated? What are some other female-centered comedies or female comedians who make you laugh?
“THE HILLS, JERSEY SHORE, and the Aesthetics of Class”
Over the last two years I have found myself writing a lot about MTV reality shows, including The City, Teen Mom, Jersey Shore, and The Real World. And a solid chunk of the text in this blog is devoted to The Hills. What the hell is wrong with me?
Rather than trying to end my MTV addiction, I’ve decided instead to try to pinpoint what is so fascinating to me about these programs. And I think what interests me the most is how popular, MTV-produced reality shows address their target teenage audiences. I’m interested in how these programs and their paratexts—including companion websites, message boards, tabloid news stories, and the various pet projects of its celebrity cast members—shape and encourage not only consumer choices, but lifestyle choices as well.
If MTV describes itself as “the world’s premier youth entertainment brand” and “the cultural home of the millennial generation,” then I’m interested in how programs like The Hills, Teen Mom, Jersey Shore, and The Real World work to educate and instruct this Millennial generation about appropriate sex, gender, race, class, and consumer roles. I’d also like to start looking at versions of these programs on other channels, like BET (Baldwin Hills, Harlem Heights) and the UK’s ITV2 (The Only Way Is Essex).
I also want to write about how the aesthetics of these reality programs serves to frame the viewing experience. To that end, I’ve published a piece over at FLOW that examines the visual style of The Hills and Jersey Shore. If you’d like to read it, click here. Otherwise, you should click here.
MILDRED PIERCE, PARTS 4 & 5: Glendale Sucks!
If you are one of the five people who has been keeping up with my Mildred Pierce recaps, please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay. The final two installments of Todd Hayne’s miniseries clocked in at 2 1/2 hours and I simply could not stay awake to watch the final half hour on Sunday night.
Parts 4 and 5 of Mildred Pierce are all about location: where characters live, where they want to live, and how where we’re from indelibly marks us. So it is fitting that Part 4 opens with a establishing shot of the ocean. Seagulls alight on the beach and then fly away again. We soon find out that this is Laguna Beach (before it was Laguna Beach). Mildred (Kate Winslet) and Lucy (Melissa Leo) have come here to check out a new location for her restaurant. From their conversation we discover that Mildred has already opened a second restaurant in Beverly Hills and that the Laguna location would be her third. Mildred plans to serve her signature chicken and waffles dinners, the dinners that have served her so well, but Lucy has a different idea. Lucy explains that when people are vacationing at the beach they want “a shore dinner”: fish, crab, lobster and maybe a steak. Mildred balks at the idea but Lucy is insistent. When the restaurant opens later in the episode, Mildred is surprised to see that her wealthy patrons want to eat outside on the patio. Moments like these reveal the divide between Mildred, hard-working but always working class, and the upper class clientele she serves. She might be serving them food and taking their money, but she will never truly understand them. The distance between Glendale and Pasadena is too great.
Veda, who is now 17-years-old and played with haughty perfection by Evan Rachel Wood, is all too aware of this distance. When her piano teacher dies suddenly, she must seek out a new one. Of course, Veda being Veda decides that she can only work with the best, a snooty Italian conductor, Carlo Treviso (Ronald Guttman). Halfway through Veda’s audition he gently closes the piano cover, as she is still playing, which is a total dick move. She flees the audition, sobbing (as she did in Part 3), and Mildred attempts to comfort her daughter, but her encouraging words enrage Veda, “You think I’m hot stuff, don’t you?” she spits, “Well I’m not, there’s one like me in every Glendale!” Veda’s point is that she is a big fish in a little pond, just like her mother. And if her mother were more cultured, more high-class, then she would realize how average and ordinary her daughter’s talents are. In other words, Mildred’s love and admiration for her daughter mean nothing to Veda because of who Mildred is: she is Glendale. And Glendale is filled with middle brow people with middle brow tastes, people who don’t know the first thing about “real” piano playing talent or the necessity of wearing tight turtlenecks. Did you know, by the way, that Veda hates Glendale?
Veda hates the ordinariness of Glendale/Mildred because she fears (or possibly knows), that deep down, she might be Glendale too. Mildred’s success in the restaurant and pie business is the result of hard work, sacrifice, intelligence, and perseverance, all qualities that Mildred values. However, it is precisely these qualities that Veda hates. Because anyone can work hard. Anyone can persevere. But only a few special people are born with true class and true talent. Veda desperately wants to be one of those special people and hates her mother for not bestowing this specialness on her at birth. This becomes painfully clear during my second favorite scene of the miniseries. Mildred has just discovered Veda’s plans to blackmail the son of a Hollywood director and she questions why her daughter would need this money, “I’ve never denied you anything, anything money could buy I’ve given you.” Veda replies:
“With enough money I can get away from you and your pie wagons and your chickens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from Glendale and its dollar days and its furniture factories. Women who wear uniforms and men who wear smocks. From every rotten, stinking thing that reminds me of this place or you!”
Oh man, what a speech! Where to begin? First, Veda borrows Monty’s (Guy Pearce) words when she refers to Mildred’s “pie wagons,” the chain of restaurants that have created the life of privilege Veda now enjoys (and resents). She is a young Monty in the making. Veda also elaborates on what she hates so much about Glendale: people work in Glendale. There are furniture factories and department stores with … gasp … dollar days! Obviously, Veda would never buy anything on sale. But what is most interesting about this speech is Veda’s anger over “women who wear uniforms and men who wear smocks.” Veda clings to old-fashioned notions about gender. Specifically, she resents that her mother has taken on the role of breadwinner in her home, that her mother emasculated her father, and that Mildred takes “what she needs” from the men around her.
So Mildred kicks Veda out, Mildred is sad, and we get lots of sad, long takes of Mildred alone in Glendale, staring longingly at photographs of her two departed daughters. And what has Veda been doing all of this time? Apparently, Veda is a magnificent singer, a rare singer known as a coloratura soprano. She is so magnificent that mean old Treviso begged her to be his student. I am willing to buy that Veda is suddenly this amazing singer. But I do find it odd that, with all of her training and exposure to music instructors, Veda has only discovered this rare talent at the age of 18?
After so many months apart, Mildred is desperate to win Veda back. She runs into Monty (Guy Pearce), her old flame, and she makes the impulsive decision to purchase his withering estate. Monty even adjusts the price to account for all the money he borrowed from her years ago. What a great guy! He also gives her some oral sex, which she clearly appreciates, but then Mildred has to ruin all that sex and purchasing of expensive real estate by deciding that she and Monty should get married. Really Mildred? Really? Monty agrees, but only because he senses that to say no would mean that the real estate deal would fall through. And damn it, tight turtlenecks don’t come cheap!
Did I mention that this final segment of the miniseries was 2 1/2 hours long? That is a lot of melodrama! So let’s summarize quickly, shall we? Mildred and Monty get married. Veda shows up at the wedding reception and agrees to move back in with Mommy, now that Mommy is living in Pasadena in a sweet mansion. Mildred gazes longingly at Veda while she sleeps as if she can’t believe that her baby is home again. Veda gets to sing at the Philharmonic. Monty is spending all of Mildred’s money on fancy liquor, jodhpurs, and turtlenecks. Mildred is falling behind on payments and her creditors are pissed. Wally, for some reason, has turned on Mildred (WTF Wally?). Burt (Brian F. O’Byrne) and Mildred decide that they need to borrow money from Veda to save the business and Burt tells Mildred that she’s got to ask Veda for the money now, in the middle of the night!
So Mildred rushes home to look for Veda and can’t find her. She heads to Monty’s quarters (apparently Monty and Mildred no longer sleep together) and guess who’s in bed with Daddy? Yep, it’s Veda! [My favorite scene of the whole miniseries] This revelation is not a surprise for those familiar with the novel or the 1945 film, but Evan Rachel Wood manages to make it shocking by her sheer defiance. As Monty attempts to put the blame on Mildred (he claims that Mildred used him as “bait” to lure Veda home), Veda simply reclines in bed, smoking a cigarette with those blood-red nails of hers. Then, to drive home the point that she really hates her mother, Veda gets out of bed, stark naked, and walks slowly over to the vanity. This is a real “fuck you” walk. It says “I’m young, I’m skinny, I’m beautiful, and I just stole your man. Suck it, Mommy.” She then begins to slowly brush her hair, eyeing her mother through the vanity mirror. Monty approaches and puts a robe around Veda’s shoulders, which is the final straw for Mildred. She lunges at her daughter, knocking her to the ground, and begins to strangle her. She only stops when Monty pries her hands from her daughter’s throat. Then, in a moment of perfect melodrama, Veda dashes down the steps to the piano, and tries to sing. All that comes out is a hoarse moan. Veda collapses on the very expensive Oriental rug, gasping and crying.
When we next see our characters, it is a few months (weeks?) later. Mildred and Burt have just returned from Reno, where Mildred got a divorce and then remarried her ex-husband. Because, of course. They decide to move back into the Glendale house, which will, in the 1990s, become the home of the Walsh family of Minnesota. Veda shows up to wish her parents well. Her voice is nearly healed and she’s headed to New York City (at last, no more Glendale!). Apparently, her old sponsors, Pleasant Cigarette, dropped her after her mother strangled her, which conveniently freed Veda up for a far more lucrative contract with Consolidated Foods. So what we are supposed to understand is that Veda was hoping her mother would attack her? That being caught in flagrante delicto was the only way for her to get out of her old contract? I find it all to be very far-fetched. but it’s enough for Mildred to finally decide that she is done with Veda. Weeping over Veda for the last time, Mildred retreats to the original pie wagon, where Burt urges, “To hell with her.” Mildred agrees, “All right, Burt, to hell with her.” Then they decide to get “stinko,” which is an old-timey word for getting shit-faced drunk.
Overall, I found this ending to be very unsatisfying. I understand that the HBO version is a faithful retelling of James M. Cain’s novel. However, I much prefer the ending to the original Mildred Pierce (1945, Michael Curtiz), in which Veda murders Monty because he refuses to marry her, and Mildred attempts to take the blame. No matter what Veda did, and no matter how angry Mildred became, she never gave up on her daughter. And maybe this Mildred hasn’t given up either. Maybe getting drunk and declaring “To hell with her!” is the only way Mildred can deal with her daughter’s betrayal.
So, for those managed to read through this very, very long recap, what did you think? Did you enjoy this miniseries? Was it worth 5 1/2 hours of your life?
MILDRED PIERCE PART 3: Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner
Part 3 of Mildred Pierce opens with a close up of a child’s doll. The camera then tracks over to a set of feet on a bed. The camera makes its way up the sleeping body and we see that this is Mildred Pierce (Kate Winslet), huddled in bed with her oldest daughter, Veda (Morgan Turner), who is also asleep. Mildred wakes with a start, momentarily forgetting why she is in bed with Veda. Then she glances over at the second, empty bed across the room and remembers that her youngest is dead. As the full weight of this memory begins to register, her face crumples and she squeezes Veda once more. Losing a child is unthinkable. But to momentarily forget this loss, and to remember it anew each morning, is a particular form of torture.
But, Mildred does not dwell on her youngest daughter’s untimely death for too long. We see her select the clothing that her daughter will be buried in (a ballerina costume and pink socks), we see the tiny coffin being carried from the hearse to the cemetery, and we see Mildred take her black dress and place it, decisively, in the back of her closet. This final act signals Mildred’s ability to compartmentalize her life. After all, she has a restaurant to open and Veda’s new grand piano isn’t going to pay for itself! So in the very next scene Mildred is haggling over chickens at the poultry farm, buying produce, and taking money out of her bank account. While in many ways the impending opening of the restaurant is poorly timed, it is probably exactly what Mildred needed to distract her from her daughter’s death. It is much easier to work hard than it is to mourn.
The preparations for Mildred’s opening night appear in a montage of furious cooking: Mildred butchers chickens, shells peas, and chops vegetables. She instructs her waitstaff on how meals should be ordered and prepared (chicken and waffles or chicken and vegetables, everyone gets biscuits). When customers begin pouring in (Wally launched an effective direct mail campaign), Mildred realizes that she is understaffed. Once again, Ida (Mare Winningham) and Lucy (Melissa Leo) come to the rescue, expediting the service and clearing tables. Once again, the miniseries makes clear that while Mildred can depend on some men like Wally (James LeGros), it is the women in her life who are her true safety net.
After closing up for the night, the entire waitstaff, plus Veda, Monty (Guy Pearce), Wally, Bert (Brian F. O’Byrne), Ida, and Lucy gather outside to toast the new restaurant’s success (they made 47 dollars!). Veda even hugs her mother in a rare moment of public affection. But almost immediately the entire group falls silent, aware that their joy is an affront. Nobody mentions Ray by name, but her ghost is there, an absent presence.
But that’s pretty much the last we’ll hear of Ray in this episode. The remainder of Part 3 works to establish the increasingly frustrating, increasingly dysfunctional relationship between Mildred and Monty. I spent a lot of this installment yelling at Monty and his silly Hitler mustache: “No Monty, Mildred does not want to have sex with you tonight! Her daughter just died!” But then, Monty does something totally creepy involving his toe and Mildred’s matronly underthings, and boom, they’re screwing. This happens a lot in Part 3. Mildred is angry or annoyed, Monty drops trou, and then it’s sexytime.
Mildred is no fool: she knows that Monty is a snob and that he looks down on her for being a working woman. Even worse, Monty is financially dependent on Mildred — he is above working but dependent on those who work. At one point he derisively refers to Mildred’s, the restaurant that is keeping him in handmade shoes and polo club memberships, as “the Pie Wagon.” But I think Monty sticks around for more than just the money. I think he also likes the idea of “slumming it” with Mildred and her shapely, working class legs. As he tells young Veda: “The best legs are found in kitchens, not drawing rooms.”
But why does Mildred keep Monty around? First, she’s flattered. Remember that Mildred is also a snob. Although she knows that she lacks the pedigree her daughter craves and that Monty claims to have, she still loves the idea of old money. Monty may be broke, but the dude is classy. Have you seen those white turtlenecks? And Monty exploits Mildred’s insecurities about her social standing. When Mildred visits Monty’s cold, empty family estate in order to end their relationship, she berates him for taking her money and disdaining her at the same time. But Monty knows what buttons to push. He actually makes Mildred feel low class for caring about money. “Maybe I was mistaken,” he sniffs, “You never were a lady” (or something like that). The scene culminates with Mildred tossing a crumpled up 10 dollar bill in Monty’s face (to prove that she doesn’t care about money either) and Monty saying (I kid you not) “All this needs is the crime of rape.” Yes, that is Monty’s version of foreplay. And this is the second reason why Mildred is around. She likes the sex. Especially when the sex involves class-based humiliation and Guy Pearce’s naked behind. Mildred, you are a dirty, dirty birdie.
Part 3 also devotes time to Mildred’s increasing estrangement from her remaining daughter. As Mildred works away in her restaurant, she relies on Monty to entertain her daughter. The last thing a budding snob needs is a bigger snob as her mentor. Indeed, by the end of Part 3, Veda has completely transformed into the venomous bitch that HBO’s previews promised us. Towards the end of the episode, we see Veda opening her Christmas presents. She is still in her pajamas, but she wears a red bow, rouge and red lipstick, all in attempt to look more “mature.” But the make up only highlights how she is still very much a little girl, especially when she begins to smoke a cigarette. Mildred tells her to put it out, but Veda refuses. What Veda won’t articulate (remember, this is a melodrama, and no one says what they really mean) is that she is angry that her mother did not buy her a new grand piano. Mildred had planned to do this, but had to spend the money she saved up on a bar for her restaurant instead (no more Prohibition! Wheee!). Veda wasn’t supposed to know about any of this, but of course, good old Monty spilled the beans because that’s what rich people in tight white turtlenecks do. The fight culminates with Mildred slapping Veda in the face and Veda responding with a slap of her own. Recall that in Part 2, Mildred disciplines Veda with a good, old fashioned spanking. Veda is too old to be spanked , of course, but she sure does deserve it! And she took it. But in Part 3 Veda retaliates, a small taste of what is to come. Now, bring on Evan Rachel Wood!
So what did you think of Part 3? Overall, I found it to be less satisfying than the first two, but maybe I was too distracted by Monty’s Hitler mustache?
MILDRED PIERCE PARTS 1 & 2: Food and Women
Let me begin with a confession: I have been anticipating the premiere of HBO’s adaptation of Mildred Pierce ever since I first heard about the project last spring. Then, there were just a few tantalizing shots of Kate Winslet in red lipstick, looking both stern and forlorn (which is exactly how poor old Mildred must always look). There is very little director Todd Haynes could have done in the premiere to discourage me from watching the rest of the series. Luckily, however, Parts One and Two, which aired last night, were solid (for a look at some more tepid reviews, check out James Poniewozik and Alan Sepinwall).
I am a huge fan of the first Mildred Pierce, Michael Curtiz’s 1945 adaptation of the James M. Cain novel of the same name. The film is amazing for so many reasons: Joan Crawford’s Academy Award-winning performance, its explicit (and fairly radical) commentary on the limits that gender places on women, that beautiful, beautiful cinematography, etc. But Mildred Pierce remains one of my favorite classic Hollywood films because it deftly blends film noir with the maternal melodrama. If you are an aficionado of American film genres as I am, then you know that film noir and melodrama are considered to be “modes” of filmmaking, rather than coherent genres in their own right. Unlike the gangster film or the Western, these two modes cannot be defined by a specific setting, nor do they have consistent plot formulas or conventions. Rather, these two modes of filmmaking transcend generic boundaries, so that we can speak of noir-science fiction films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, Robert Wise) and Western melodramas like Brokeback Mountain (2005, Ang Lee). In other words, noir and melodrama are like a cloak that other films (generic or not) can try on as way to compliment, but not consume, their own unique elements. So while Mildred Pierce is a drama about the plight of the American woman of the 1930s and 1940s, who is constantly subject to the whims of the lecherous, selfish men around her, it is also a tortuous account of a mother sacrificing everything for the happiness of her children (maternal melodrama) and a murder mystery that begins at the end and then winds its way backwards to discover the truth (film noir). This is an amazing combination. For me, that’s the cinematic equivalent of carrot cake cheesecake. Have you ever had that? They actually mix carrot cake together with the cheesecake!
Since I mentioned cheesecake, let’s move on with this review. After its simple and decade appropriate Art Deco credits (love!), Part One of the miniseries opens with a pair of busy hands making biscuits and pies. We see close ups of perfectly crafted pie crusts awaiting their bright lemon custard fillings and stiff white meringue toppings. Yes, this is food porn. Indeed, throughout the first two parts of the miniseries, Haynes gives loving attention to food. Some might view these scenes as slow, but I enjoyed Haynes’ “elastic attitude towards time,” to quote Matt Zoller Seitz’s recap in Salon:
TV has permission to do this — settle into a scene the way you might settle into a warm bath, and linger. And yet it rarely avails itself of this privilege. On most scripted TV dramas, as in most movies, the mentality is more often “Just get on with it!” All climax, no foreplay, as it were.
Yes, we gets lots and lots of food foreplay here, but it serves a purpose. As in all melodramas, Mildred Pierce‘s mise en scène serves a specific narrative and thematic function. In his famous essay “Tale of Sound of Fury,” Thomas Elsaesser argues that the melodrama is an expressive code, a form of dramatic mise en scène. Specifically, in the domestic melodrama of the 1940s and 1950s, the scope of action is restricted. All of the turmoil is happening inside the characters, rather than outside. Characters want to speak and act, but social decorum, class restrictions, and pride prevent them from doing so. And so the mise en scène becomes a vehicle for helping to express the tense emotions roiling just below the surface. In the image, below, for example, Mildred is carefully decorating a cake as she carefully points out to her husband that most folks wait to water their lawns until later in the day (so that the water isn’t dried up by the heat of the late day sun). But Bert (Brian F. O’Byrne) has watered the grass early in an effort to meet up with his mistress. She lays out her reasoned argument, bit by bit, as she adds small decorative details to the cake (a cake she must make because her husband is no longer supporting the family financially). Thus, in Mildred Pierce extended, loving shots of food offer us insight into characters, their experiences, and their emotions.
Along the same lines, the opening shots of Mildred’s impressive pastry skills signify not only that Mildred is talented, but also that she is a hard worker and a perfectionist, two traits that are central to her character’s development over the course of the story. Furthermore, it is significant that Mildred’s talents are definitively domestic. When Mildred goes looking for work after good-for-nothing husband, Bert, leaves her to fend for herself and their daughters, she discovers that she has “no skills.” Her head hunter reminds her that as a housewife she is only qualified for domestic work: waitressing and housekeeping. But what we know, and what it takes Mildred about 75 minutes of screen time to realize, is that her seemingly useless “feminine” skill set will eventually lead to the creation of an empire. An empire of PIE!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. To return to the mise en scène of food: one of my favorite shots of the miniseries so far is an extreme close up of the ham sandwich Mildred orders after a discouraging day of trying to find work. Mildred has spent her morning pounding the pavement and becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the only jobs available are in the service industry. Mildred, you see, is a bit of a snob. As she explains to her neighbor/confidante, Lucy (Melissa Leo in another “feisty role”), she has something inside of her, pride or possibly nobility, which makes it difficult for her to accept a job in which she must kowtow to class-based roles and take commands from others. This, we are told, is why young Veda (Morgan Turner), her first born, is such a shit; she’s her mother’s daughter.
Anyway, at this point, we know that Mildred has little money to buy food. In an earlier scene Mildred calls a customer to see if she wants her usual order of baked goods, while fixing her daughters breakfast. When the woman declines we see Mildred pause, and then decisively cut a sausage in half, placing a serving on each girl’s plate. Mildred’s breakfast is a single triangle of toast; she starves herself so her daughters can eat. Therefore, I was relieved to see Mildred order herself a ham sandwich. When the meal arrives, Haynes offers an aerial shot: the bright white plate matching the white bread, the bright pink of the ham, and a dish of mostly-white coleslaw. Unlike the elaborate, sustaining meals we have seen Mildred prepare in her own home, this meal is devoid of color, and we can only assume, flavor. As Mildred chews her sandwich, she looks around the diner, overhearing a conversation in which two men discuss the Great Depression and how the lack of jobs is only going to increase. This is the turning point for Mildred — does she want a lifetime of tasteless sandwiches or is she going to swallow her pride and do whatever it takes to feed her family?
Moments later, a job opens up in the diner and Mildred takes it. Yes, this job is in the service industry, but unlike the housekeeping position offered by Mrs. Forrester (Hope Davis), a cruel snob, this job is filled with female allies. True, head waitress, Ida (Mare Winningham) bosses Mildred around, corrects her techniques, and ultimately tells her she did a terrible job on her first day. But we know that what Ida is actually doing is helping Mildred. She’s making her into a good waitress, and Mildred needs to be a good waitress.
This leads me to the second thing I loved about this mini-series: its focus on women. This is a world in which men use women to fulfill their sexual desires, keep their homes clean, raise their children, and support them in their careers. When they’ve had enough, the women are tossed aside to become “grass widows,” an American institution. Men control and limit Mildred’s actions: Bert leaves her financially destitute, Wally (an unrecognizable and totally awesome James LeGros) takes advantage of her new status as “grass widow” (though we get the sense that Mildred was a little bit horny and didn’t mind this too much), and Mildred is dependent upon people like Bert, Wally, and Monte (Guy Pearce) to finance her restaurant. Nevertheless, Mildred Pierce celebrates the bonds between women. Her neighbor, Lucy, fills in the holes left by Bert’s absence: she makes excuses for leaving “left overs” in Mildred’s fridge so that the proud woman won’t go hungry and she (rightly) urges Mildred to keep her new job as a waitress.
*SPOILERS LURK BELOW! PROCEDE WITH CAUTION!*
And then, of course, there are the bonds between mothers and daughters. This female relationship forms the heart of Mildred Pierce. Motherhood is what motivates Mildred to get past her own pride, look for work until her heels bleed, refrain from bad-mouthing her husband in front of her daughters, and to spend any extra money she earns on food and clothing for her daughter (notice that for most of Parts One and Two, Mildred can be seen wearing just one “nice” dress). When Ray dies at the end of Part Two (I won’t say much about this since, as I’ve noted elsewhere, I have difficulties watching and dealing with the death of children on film and television), we know Mildred’s fate is sealed. The love she had for her two daughters will now be channeled into one, all-consuming love for Veda. That’s the thing about maternal love. It may change forms, but it doesn’t disappear. And love like that can be dangerous (see, for example, Toni Morrison’s Beloved). So far I have yet to pick up on the noir aspects of this story, but with Mildred’s and Veda’s unhealthy relationship established at the end of Part Two, the twisted tale of jealousy and deceit that ends in murder is just around the corner.
A Few Other Things:
* When Mildred is sitting in the diner eating her nasty ham sandwich, we hear two young women discussing Greta Garbo. One of the women mentions that she loves Garbo so much she could watch her sleep. Then both women declare in unison, “Garbo snores!” This conversation is intended to serve as a contrast to the more “serious” economic discussion the two men near them are having. But it’s also a great little nugget for film buffs who remember the tagline from Garbo’s first talking picture, Anna Christie (1930), “Garbo talks!”
* I am (or rather, was) smitten with Mildred’s youngest daughter, Ray (Quinn McColgan), because she is almost exactly like my own daughter: a motor mouth who will talk and talk and talk, even when no one is listening (she, too, is her mother’s daughter). Ray is always recreating scenes from films, such as when she performs the famous moment when James Cagney is shot in Public Enemy (1931), “I’m not so tough!” That’s one of my favorite movie scenes (and is at the center of the arguments I make about the links between gangster films and melodrama in the first chapter of my book).
* Todd Haynes is killing the cinematography so far. Everything is a feast for the eyes. I swooned over the 30s era fashions while my husband swooned over the automobiles (yes, I see the gender breakdown there, but I’m being honest).
* Once again Kate Winslet’s boobs appear on screen. When I mentioned this to my husband he noted, “Well, those boobs won her an Oscar. Maybe they’ll win her an Emmy too.” Leave it to the software programmer to come up with the most cynical yet succinct summary of Winslet’s career that I’ve ever heard.
So what did you think of Parts One and Two of Mildred Pierce? Too long? Too slow? Will you watch again? And most importantly, did it make you want to eat some pie? Please share your thought below.
REAL WORLD, I Wish I Knew How to Quit You
As a child of the 1980s, I was literally raised on MTV. I’m not using the word “literally” here in the way that my students do (“Dude, I was literally puking my brains out last night!”). I mean: I spent so many hours of my youth watching music videos that I could argue that the music station raised me. It shaped my musical predilections (I still love 80s music), my fashion tastes (yep, still fond of leggings), and my idols (to me, Hall & Oates will always be cool). When MTV started airing original programming, I watched that too. My favorite show was Remote Control, a game show that rewarded the one thing that I did best — watch TV! The show’s theme song really spoke to me “Kenny wasn’t like the other kids, TV mattered, nothing else did. Girls said yes but he said no! Now he’s got his own game show. Remote Control!” Finally, something I could win. But I needed to be 18 to play. Needless to say, I was devastated when the show was cancelled in 1990.
In 1992, when the wonderful first season of The Real World premiered, I was there to see it. The season enthralled because it was the first time that I had ever seen “a group of seven strangers picked to live in a house and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” How could they agree to this? Were they crazy? I was also enthralled because the first cast was filled with such fascinating people. They had interesting careers and career aspirations: a folk singer, an indie rocker, a rapper, a poet, a model, a painter, and a wide-eyed, young Southerner. As a 16-year-old living in central Pennsylvania I loved seeing these smart, artistic people, living together in New York City, putting up with each other’s differences, arguing, and coming to resolutions, however brief. They were very different from my 16-year-old peers. And their conversations were way more interesting.
From that season on, I was hooked and watched almost every season of The Real World up until Back to New York in 2001. At that point my reality TV plate was pretty full, what with American Idol, Survivor, and Temptation Island all vying for my attention. I didn’t miss it too much. But then, in 2002, the Las Vegas season happened. The scene that pulled me back in was the one in which Trishelle, Brynn, and Steven make out in a hot tub. If memory serves, they had only known each other for a few hours (though really, when is the “appropriate” time for a three-way in a hot tub?). I was appalled and intrigued by the sleaziness and the exhibitionism of these well-toned twentysomethings. I was back in.
Although this version of The Real World was quite different from the series I had originally fallen in love with, I remained fascinated with each new casts’ total incapacity for introspection or self reflection. They seemed to exist in a perpetual now. They’re like those birds that keep flying into the same glass window day after day. This is the mindset of the typical Real World cast member. The same mistakes are made over and over — they get drunk and make asses of themselves, they throw themselves at lovers who just aren’t interested, they shirk commitments made to employers and to each other — and yet, no one emerges any wiser. When these situations blow up in their faces, they’re usually surprised. Just like those birds. “Why am I puking my brains out? Why is there a window there?”
I suppose I also enjoyed watching these young people screw up because it reminded me of what I was like in my early twenties. I often drank too much and made an ass of myself. I too fell in love with the wrong people. I let down bosses, friends, and family. This is the how life is when you are old enough to live on your own, but too young to concern yourself with living a responsible life. To see this behavior so raw and bare on my television screen reassured me about my own youth. Or rather, it reassured me that my youth had passed. I was no longer that out of control 20-year-old. I had stopped flying into windows. So I continued to watch The Real World, basking in the Schadenfreude of it all … until Cancun and Ayiiia made me rethink the series.
Ayiiia is an ideal Real World cast member: she is young, physically fit, a heavy drinker, aggressive, outspoken, thin-skinned, and, unfortunately, mentally unstable. MTV has a history of casting mentally unstable people whose exposure to MTV’s unrelenting cameras ultimately drives them to perform an onscreen freak out or breakdown (see Irene from Seattle, Frankie from San Diego, Paula from Key West, Ryan from the most recent season in New Orleans). True, Ayiiia was not picked by MTV’s producers; she was the winner of a contest in which MTV fans were allowed to choose the final cast member for the Cancun house. Nevertheless, all potential cast members for the show are subject to background checks and psychological evaluations. The producers would have known about Ayiiia’s history of self mutilation. Now, I’m not saying that The Real World shouldn’t feature cast members who are struggling with addictions, phobias, or even fatal diseases. Pedro Zamora is a great example of how casting someone with a particular ailment, in his case, HIV, creates an opportunity for dialogue and awareness.
People who self mutilate do so under extreme stress. When they feel angry or powerless or attacked, they will cut and tear at their own skin as a way to manage their pain. And being on The Real World is highly stressful. By the end of any given season, almost every cast member has been involved in at least one screaming match with another roommate. And many of these battles are ongoing, cropping up whenever two particularly hot-headed roommates are forced to interact and work together. Indeed, roommates are cast because they are likely to fight with one another. It’s like placing a mongoose and a cobra into a glass case and then wondering why there’s blood all over the walls.
Sure enough, after weeks of constant fighting with her roommates, Ayiiia began cutting herself again. And after watching this season I felt complicit in this young woman’s pain and exploitation and so I gave the series up all together. And my husband promised to stop watching too. However, a few months later, I came home from teaching to find my husband curled up on the couch watching the premiere of The Real World: Washington, D.C. “What are you doing?” I demanded, “We quit this show!” My husband replied “But I didn’t even record it!The DVR just…did it. And there was nothing else to watch.”
And just like that, I was back in it. Now I find myself watching season 25 (!) of The Real World. As I sat through the first two episodes last weekend, I felt like I was trapped in the movie Groundhog’s Day. Everything I was seeing, I had already seen before. For example, when Heather, an attractive young blonde, introduces herself to the MTV audience she tells us, “I’m very impulse driven. I do what I want to do.” And this makes you different from every other college student how? Later, Heather is gobsmacked by the differences between Leroy, a sexually frank, adventurous African American, and Michael, a sexually naive, sheltered Caucasian, “They just couldn’t be any more different!” she marvels. Later on, Adam, a former juvenile delinquent, calls his “girlfriend” (those are MTV’s quotation marks, not mine) and complains: “Some of these people might not like me because they’re completely different from me.” This is true. But they may also not like Adam because he gets black out drunk on his second or third night with the roommates, acts the fool, and refuses to apologize for his awful behavior. It’s a good thing that Nany is probably going to reward his douche-y behavior by becoming “his girl” (and dumping her long term boyfriend back home). Yes, Nany, I’m sure Adam will treat you much better than the string of women he has already brought home for one-night stands.
There are many good reasons why I should stop watching The Real World once and for all: each season blends into the next; many of the young people cast on the series are mentally ill and should not be placed in situations where their vulnerabilities can be provoked and exploited; and finally, there is so much great TV out there, do I really need to spend one hour a week on this? But I will keep watching. Not because it’s a great program, but because I can’t quite give up my MTV just yet.
Compulsory Masculinity on the JERSEY SHORE
When criticizing an artifact of popular culture people often toss out hyperboles like “It’s everything that’s wrong with this world.” Well, you know what? Jersey Shore really is everything that’s wrong with this world. Nothing is more useless than an underemployed twentysomething reality television star with an inflated sense of ego and the relentless desire to press his or her naughty parts against the naughty parts of drunken reality TV groupies (the worst kind of drunken groupies). And Jersey Shore employs seven of these individuals (the eighth cast member, Sammi, mercifully exited the show a few weeks ago). It’s not just that I know I could spend my limited television viewing time more productively (8 Firefly episodes await me on my Netflix instant queue); I know that a lot of the behaviors I’m watching are highly problematic and that they’re being played for laughs.
I don’t approve of grenade whistles (c’mon, that’s just too mean folks):
But how can I stay mad at a show that gave me this?
Also, I can’ stop watching Jersey Shore because I can’t stop writing about it (click here for my thoughts on why the Jersey Shore men are like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). This week I’m writing about Jersey Shore for Antenna. You can read it here. And please do feel free to comment and join the discussion at Antenna. That kind of thing warms my heart. Thanks!
BLACK SWAN, Cinematic Excess, and the Full Body Experience
No, I haven’t written a new blog post. January has been a crazy month! January’s been so crazy, in fact, that it has bled into February. I plan to write more in the next few months. But until then, please to enjoy my thoughts about Black Swan and the power of those icky, cuticle-pulling scenes in the latest issue of Flow TV, online now.
Click here to read.
judgmental observer 
