I wanted to write a little more about the discussion we had in class about the word mother vs. mama or mommy and how that translated in the film, The Help.  I think that the word ‘mother’ is used to represent someone who birth a child, but the words ‘mommy’ or ‘mama’ are words for someone who is actually a parental figure in someones life.

This is applicable to the film between Aibileene and Elizabeth Leefolts daughter.  It is very clear from the beginning of the film, how much of a ‘mom’ Aibeleene is for this girl.  She tucks her into bed and even potty trains her.  In the movie we don’t even see Elizabeth Leefolt holding her daughter in a single scene.  When Aibeleene is holding the little girl in her arms after Elizabeth Leefolt pulls out of the drive way to do who knows what, she says “you’re my real mommy Aibee” which is a line that stood out to me during the whole movie.

The fact that she calls her ‘mommy’ adds to what I mentioned earlier.  Mrs. Leefolt is her biological mother and birthed the little girl, but she is absent in her life pretty much.  The only time she expresses any concern for her daughter is when she might get dirty germs from Aibileen by standing too close to Aibileen’s designated bathroom stall.  Aibileen on the other hand is the little girls “mommy.” She love this girl so much and it is so apparent how much the little girl loves and appreciate her as well.

The scene where Aibileen is asked to leave by Mrs. Leefolt broke my heart and made my teary-eyed.  The little girl says “Don’t go Aibee!” which is another example of how important  Aibileen is to her and how she loves her so much.  When Aibileen walks out of the Leefolt household, the camera shows the little girl banging at the window and calling for Aibileen as she walks away.  That was such a powerful scene, and the fact that Mrs. Leefolt just stands there and doesn’t even comfort her little girl while she is sad goes to show how much of a terrible mother she is.

Connecting back to Kaplan’s article “The Case of The Missing Mother,” I would identify Mrs. Leefolt to be a bad mother/witch because she doesn’t love her children a way a “mom” should.  The fact that she got pregnant with another one towards the end of the film and doesn’t have Aibileen’s help scares me a bit because she doesn’t seem to know a thing about parenting, since she has no experience with it.  I would identify Aibileen as a heroic mother because she leaves her family to work and sacrifices not being with her son to take care of Mrs. Leefolts daughter.  She not only is a nanny to her, but she loves her as if she was her own child which is very clear in the film.

So I’ve shared and discussed the following video in other FAMS classes but in all honesty this is my first WGS class. Therefore I’m curious to hear a more varied reaction.

Video

original article

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/construction-workers-yell-messages-empowerment-women-snickers-stunt-156541

http://notherapedocumentary.org/another-black-feminist-critique

The clip and other critiques from today is at the end of this article.

“The New Yorker: Against Nature – Elisabeth Badinter’s Contrarian Feminism” by Jane Kramer

• Elisabeth Badinter polled France’s “most influential intellectual” in 2011

o   Believes that young women are “falling victim to sociobiological fictions that reduce them to the status of female mammals, programmed to the ‘higher claims’ of womb and breast.”

o   Wrote 5 bestsellers on feminism

o   1^st: “Lamour en Plus” : a history of the changing notions of mother love

o   Dismisses the myth of maternal instinct as a somewhat “cultural construct”

o   Latest book: “Le Conflit: La Femme et la Mère”

• Analysis of what she sees as a “spreading cult of ‘motherhood fundamentalism’ in the West
• Denounces the model of motherhood : “that primitive idea that nature is God” – “I have a horror of that naturalistic ideology”
• Questions just what we mean when we say “maternal instincts”
• Feminist guide to her readers
  • Sees a conspiracy against women’s freedom, fuelled by economically uncertain times and religion
  • Calls it “an identity crisis perhaps unprecedented in human history”
• Badinter rarely mentions her mother, who worked for “Elle” magazine – says the relationship between mothers and daughters is “complicated”

o   Had a very special/profound relationship with her father

o   Suspects that most strong women have fathers like hers

o   Married a man 14 years older, had 3 children in 3 ½ years because “he was older and he wanted it”

• Always had an au pair for her children—couldn’t have completed her exams without one

• Criticism of today’s mothers:

o   Rejects the notion that a child needs “only” its mother

o   Women are falling victim of a movement that is a modern, moral worship of all things natural

• Ex: Won’t use epidurals because they want to “feel” what it is to be a woman
• Idea that if you’re not suffering, you have failed the experience of maternity

• Badinter: You should decide for yourself what’s “right” as a mother
• Kramer asks her: How can equality happen if we will make no exceptions for inequality?

o   Badinter answers: “There are no exact solutions. Women still bear the burdens of private life—home, children, family, and also of work, of public life—and without the equality of private life we will never have the same liberty as men.”

• Questions:

o   The male characters in “The Help” had particularly minor roles, with the exception of Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain)’s husband, Johnny – do you think this was necessary in order to focus on the relationships between the women and establish a sense of female dominance, or could the same effect have been achieved had there been more of a male presence? (Did the female-female dynamic accomplish something that a male-female dynamic couldn’t have?)

o   Badinter rejects the notion that children “only” need their mothers; even though many characters in the film had strained mother-daughter relationships, they still emphasized the role of the maid in raising the children (and still maintained the mother-like figure). So, by her standards, is “The Help” Badinter-approved? Does it display that children don’t really depend on their mothers, or does it show that they need some sort of motherly figure to raise them, even if it is not their biological mother?

After taking a course in psychology, and now reading this article, it is true that Freud is as weird as ever. I am still trying to understand the notion that from birth a child’s first love and fixation is on their mother. I am also curious to talk about the idea of competition between children and their parent of the opposite sex. In relating this back to The Help. I am wondering how this compares to competition with the maids and mothers. If the maid is the one who is tending to the child more than the biological mother, does this mean that the maid becomes the object of love for the child?

The term Mother has always has a dual meaning (for me at least). I offer that the word Mother is usually assigned to the biological carrier of an individual and after that it [mother] takes variations depending on the relationship between child and “mother”. So everyone has a mother [biologically], some have a “mom”, sometimes the mother and mom are one person and some have no mom at all. To link to the article by Kaplan the “mom” takes the role of who the child aspires to be/who they trust and learn from. A mom can come from anywhere there is no need for a biological connection (although in most cases I’d hope that would illicit a stronger connection). I know my definition can get muddled with the different images of mothers that Kaplan discusses or with the idea of image through mother and daughter discussed by Williams but, I believe there is still validity.

To look at the scene in King Vidor’s Stella Dallas (1937), when Stella is watching her daughter Laurel through the window as she is about to be wed. I think we see a shallow representation of the split between mother and mom. Laurel’s mother is outside looking in because she gave up her daughter for her child’s benefit (heroic mother) but Laurel still looks for her mother. Not completely alone, Laurel has a step mother whom she begins to mimic. This is discussed in the Williams article I believe. When she talks about the relationship between mother and daughter and the dynamic of it. (the mother and daughter bond over their lack of penis, the mother passes the image of herself onto her daughter etc)

So to look at Tate Taylor’s The Help (2011) the relationship between Elizabeth Leefolt’s daughter and Aibileen Clark is extremely complex. For the split now has added a dimension to image. Aibileen loves the little girl as if her own and the little girl reciprocates this love stating, “you’re my real mommy Aibi”. That line, to me, was one of the most important lines of the film. For how do we dissect the word Mother/mom/mommy. IS a mother the term for the nurturing, caring, and forgiving parent or is it the biological term for the sex that carries the offspring? Even further into the film Aibileen begins to tell stories about the children she has raised, exclaiming that she had told one little boy that she drank to much coffee to explain her skin color. I know that this dynamic is intriguing to me but I don’t quite know how to tie it in to the readings directly. So how does the idea of race and even biological ties play into what the word “mother” is?

It’s all about the mother/daughter relationship.

In Freud’s theories of sexuality there is an important phase in young development that occurs in both sexes. This is called the Oedipus Complex. In boys it is very simple: boys first love mom, then begin to see father as a threat and competition, and then begin to hate father.

In girls it is more complicated. In girls they first passionately love their mother, then move away from them and then transfer this love to the father.

Freud’s main point in this paper is analyzing and conjecturing about how/why this split from mother to father happens.

This love for their mothers is very strong and lasts much longer than it would in boys. The mystery is then, why the daughters eventually hate their mothers.

A big part of it comes from the castration complex. When a girl is little there is a point where she realizes that she does not have a penis (or what Freud says “the consequent superiority of the male and her own inferiority”). There are 3 lines of development that can come from this for the girl:

1. The girl turns her back on sexuality altogether
2. The girl becomes focused on the idea of eventually getting a penis. She begins to embrace her masculinity. In extreme cases she can become gay
3. the normal feminine attitude in which she takes her father as the love-object (the Oedipus complex)

There are many reasons why Freud guesses why daughters turn on their mothers:

• jealousy of others (father included) and an unsatisfactory love (from a childish all consuming love) makes the daughter find another love (the father)
• the girl blaming her mother for not being male/having a penis.
• Associating the mother for exciting then stopping her sexuality (when she’s young with her phallic masturbation by accident when cleaning the child)
• The mother didn’t breastfeed long enough

These all lead to the daughter eventually turning away from the mother and going towards the father. This really develops a woman’s sexuality. For instance, although she may choose a husband that reminds a woman  of her father, she eventually may treat her husband with hostility/love of her mother. There are still a lot of things that are unsure (some psychologist think that boys and girls Oedipus complex work the same way), so even Freud who is sure they are different, cannot say for sure what occurs during/after this split.

My Question:

In The Help we see many different types of mother/daughter relationships of many different ages. Do we see evidence of the young mother love and do we see evidence of the hated mother relationship?

Also is this theory complicated when there is more than one mother in the case of the help raising these children?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/movies/awardsseason/for-tate-taylor-making-the-help-was-a-tale-of-adversity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

From The Help, a scene that really stuck out to me was the scene in which Skeeter and Charlotte, are positioned in front of the mirror in Charlotte’s room. This scene, one of the first encounters that we are introduced their relationship as mother and daughter. We see that Charlotte is pressuring Skeeter to try on clothes, jewelry, hairstyles that aren’t really her style, in hopes that she would wear such clothes on a date with a man. There are a few seconds where the camera is showing us the reflection of both Charlotte and Skeeter looking into the mirror where Charlotte is standing behind Skeeter. The use of the reflected image of the mirror suggests that what we see of Skeeter and her mother is symbolic of the way that Charlotte wants her daughter to reflect herself. Additionally, because Charlotte is standing behind Skeeter, she wants to exert some sort of dominance over her, as she peers down at her in the mirrored image but also as her body frames Skeeter’s body.

This is supported by Williams argument in Something Else Besides a Mother where she states,

“Clearly, the paralleled closeness and similarity of mother to daughter sets up a situation of significant mirroring that is most apparent in these films. One effect of this mirroring is that although the mother gains a kind of vicarious superiority by association with a superior daughter, she inevitably begins to feel inadequate to so superior a being and thus, in the end, to feel inferior. Embroiled in a relationship that is so close, mother and daughter nevertheless seem destines to lose one another through this very closeness” (479).

I  took this claim quite literally and applied it to The Help by singling out a scene that uses a mirror. Since Williams is speaking about the way that mothers seek to cultivate daughters to become their respectable mothers, the mirror is a cinematic way of suggesting a reflection without expressing it explicitly in dialogue. Throughout the film, we see Charlotte attempting to remain a superior figure in Skeeter’s life, although Skeeter exemplifies just as much superiority from going to college.  The scene that I mentioned is especially important in establishing the way the mother tries to keep her superiority before she inevitably accepts her inferiority later in the film.

I know tomorrow will be a bit hectic trying to work through our discussion of the 3 articles in addition to reactions to The Help, so I wanted to post my summary notes of Kaplan here on the blog. Kaplan’s piece serves a two-fold purpose; to educate us about the representations of mothers in Hollywood, and to address the attitude toward and full discussion (or lack thereof) of motherhood by feminist film critics.

The piece discusses how Hollywood films tend to relegate the Mother to the periphery of the film. They are not shown as complex characters who have conflicting needs and roles.

Kaplan outlines four paradigms of the Mother:

• 1. Good Mother: She is all-nurturing, and lives only through her family
• 2. Bad Mother/Witch: She demands her own life, takes control of the narrative & is therefore punished for her violation
• 3. Heroic Mother: She suffers/endures for the sake of the family; is slightly more central to the narrative than the Good Mother
• 4. Silly/Weak/Vain Mother: She is the center of comedies and is ridiculed by the members of her family

Additionally, Kaplan notes that the Mother is rarely single, and traditionally rarely combines motherhood & work. She argues that the narratives which do focus on the Mother do so only because she is resisting her “proper” place; the heart of the film is to work to re-inscribe the Mother back into her appropriate role as defined by patriarchy. In this way, films aim to teach us about the life that we should want (Kaplan gives examples of Stella Dallas to show how this function of film serves to indoctrinate us to desire a particular set up of social roles within a capitalist context).

Another important aspect of this piece was the recognition that traditionally, feminist film critics have focused on the Mother from a daughter point-of-view. She mentions the tension and conflict that feminist film critics have, angry at their mothers for reinforcing and working within the patriarchal structure. However, Kaplan concedes that this is a repetition of patriarchy’s omission of the Mother.

At present, Kaplan says that there is a split between representing Mothers as the Old, traditional mother and the Career mother. The Career Mother, in her dedication to her career, loses the very qualities that are needed to be cast as a good mother. However, more recently fathers have been portrayed as nurturing, and are now allowed permitted to acquire feminine attributes.

Questions to consider:

1. Can you think of examples of each of the 4 types of Mother images?

2. Why is it problematic that until recently the perspective of the mother was left unexamined?

3. Can you think of examples that contrast old & new representations of mothers/fathers that show either a combination of motherhood & career (for mothers) or a nurturing fatherhood (for fathers)?