Mum knows best, she’s a superhero, too
At a time when the Avengers are flavour of the month, there is a film about a superhero of another kind — a mother of three. Behind every portrait of a ‘happy family’ is a story of a sacrifice made so silently that it almost seems to be a rite of passage. As I watched Jason Reitman’s Tully last week, I couldn’t help but applaud it for its refusal to sugarcoat the idea of motherhood, examining instead those sleepless nights where a mother tending to her newborn also longingly looks back at the woman she once was. In the film, the said woman appears in the form of a 26-year-old night nanny, Tully. In real world, epiphanies such as Tully come in different forms.
Just as I was soaking in the film’s nearmerciless take on the harsher aspects of motherhood, YouTube notified me about a new trailer of A Kid Like Jake that stars Jim Parsons, Claire Danes and Priyanka Chopra. The story, as the teaser suggests, revolves around a couple’s struggle to come to terms with their four-year-old son who prefers “Cinderella over G.I. Joe”.
Fairly impressed by the themes of Tully and A Kid Like Jake, I wondered if depictions of parenting, motherhood in particular, are coming of age in Hollywood? Are we as audiences more open now (than ever) to layered narratives on parenthood? A friend suggested my ‘hurrah’ might be a tad premature, but it certainly isn’t misplaced, given Hollywood’s bleak portrayals of emotionally and financially independent mums.
Traditionally, in most, if not all, mainstream Hollywood films, ambition is at odds with a woman’s role as a nurturer. A case in point would be the 1979 classic Kramer vs Kramer. The film, in a nutshell, is about the evolution of a fatherson relationship as the mother, played by Meryl Streep, steps out of domesticity to find her place in the world. She returns — more self-assured than ever — only to claim the legal custody of her child. In her book, Home Movies: The American Family in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, Claire Jenkins suggests that Streep had to intervene and change considerable portions of her speech in the film in order to validate her character’s claim on her son. She quotes Streep as saying, “I rewrote it because they were not happy with it… I think Bob Benton (the filmmaker) and Dustin (Hoffman, actor) came to the story with a very strong understanding of where the man stood… What they didn’t really know or care about was her (Joanna, Streep’s character) situation was.”
Hollywood cannot be blamed alone. In popular culture, motherhood is viewed with rose-tinted glasses, with just a footnote on the big changes that will ensue. That footnote can sometimes become the larger narrative of one’s life as a parent. Women, and men, are often told how they’d feel a sense of fulfilment as soon as they hold their child for the first time. Or how their entire world will begin revolving around their little bundle of joy. What is often left untold is that each individual understands and experiences parenthood differently. What if that sense of fulfilment does not come naturally? What if you, like Marlo in Tully or Joanna in Kramer Vs Kramer, still crave for your own little space even as you tend to your child? As direct caregivers, these are questions that women find confronting, even as the idea of stay-at-home daddies is beginning to take off in modern societies.
Parenting is not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon, hence, its ideals cannot be universal — especially in an age where technology and feminist movements are constantly reshaping our world views. One of the most poignant moments for me in Tully was the scene where Charlize Theron’s character takes off her T-shirt and her daughter is left horrified seeing her mother’s postchildbirth body. In another scene, she jogs past a younger woman only to fall eventually as she begins lactating. These scenes are not mere deviations from standard narratives, they sum up motherhood for what it is — a mental, physical and an emotional battle!
— anamika@khaleejtimes.com
In popular culture, motherhood is viewed with rose-tinted glasses, with just a footnote on the big changes that will ensue