The Lovingly Complicated Role Of Mothers In Movies
From the inspirational and emotional heart of a loving drama, to the shrewish scold flustered by the hijinks of a comedy, to the vengeance seeking badasses of horror and action—and everything in between—cinematic mothers have been diversely represented over the years in a way that almost reflects the great variety of moms out there.
In Luís Azevedo’s video essay for Fandor, originally posted on May 14, 2018, he looks at how the intrinsic dynamics everyone has with their mother has been explored in theatrical storytelling since it began. Whether that’s a relationship built on anger, love, friendship, distrust, distance, or even one defined by its own absence, these connections play out beyond just sharing the blood swimming in each others’ veins.
Clearly, over the century of filmmaking, some of these roles have been better than others. Many maternal characters amounting to little more than human stand in for “pleasant” or “good morals,” if even that far. But there still shine many portrayals that have captured the hearts of audiences and maybe even help viewers understand their relationships with their own mothers. Azevedo uses clips from many movies to show artists’ attempts at understanding how they view the role and, to a certain degree, how they view their own moms.
Fandor summarizes the video thusly:
The scope of motherhood in film and television starts with the prototypical 50s stay-at-home mom, epitomized by the performances of women like Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson, or Jane Wyatt. These women wear kindness behind their aprons like Superman dons tights under his briefs. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Margaret White as Piper Laurie in Carrie, the embalmed corpse as Norma Bates in Psycho, Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, or Joan Crawford playing herself in real life.
Like clockwork, every Friday the 13th a new horror movie will premiere. One would also expect that Mother’s Day would boast the same film honors as the four times per year that the sixth day of the week falls on the seventh odd day of the month. No such luck! We could do with less Freddies and more Mrs. Gumps.
Continue celebrating motherhood with our Mother’s Day movie list and checkout our favorite matriarchs of the horror genre.
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