(no subject)

[selenak]

Mother's Day, which means I'm with my Aged Parents and have very little online time. I also feel very mushy about all things motherly right now. However, because I'm perverse like that, I'll give you my current Favourite Ruthless Mothers Moments. Because I love that, too, and I don't mean "ruthless" in the sense of Ripley's "get away from her, bitch", i.e. Mama Bears in action. No, I mean that it's not a coincidence that, say, the film version of Gone With The Wind dumps Scarlett's first two children, and the recent film version of Vanity Fair significantly softens Becky's attitude towards her child. Because the one thing usually considered unforgivable in a female character is Being A Bad Or Even Just Indifferent Mother. (This does not apply to men and being lousy fathers, of course.) So, characters who do the following stuff are rare:


1) Livia Drusilla in I, Claudius. Well, her in general - Livia is one of my all time favourite villains -, but out of her many classic scenes, I'd like to nominate, for the current purpose:

Tiberius: Did it ever occur to you, mother, that it might be you they hate, more than me?
Livia: Nothing ever occurs to you that doesn't occur to me first. That is the affliction with which I live.

There is also the absolutely chilling moment - where, however, Livia is not present - when a dying Drusus says to Tiberius "Rome has a severe mother", fully believing their mother Livia poisoned him. (She hadn't, but she was planning to.) Oh, and Augustus extolling the "picture of Roman motherhood" when Livia puts her arms around Julia's sons, Gaius and Lucius, both of whom will die young as well.


2) Irina Derevko in the teaser of The Enemy Walks In: shooting her daughter Sydney in the shoulder is one way of saying hello after decades of absence. Mind you, Irina had her reason (welll, that's what she says - as always with Irina, we can never entirely be sure), but it's still something that made it clear, from the start, that this woman was dangerous as hell, in case her backstory hadn't made that clear already, most of all to her nearest and dearest.

Comments

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

I love characters who are ... not necessarily bad parents, but who seem far more detached than our culture really allows.

I'm currently being KILLED DEAD by the Predator Cities quartet by Philip Reeve -- it starts with Mortal Engines. The first two novels feature the main characters as teenagers, and Hester is basically a sixteen-year-old Mad Eye Moody -- paranoid, violent and horrifically scarred. The next two books are set about eighteen years later, and follow the adventures of their sixteen-year-old daughter. And Hester is a terrible mum -- in one scene she tells her daughter that she wishes Wren had never been born. And she means it.

I love Hester so much.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Mad Eye Moody would be a horror as a parent, male or female. This sounds great; I'll look out for this quartet.

Hey, what are the chances the Doctor when young (err, in Gallifreyan terms) and producing whoever was Susan's parent was an, err, less than stellar parent himself?

[lizbee.livejournal.com]

Chances are pretty strong, I'd say. Maybe taking Susan with him was his way of making up for it? Before he dumped her on a Dalek-ravaged Earth?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*nods*

And it's "always the mothers" because mother-of-his-child slapped him A LOT for lousy fatherhood. Deservedly! And it's also why he avoids making any comment on Ace's mother, and keeps doing that confronting-Ace-with-her-past thing. Subconsciously, he identifies!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Aaaahhh, Livia, or the Unsentimental view of the Roman matron. Love her to bits.

And all sorts of greetings to your parents. When oh WHEN are you taking them to Paris to stay?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Today, the Aged Pater was heared muttering "you know, it's been a while since we were in Paris..." and I pounced at once. We'll see whether it has results!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Livia Soprano (whose name can't be a coincidence) was also a mother from hell, though I don't think she actually killed anyone. "The woman was a saint."