Laughing Through Motherhood: An Analysis of “Mommy”-Written Parenting Manuals

As discussed in a previous post, the self-help genre has capitalized on the insecurities that often accompany pregnancy and parenthood for decades, creating a long list of texts by “experts” providing advice to women as they become mothers.  These books are often fear-invoking, didactic how-to manuals that prescribe “correct” ways to raise children.  Recently, a wave of mommy-crafted texts has surfaced to counter these “one-size-fits-all” professional perspectives.  (Or at least this is what they claim to do.) This essay discusses various mother-written (and often comedic) self-help books alongside of motherhood memoir and fiction novels to see how these contemporary texts are redefining motherhood and responding to ideological messages concerning parenting.

I was originally eager to read these “mother”-written texts as a response to these fear-invoking self-help books and hoped to find them operating in very different ways (with vastly different to the “expert” texts, the similarities between these two groups are problematic and telling.  These texts do often critique the self-help parenting texts that came before them, suggesting that mothers embrace their own parenting styles and choices, and they most definitely offer more honest portrayals of parenting, but at times they fall into the same traps as the other groups of texts:  they promote the author’s specific parenting preferences and make assumptions about mothering that rest on the outdated notion of a universal women’s experience.  But, to be clear, there is much to celebrate in these texts and I will discuss some beneficial motifs that circulate throughout them. 

Arguably, what the mommy-authored texts analyzed here do best is respond to the literature that came before them (sometimes directly and more often indirectly), by countering parenting fears and encouraging women to reject the impossible societal expectations placed on contemporary mothers.  For example, in Confession’s of a Slacker Mom, Muffy Mead-Ferro discusses how “moms or moms-to-be in these information-awash and overachieving times” often feel as though they have “become everyone else’s property.  Wards of the state.  Imbeciles” due to the way women are depicted and spoken to throughout the majority of circulating parent products and advice columns (2).  Currently, a simple “Goggle search of the phrase ‘parenting advice’ produces more than a million matches’” (Mead-Ferro 130).  Rather than acting as a tool and comfort to most mothers, this slew of information is heightening anxieties and sparking confusion.    The authors of these mommy-written self-help books consider the detrimental effects of this information-overload.  Mead-Ferro writes:  “I wonder if we’re giving our children the chance to really perform, if we’re giving them and ourselves enough credit, as we pore over our parenting magazines and reference manuals.  I wonder if we’re getting in the way rather than out of the way, as we get sucked into the trap of competing with other parents to raise the most exceptional child” (133).  Many of these texts express nostalgia for bygone eras when parenting, although free of the fancy gadgets and endless options that parents have today, was not entrenched in all of this propagandistic merchandise.  Mead-Ferro muses: 

Mothers of an earlier generation had it easier in a way.  Because the glut of child-rearing

news articles, books, and equipment that we modern-day moms have to contend with is truly dizzying, even for the  most clear-headed of us.  The biggest problem isn’t the confusion though, it’s the seduction.  We’d just love to believe that someone’s discovered a secret formula that will give our children and us a guarantee of success. (134)

However, the problem with this wealth of information is that it is as contradictory as it expansive (Mead-Ferro 136-7).   Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of Sippy Cups are Not for Chardonnay and Other Things I had to Learn as a New Mom, discusses her experience of turning to such texts when she first discovered she was pregnant:  “Under the avalanche of information, I started worrying more rather than less.  Was there really one right answer?  Every book seemed to think so” (xv).

The effects of these expert-written self-help books are explored in motherhood memoir and fictional novels as well.  Suzanne Finnamore’s The Zygote Chronicles is a faux memoir – a fictional novel written as a diary by one woman to her unborn son.  Although it is a fictional narrative, Finnamore evokes the second-person tone of the self-help genre and often gives advice (albeit to her forthcoming child).  Finnamore’s main character recounts her experiences with parenting advice books: 

Here in bed, I am dressed in a tattered U.C. Berkeley T-Shirt and a pair of your father’s boxer

shorts, surrounded by my bibles.  They are:  The Mayo Clinic Complete Book of Pregnancy, The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons’ Guide to Pregnancy, Having a Baby:  A Complete Guide for the Mother-to-Be, What to Expect when You’re expecting, The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth…, The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy, and A Child Is Born, which is mostly photographs.  Whenever I have a question, I look up the answer in each book, which all have conflicting information and wildly divergent facts, and then I listen to the answer that I like best.  (25, emphasis added)

Although the character initially navigates through these “bibles” quite well – picking and choosing the answers she prefers – later in her prenatal journey she finds them more disturbing:  “I must say the parent’s literature is depressing.  It describes how after the baby is born, marriages get strained and often fail, about how your life will never be quite the same again, and that it’s still good just different, all very vague and disturbing.  I cannot believe this is true, but then why do they write it in books” (Finnamore 89).  

Karen Maezen Miller’s Momma Zen:  Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood is a pseudo memoir, or, perhaps more correctly, a memoir-advice book blend.  The book follows her through the last stages of her pregnancy, her delivery, and through the first years of her daughter’s life, offering advice based on her own experiences and her spiritual practices.  Miller discusses the value she found in parenting advice texts but explains how one ultimately grows out of them (therefore subtly encouraging such growth):

There comes a point when you stop reading the books and resign yourself to what you don’t know.  This is precisely how you come to know it all.  When a single, stray cough in the middle of the night tells you that a cold is coming in the next twenty-four hours: nobody tells you, but you know.  When your child says her teeth hurt and you instantly suspect an ear infection:  it seems farfetched, but you know. (137)

She continues later in the text:

I read less.  For certain, parenting manuals were essential companions in the beginning. 

At every turn I needed to know so much.  Not long ago I glanced up and saw these books, propping up dust on the shelf of my closet, and realized that many pages and stages had gone unread.  So much kindhearted advice had gone unconsulted.  It had been years since I sought answers there.  No matter, because I remembered the awesome essence of what those books had taught me.  Through fevers and rashes, teething and tantrums, those guides had told me to watch and listen, to intuit and discern, to worry less, to wait longer, to trust my child first and to trust myself always.  I only hope I’ve done as little for you. (Miller141)

Miller provides the most positive depiction of parenting advice books found within this group of mother-written texts. 

Beyond referencing the parenting literature directly, most authors express frustration concerning the fear-evoking climate that produces them.  Mead-Ferro notes:  “Whenever I feel like I’m getting caught up in the modern neurosis that seems to accompany child-rearing, I just ask myself, what if I’d had my babies in an isolated Alaskan fishing village and didn’t have access to the breast-feeding counselors or toddler-fitness classes…” (14).  Wilder-Taylor vents:  “I can’t stand those people who love to issue ridiculous warning before you have kids.  You know the ones:  They feel the need to let you know how tough having kids is on a marriage – with the old ‘loss of freedom,’ ‘no alone time with your husband,’ and ‘say good-bye to your sex drive.’  Blah, blah, blah” (136).   Similarly, the fictional expectant mother in The Zygote Chronicles reflects:  

It is expected for women to breed, but the moment you do, they come at you with reams of

information pronouncing doom, crippling stress, and general malaise.  And what’s maddening is how even though I’m almost forty years old, they all know so much better than I do.  I’m the first-time pregnant village idiot.  If one more parent says, ‘Do it now.  This will be the LAST TIME EVER you can _____,’ with that ominous hypernegative tone, I am going to scream.  If I were you, baby, I would be very upset and up in arms.  I would be picketing with little Popsicle-stick pickets.  MEDIA UNFAIR TO BABIES.  (Finnamore 90)

What all of these mommy-written texts do is capture the “fear” surrounding pregnancy and motherhood through vignettes that help to alleviate said fear (or help readers to feel less silly about such unjustified fears).  Take for example this passage from Anne Lamott’s memoir Operating Instructions discussing her first car ride with her baby as she took him home from the hospital:  “The first time we hit a pothole, I thought, well, that’s that, his neck just snapped; we broke him.  He’s a quadriplegic now.  But we did get him home safely” (22).  

As many of these texts explain, many of the fears surrounding parenthood stem from unrealistic societal expectations placed on parents, or, more specifically, mothers.  One of the mommy-written self-help books in this study, Anne Dunnewold’s Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box:  Cut Yourself Some Slack (and Still Raise Great Kids) in the Age of Extreme Parenting, continues this discussion.  This text is perhaps the most “academic” of the grouping, touting the fact that it was written by a Ph.D. on the front cover while advertising “Workable Solutions to the Mommy Madness” in the air of the self-help genre.  In this text, Dunnewold, a practicing psychologist, provides a literature review on motherhood studies and recounts stories from her patients’ lives.  She boils the problem down to “The Three O’s of Extreme Parenting:  overperfecting, overprotecting, and overproducing” (Dunnewold 10).  In a similar text, I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids:  Reinventing Modern Motherhood, Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile explore these same issues.  Their text is interspersed with the products of their research:  interviews with over a hundred women across the United States.  The first chapter of their book, titled “The Fake-Cupcake Problem (Why We Needed to Write this Book),” deals with the unrealistic expectations placed on mothers (for example the need to provide home baked goods for school events).  It also evokes the opening passage of Allison Pearson’s fictional novel I Don’t Know How She Does It.  Pearson’s novel, which is focused on the life of Kate Reddy, a fund manager in a male-dominated profession and mother of two young children, was adapted into a Hollywood film in 2011. The novel opens with the following scene:

            1.37am.  How did I get here?  Can someone please tell me that?  Not in this kitchen, I

            mean in this life.  It is the morning of the school carol concert and I am hitting mince

pies.  No, let us be quite clear about this, I am distressing mince pies, and altogether demanding and subtle process…. (Pearson 3)

The main character is forging fresh baked goods in order to avoid the judgment of other mothers that she believes will incur if she simply drops of store bought desserts.

Regardless of whether these mommy texts are fiction or non-fiction, they all contain two characteristics that separate them from the traditional parenting self-help books written by so-called experts:  they are incredibly honest and humorous in their depictions of motherhood. These texts capture real moments that women experience throughout pregnancy and childhood and present some unflinchingly honest, and not always flattering, depictions of how women survive through them.  For example, Finnamore’s character, who early in the novel admits to having called her fetus a parasite (20), provides a realistic portrayal of a woman reacting to the news that she was giving birth to a boy (when she had hoped for a girl):

I have to admit something to you now.  For the past couple of days, I have been wrestling

with a terrible, shameful feeling.  This feeling came right on the heels of joy and huge relief that you were all right.  It came about two seconds after that.  You see, you are to be our only child.  And I have always wanted a girl, I had the hallowed girl names all picked out.  I saw myself downloading all my feminine information on to you, passing it along like a very ornate bejeweled baton….I was going to create you in my own image…. That night, after happily announcing your sex to everyone, I wept.  I am thirty-eight, and know now that I will never have a daughter.  A daughter s a precious and secret dream I have carried with me since I was five.  Your father heard me crying and said I was crazy, and that he had no sympathy for me.  He said I was hurting his feelings because, lest I forget, he was a boy, too.  (43-44)

She also later expresses unease at not being an ideal mother, “the perfect, young, spry mother, the unblemished canvas” her son deserves (Finnamore 68).  She admits in her dialogue to her unborn son:    

I have been fired three times, have been to jail once in New Jersey for four hours, and have had twenty-two lovers.  Also I have several gray hairs, which I secretly pluck from my temples while sitting in parked cars outside McDonalds.  Maybe I should have had you when I was younger.  I should not be telling you any of this.  I should be strong enough to keep it in.  But I am not, or if I ever was, I am no longer.  Pregnancy trips off the veneer, the protective casing.  It husks the soul. (Finnamore 68)

In I Don’t Know How She Does It, one of the most honest moments comes at a point when Kate admits, via an email to her best friend recapping a holiday trip, how her children make her feel:

Dearest debs, how was it 4 U?  All the elements of the traditional English Xmas here:  sausage rolls, carols, subtle recriminations.  Mother-in-law busy preparing emergency food parcel for song neglected by callous City bitch (Me).  You know that I always say I want to be with my children?  Well, I really want to be with my children. Some nights, if I get home too late for Emily’s bedtime, I got to the laundry basket and I Smell Their Clothes.  I miss them so much.  Never told anyone that before.  And then when I’m with them, like I am now, there need is just so needy.  It’s like having a while love affair crammed into a long weekend – passion, kisses, bitter tears, I love you, don’t leave me, get me a drink, you like him more than me, take me to bed, you’ve got lovely hair, cuddle me, I hate you.  Drained & freaked out & need to go back to work soonest for a rest.  What kind of mother is afraid of her own children? (Pearson 52)

In the end the honesty is too much and she cannot complete the email: “I am about to hit Send, but instead I press Delete.  There’s only so much you can confess, even to your dearest friend.  Even to yourself” (Pearson 52). 

The fictional text provides a convenient space for this honesty as it is not necessarily a confession of the author’s own thoughts on childhood.  What is at times more surprising, and impressive, is the moments of complete honesty that surface in the nonfiction texts.  In her memoir, Lamott shares many of her less-than-blissful postnatal thoughts.  From small diatribes on how she hates expressing milk and on how much babies cry to how on some days she cannot even manage to get her teeth brushed or how she had to dose her baby with a hint of Tylenol to ensure he would be a model baby at his baptism (6, 66, 67, 117).  Some of the most truthful moments come when she admits to having negative thoughts about her own child:  “I was just hating Sam there for a while.  I’m so goddamn fucking tired, so burnt beyond recognition that I didn’t know how I was going to get through to the morning” or “Last night at midnight it occurred to me to leave him outside for the night, and if he survived, to bring him inside in the morning.  Sort of an experiment in natural selection” (Lamott 39, 48). 

Buchanan’s Mother Shock, also contains moments that detail the negative thoughts that accompany motherhood:

One night when I couldn’t sleep, I lay awake planning in detail my escape:  I would pack a small overnight bag and slip out at 3:00 a.m.  No note, no message.  I’d just leave.  I would go to the ATM and take out as much cash as I could.  I would walk over to the bus station at 11^th and Market and take the bust hat went farthest.  I couldn’t go to New York, nor New Jersey nor Boston nor California; those were all places my husband would think to look for me.  I would go somewhere nameless, faceless, some small town in the middle of some unheard-of place, where I could have no identity and just start over.  I would get a job waitressing.  I would live in a motel.  I would do whatever it took to make some money to live on, and I would sleep all night.  My time would finally be my own.  I drifted off to sleep, eventually, lulled by the fantasy of escape.  In the morning, I remembered my midnight plan and told my husband, laughing at how ridiculous it sounded in the light of day.  I expected him to be a little horrified, but when I finished telling him my secret scheme all he asked was ‘Were you going to go by yourself or were you going to take the baby?’ (57)

In sharing this personal anecdote, Buchanan sets the example for what her book is trying to encourage women to do – to admit, as the book’s subtitle posits, that they love every other minute of motherhood, the entire experience without exception.

Although not always in the context of an overarching narrative, the more self-help focused mommy texts also shatter the illusion about the perpetual happiness that accompanies motherhood.  These texts cover the doubts mothers are plagued with, failures to bond with newborn babies, postpartum depression, being jealous of one’s spouse’s attentions to the new baby, the inability to breastfeed, and so forth.  Many of these texts also contain “confessional” moments.  Dunnewold’s book compiles a list of Naughty 9 Bad Mom Thoughts that she had heard through her therapy sessions:  “I hate my life; I can’t believe I traded sleep for this; This kid is a brat; I cannot stand to play Barbies (or read Goodnight Moon, or play Legos….); I now understand how a parent could throw a child against the wall; This kid has ruined my life/my body/my marriage; I want to run away – alone; If that kid does not stop crying, you’ll have to check me into the funny farm; I’d rather be at work during busy season than with these kids” (89).   Likewise, Ashworth and Nobile’s texts includes anonymous excerpts from their interviews in little boxes throughout titled:  dirty little secrets.    The most absurd being the following admission from one woman:   ““My life is so crazy and I practically live in my car.  I’m mortified to admit this, but there are some days I don’t even have time to pee… so I wear Depends!’” (Ashworth and Nobile 158). 

Quite often these moments of honesty are recapped humorously, although much of the humor comes into play when the authors of these texts are mocking the self-help books they follow in the steps of.   An example of this can be found in Christie Mellor’s chapter on “The Childproof House:  How to Know When You’ve Gone Too Far” in The Three-Martini Playdate: A Practical Guide to Happy Parenting.  After recounting a story about how once at a social occasion she could not use the bathroom facilities because a friend had installed a safety latch she could not figure out on the toilet, she rants: 

Can it possibly be true that an untold number of toddlers are actually drowning in the

toilets of America?  Might it not be a good idea to explain to one’s two-year-old that she mustn’t put her head in the potty and leave it here?  Has anyone thought that perhaps a simple hook on the door to the bathroom might be the answer to this silent epidemic?  An entire industry has sprung up based solely upon the fears of the new parent, that of ‘childproofing;’ one’s house. (Mellor 23)

She later makes fun at the childproofing advice that parenting manuals include: 

One may find helpful hints for the new parent in every book on child rearing, usually

with the suggestion that one crawl around on the floor in order to see the house form the child’s point of view.  This can be a delightful activity to undertake with one’s spouse, as it often leads to horseplay and intimate rolling about while you search for electrical outlets and any frayed bare wires. (Mellor 24)

A great deal of the humor in these texts stem not from the content of the material but in the way these texts strategically borrow from the self-help genre in a satirical fashion.   Examples include amusing checklists (like one houses items that can affect child bonding including serious and non serious items next to one another:  baby’s health, uncertainty of father’s identity, colic, OB’s breath) (Wilder-Taylor 7); funny charts (one such example is what books say your child should be able to do versus what they really are doing) (Wilder-Talor107-108); humorous quizzes on “does this sound like you” asking questions such as “you consider a trip to the dentist your special “alone time” (Ashworth and Nobile 11), and random bits of information such as New Mom Pick-Up Lines (Wilder Taylor 144), Questions Not to Ask Your Husband (Wilder-Taylor 144), Names that will ensure your child stays a virgin until they’re thirty (Wilder-Taylor 195), the contents of a Do-It-Yourself-After School Enrichment Program that includes activities like weeding for fun (Mellor 120), helpful hint sections with titles including Etiquette for First-time Parents and Fiscal Planning and Your Tooth Fairy (Mellor), a Comeback Chart for Snarky Comments People May Make when Judging You (Ashworth and Nobile 70), and – the most sarcastic inclusion – lists of drink ingredients, such as “Our Little Tot’s First Martini Recipe” (Mellor).

Although there is quite a bit of similarity between the various books in this study – their use of humor, honest content, critiques of parenting trends, etc. – studying them together does reveal a few things about how the genre they take on affects their overall message.  A continuum might be envisioned where the mommy self-help books (filled with advice based on scholarly research, interviews, or just plain opinion) are found on one side and the fictional novels depicting motherhood (through the lens of one character) are found on the other.  In the middle on each side respectively would rest the memoir/self-help blends (texts such as Momma Zen), memoirs (like Operating Instructions), and the faux memoirs (fictional texts deceivingly taking on the memoir style, e.g. The Zygote Chronicles). 

The Textual Continuum:

Non-Fiction/Self-Help -----Memoir-Self-Help-Hybrid-------------------Memoir------------------Pseudo-Memoir/Fiction INFORMATIONAL/NON-NARRATIVE------------------------------------------------------------------------NARRATIVE I Was a Really Good Mom                                                                                                       I Don’t Know How She Does It Even June Clever Would Forget the Lunch Box                                                 The Zygote Chronicle                 Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay                               Operating Instructions                 Three Martini Playdate                          Mother Shock                          Confessions of a Slacker Mom                                                                           Momma Zen

As was mentioned earlier, the fictional texts do a better job of countering fears through their narratization of events:  providing windows into the minds of characters who wrestle with the same unjustified fearful thoughts.  Although all of the texts aim for honesty, the fictional ones (and all the ones on the memoir/narrative side of the continuum) are able to tackle issues more honestly and often with less “political correctness” as they are not taking on an authority position on matters.  All of the texts include humor, but at times the manual-type texts find their punch line at the expense of parenting strategies or motherhood personas that the reader might align with. 

This latter type of mommy-texts, which claim to be different from other self-help books, often fall into the same trap as those that came before them and advocate certain parenting choices over others (ones aligned with the author’s preferences).   These are more touchy-feely than standard parenting manuals – and they aim to foster positive self-esteem and promote spiritual happiness within their readership –these are not aims of the fiction books.  The non-narrative texts aim to discuss motherhood; the fictional books aim to provide a snapshot of it.

Regardless of format and genre, there were some issues within these texts that warrant a brief discussion.  These mommy-texts often read like Betty Friedan’s Feminist Mystique published decades ago.  They operate under the false notions that plagued 2^nd wave feminists: that there is some universal women’s or mother’s experience.  These texts rarely acknowledge the impact that differences such as race and class might have on one’s parenting decisions, or more correctly, parenting options.   (Of the texts studied here, only Lamott’s Operating Instructions addresses this.)  Many of the books assume a white, middle-to-upper-middle class readership comprised of stay-at-home mothers or professional working mothers.  Chapter titles like “Stroller Wars,” with anecdotes about 700 dollar strollers and sections on “Park Politics” where socializing with other mothers is compared to navigating through high school cliques, demonstrate this fact.  That popular women’s literature and self-help manuals are so unaligned with contemporary feminist thought is noteworthy. 

Another problem that exists within these texts (the fictional and non-fictional ones alike) is that they perpetuate gender stereotypes.  This is especially the case when it comes to the depictions of the husbands/fathers.  Countless passages exist where men bear are the punch line of a joke or the subject of a long rant.  Explanations about the different parenting habits of men and women evoke John Gray’s problematic text pop-psychology text of the 90s, Men are From Mars; Women are From Venus.  Therefore, like the majority of the cultural texts analyzed in the previous chapters, these texts subtly (and more often overtly) instruct women on how to play the role of mother, and these instructions rest on unquestioned assumptions about what it means to be a woman versus a man.  So, in the end, these texts are both friends and foes to expecting and new mothers.  

NBC’s Crossing Lines: The Globalization of the American Episodic Cop Show?

Things I hate to admit:  I’m watching a new NBC show.  Things I like to admit but will eventually regret:  that new show stars Donald Sutherland.  

I jest (a little) because at present I have come to believe (and I’m not alone) that NBC is the network where all new shows go to die.  Also, Donald Sutherland, who I like a lot as an actor, has not had a lot of luck in his recent television endeavors.  (I really enjoyed him as the Speaker of the House, Nathan Templeton, in ABC’s Commander in Chief [2006-2007] and as the head of a Kardasian-like family, Tripp Darling, in ABC’s Dirty, Sexy Money [2007-2009], but alas both of those shows were short-lived).  Plus it’s a summer replacement show and the odds are always stacked against those.

The show, Crossing Lines, is centered around a fictionalized specialized crime unit working for the International Criminal Court to investigate serialized crimes that cross international boundaries.  The main character is Carl Hickman (William Fichtner), a former NYPD officer whose life has unraveled after being injured on the force.  Other team mates include an Italian anti-mafia covert specialist, a German tech specialist, a French crime analysis, and an Irish weapons/tactical expert. 

I’m not usually into episodic crime shows, so I’m somewhat surprised I’m watching the show but the pilot was fast-paced and, as other critics have noted, the European backdrop was a nice change for a police procedural.  The first episode found the crime unit racing to find a serial killer who was staging ritualistic murders in major European cities.  (Although the Scooby-Doo moment where we realize why the man was killing these women after dressing them up in retro outfits and chasing them through the woods was a bit cliché and Oedipal – he was reenacting his first murder… of his mother).   But the episode pulled on the heart strings a bit (one woman of the unit was captured and rescued while another was killed at the final moment) and provided enough intriguing character backstory to make me want to tune in again (Hickman is still trying to find the child abductor who injured him years back and his boss, Major Louis Daniel, is trying to bring his son’s murderer to justice). 

I’m not sure I’ll find much in this show to further my research agenda, or even much to analyze here on this space, but for now the program can hang out on my DVR and balance out the feminized drizzle that is accumulating there

Analyzing the Civil War Origin Story of Modern Day American Vampire Narratives: How Character Backstories in Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries Prompt Social Critique

Scholars have a tendency to stumble into academic territory that they did not intend to enter.  Or, well, I do at least.  A few years ago I decided to write a feminist critique of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.    It resulted in two publications.  You write two pieces on vampires and suddenly you’re marked as someone well versed in feminist readings of the monstrous.  I didn’t want to pigeon-holed in this way so I swore I was done writing on vampires… and then I saw a 

call for a collection on The Vampire Diaries.

I have a soft spot for the L.J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries.  I read the trilogy when I was in junior high and adored the books.  I was thrilled when I heard they were adapting them for television and, surprisingly, I like the television series more than I did the books they stemmed from.  (Although I do feel a bit silly for following a CW show so faithfully – it feels a bit like shopping in the junior section of a department store.)  So, I decided to flesh out an idea I had had rolling about in my mind for a few years on these recent vampire adaptations.  Unsurprisingly, it has my usual post-9/11 focus.  (Hey, if it works for zombies, why not for vampires too?)

Vampire narratives from Dracula to present have been analyzed (and allegorized) in terms of race and cultural conflict, allowing the fictional figures within such texts to often represent much more than mere mythical creatures.  For example, scholars have read Bram Stoker’s text as reflecting the fears that spawned the eugenics movement during the early 20^th century – fears of blood contamination and interracial marriage.    Scholarly analyses of vampire texts at the close of the 20^th century have read such narratives as alluding to other cultural concerns, such as terrorism – fears of “the other” who can hide among us and attack without provocation.   In Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina Auerbach argues that every age embraces its own particular kind of vampire – a cultural archetype that plays out the societal concerns from which it derives (145).   In the American post-9/11 cultural climate, it is interesting to see how the various vampire fictions represent the current cultural concerns of the 21^st century.  More interesting is the way some of the most popular vampire texts are remediating a past historical event – the Civil War – to bring attention to the cultural divides presently plaguing the United States.

Being that vampire texts throughout the centuries have attended to racial tensions and cultural rifts, the evocation of the Civil War is, in many ways, not surprising.  What is surprising is the specific ways that vampire cross-over texts are integrating this historical event into their narratives.  In my most recent essay I analyze three vampire series that have crossed mediated divides, revamping narrative content from print collections to fit the serialized small screen and the Hollywood big screen:  HBO’s True Blood (2008-present), CW’s The Vampire Diaries (2009-present), and the film adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012).   Below I’ll provide a brief summary of the arguments I make in greater detail in the larger work.

HBO’s hit drama derived from Charlaine Harris’s popular novel series, The Southern Vampire Mysteries (2001-present). One of the main vampire figures in this series (both in the print and televised versions) is Bill Compton, a vampire whose human life as a soldier and family man ended during the Civil War.  Although the primary focus of the series is often the romantic relationship between Bill and Sookie Stackhouse, the social commentary surrounding this melodramatic focus is often more interesting.  The first season of True Blood actively draws upon Bill’s historical past, one that prompts main characters to criticize the racial inequity of 19^th century.  This attention to race is one anticipated from the series’ onset.  In fact, the very first moments within the program’s opening credits house controversial scenes from the racially divided American south of the 1960s (e.g. an image of a child in Ku Klux Klan attire).  Although this focus on race relations often slips into the backdrop as the series progresses, Bill Compton exists to remind viewers of the divided state of the country both in the 1800s and at present; moreover, the juxtaposition of these time periods suggest that society has not progressed all that far.  True Blood also uses its narrative to critique other issues that divide the United States in the 21^st century.  The show focuses heavily on non-normative sexuality, allowing the discrimination the vampire characters experience on the show to parallel discrimination experienced by homosexuals in present-day America. As the series was released in 2008 during the height of the outrage over Proposition 8, the California Marriage Protection Act, it was primed to be a text that transferred societal debates over the role of the family and the sanctity of marriage into the fictional confines of the vampire infused world in a way that critiqued the current political landscape.

Released a year after True Blood, The Vampire Diaries also draws upon the Civil War to highlight contemporary concerns, although more subtly.  The CW’s teen drama brought renewed attention to L.J. Smith’s 1991 trilogy of the same name.  Likely inspired by the success of Meyer’s Twilight series, Smith took advantage of the resurgent popularity of vampire narratives, expanding her print series after almost two decades and accepting a television deal that would take her original storyline in a vastly different direction.  Smith’s original series focused on a love triangle between two vampire brothers and their human love interest, Elena Gilbert.  This remains the tie that binds the two versions together at present.  Although much could be contrasted between the television series and the original trilogy, for the purposes of this essay the most interesting change relates to the backstory of the two brothers.  Smith’s novel series portrayed the two male characters, Damon and Stefan Salvatore, as brothers born during the Italian Renaissance.  The CW series alters their pasts, recasting them as young men who met their demise on American soil during the Civil War era.  The television series devotes much more of its narrative contents to the past than did its textual predecessor and it also transforms one of its main characters into an African American descendant of slaves to draw attention to the setting’s cultural hierarchy.  The racial segregation of the vampires and witches is quite explicit and, I argue, problematic.

Unlike the previous two examples, the adapted Twilight films remain closer to their ancestor texts, focusing primarily on the romantic relationship between a human, Bella Swan, and a vampire, Edward Cullen.  The Civil War connection within this series is the origin story of Jasper Cullen who was a major in the confederate army when he was turned.  While this plot element is rather minor, this series is perhaps the most obvious of the three in the way that it expresses nostalgia for the past through the characterization of the main male characters.   All of the series use this historic event as a way to anchor their stories in an American past that is sometimes romanticized.  The Civil War time period shares with this contemporary one a societal resurgence of patriotism – patriotism that comes in a form so strong that it can divide a nation.  In fact, some critics have drawn parallels between the contemporary Tea Party movement and the Civil War Confederacy.  The protagonist vampires from these series associated with the Civil War epoch are also interesting to analyze in that they do not exist as vampires traditionally do.  They are not depicted as an “other” to be feared (which might be expected from post-9/11 texts).  They exist instead as heroic characters who work alongside their human partners to thwart evil in various forms – evil that threatens to terrorize their communities.  But to be clear, these narratives still do depict dark, dangerous others in a way that calls out for a post-9/11 reading.  In these texts all of the good vampires are American and (at least initially) all of the bad vampires come from abroad.  Some examples of the evil non-American vampires from these series include Aro Volturi in Twilight, Russell Edginton in True Blood, and Niklaus Mikaelson [Klaus] in The Vampire Diaries.  This is not an entirely new phenomenon but it is certainly one that has been amplified in the post-9/11 moment.

The characterization of the main male characters in these series is also noteworthy.  Especially in the case of Bill Compton, Stefan Salvatore, and Edward Cullen, these characters represent traditional American values; they are polite, old-fashioned, and chivalrous.  Their depictions, therefore, are much different than those of vampires in past narratives and may be a product of the conservative rhetoric concerning family values that dominated the early and mid-2000s, or shifting conceptualizations of masculinity.  For example, in the Twilight series, Edward’s refusal to have sexual intercourse with Bella until marriage is read as aligning with the abstinence-only education movement popular during this time period.

With this piece I set out to explore the fascination that present vampire narratives have with the Civil War time period and the “traditional” values associated with that bygone era.  Ultimately I suggest that this historical backdrop functions to redirect viewers’ attention to the cultural divides that trouble the country at present in regard to issues including politics, religion, race, gender, and sexuality.  However, this tie to the Civil War also reflects the nostalgia for the past and the current trend of heightened patriotism/nationalism being expressed by subsections of the American public.  As such, these television and film vampire tales continue to function as their ancestor texts have:  they embody the cultural concerns and fears of the time period in which they are created and offer up fascinating critiques in the guise of fiction. 

Promoting Adultery one Program at a Time?: Thoughts on ABC’s Mistresses

Summer programming is always scarce and usually I use the opportunity to clear my DVR (which is currently housing episodes of shows that got cancelled and weeks of General Hospital) and binge view cable shows compliments of my Netflix subscription.  However, I caved in and decided to start recording a few new shows that were launched for the summer hiatus.  One of these is ABC’s Mistresses. 

I have described the show to people as one that is trying (and failing) to be Sex in the City but succeeding in being a typical, fairly well done melodrama.  I was initially enticed to watch it because I’m a product of the 80s and I liked Alyssa Milano on Who’s the Boss (she plays Savannah/Savi on this show), so I was eager to see her in a role as an adult.  I also was curious to see Yunjin Kim play a very different role from Sun on Lost.   And I like Jason George (Bailey’s husband on Grey’s Anatomy and one of the stars of the short-lived series, Off the Map) – he’s easy on the eyes and always plays a sexy, sweet talker.   I’ve also studied the phenomena of the female quartet:  the way chick flicks and women’s television create a friend group of four females who all play set archetypes (the maneater/sex kitten, the feminist/professional, the romantic/dreamer, the ditz/flake).  Characters on these shows do not always translate perfectly as ghosts of programs past but on this show Josslyn/Joss (Jes Macallan) is a younger version of Sex in the City’s Samantha and one can’t help but seeing the similarities between single mom, April (Rochelle Aytes) and Desperate Housewives’s Susan.  Although the characterization on the show is really much of the same, I think the show can be applauded for its racial diversity.  Female foursomes on the small and big screen are notoriously white – not so in this show.

In terms of the plot, the series quickly launched into a set of intriguing storylines (developed a bit too quickly in order to avoid the cancelation that accompanies long periods of exposition/backstory during the early episodes of a new show).  Of these narrative threads the major ones include:  1) Savi & Harry’s infertility problems that result in her having a one night stand with her co-worker, Dominic (which results, of course, in a pregnancy in which, of course, the paternity is in question); 2) April discovering that her dead husband has fathered a child with a mistress she never knew of (and now this ‘other woman’ is extorting her for money); and 3) Karen mourning the loss of her lover (who was also her terminally ill, married patient at her psychiatric clinic, who she prescribed a lethal dose of morphine to so he could end his own life) and dodging a variety of complications (being discovered by her lover’s wife; being implicated in his death during a criminal investigation launched by the insurance company; and being stalked by her lover’s twenty-something son, who now has an infatuation with her).    Sex, love, betrayal, secrets – the typical combination of a melodrama.  But is this typical combination problematic?

When I told a friend I was watching the show she said she had a problem endorsing a show that basically promoted adultery and I found that thought lingering in my mind.    This passing comment took on even more relevance when I saw that ABC was advertising another adultery-themed show, Betrayal, which is set to debut in the fall.  At a glance it looked like Unfaithful for the small screen, but in reading up on it, it appears both cheating parties will be married in this program.   So, just as I’ve been troubled by my ability to consumer such violent programming recently (I just finished the 2^nd from last season of Dexter without flinching), I’m not pondering my ability to have no moral problem with these adultery-themed shows.

I think part of it is that I’ve grown up watching soap operas where adultery is way more common than fidelity.  But a bigger part is that it IS a staple of the genre.  Almost out of necessity.  Any careful viewer, and television scholar, knows that the narrative kiss of death is a happy couple.   If you’re in a happily paired couple on a television program, chances are you’re being written off (at least in dramas, family-based sitcoms usually avoid this trap).  This is why the “will they, won’t they” storyline is so common in shows.  It’s why Jack and Kate couldn’t get together until the end of Lost; it’s why Carrie and Big couldn’t get their happily ever after until the end of the Sex in the City (and why its continuously in peril in the film sequels); it’s why Rachel and Ross had to break up so often on Friends, it’s why Who’s the Boss got canceled shortly after Tony and Angela got together.  If a show depends on a super couple (or even a set of couples), then the narrative must ensure that they are interesting.  What makes a couple’s story interesting?  Conflict.  Sure there are tons of possible conflicts – serious ones like illness and potential death and less serious ones like financial hardship, job complications, family drama – but of all the possible conflicts the one that attracts most viewers is, unsurprisingly:  sex.  Viewers adore love triangles and living vicariously through the bad behavior of the onscreen players.  So adultery storylines are common.  (Followed by break-up or reconciliation storylines, case dependent). 

Does consuming these narratives where affairs are glamorized weaken the moral fabric of our country? Could we find a correlation between the prevalence of such narratives and divorce rates that would be statistically reliable?  I’m not sure.  (I took statistics twice and received an A both times but still I’m useless in applying that knowledge).  As someone who always believes that there is a reciprocal relationship between cultural and narrative trends I’d just as likely assume that that such programming mirrors societal norms rather than prompts them.  And while I wouldn’t imagine that watching a show would make a person more likely to cheat, or change his/her view on adultery – just as I don’t think the current popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey necessarily means that S & M is experiencing its biggest boom yet – does it mean that it has absolutely no detrimental effect?  Again, I’m not sure. 

As always I rest in the mucky gray area feeling that any show is fine as long as we examine it critically – that all media products can have utility if we “talk back” to them (as Susan Douglas advocates).  So I’ll keep watching it and add it to the list of other shows, like the Bachelorette, that make me question my status as feminist, and try to find some value in it… even if that value falls into the categories of “guilty pleasure,” “mindless entertainment,” or even just “eye candy.”  After all, sometimes that’s what we need more than television programming that proposes to act as our moral compass (of which I would be infinitely skeptical of anyhow).