mommy dearest & self-parody

A couple of brief thoughts on seeing Mommy Dearest at Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass series.

Lately I've noticed that the focal (not necessarily main) character of certain films seems to act as a metaphor for the films themselves. I first noticed it on watching The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. In many ways, the effects that the overbearing, borgeuois thief has on those around him aren't at all unlike the effect that the film has on its audience. Insulting, frightening, weirdly compelling. When the cook revolts, it's almost as though the film turns on itself and the audience fulfills its revenge fantasies upon the film through cook's character. As for Mommie Dearest, the film takes itself every bit as seriously as the version of Joan Crawford it portrays -- it's intentions are no less ambitious, lurid or self-serving. Base cruelty masquerading as high art -- yet the film's/Joan's undisciplined hubris exceeds its/her ability to keep up the charade, rendering the film/Joan as ridiculous, pathetic and laughable as it/she is horrifying.

It seemed to me that the only scene that actually works -- the only scene in which the audience laughed with the film and not directly at it -- is the one in which Joan takes over her daughter's role on the daytime soap opera. On live television, Joan, drunk, a fifty-some year-old woman playing a girl of eighteen, stares offstage instead and seductively lights a cigarette instead of delivering her lines. The audience howls -- not because the scene is as poorly made as the rest of the film, but because it is basically effective. No cheap camera angles and edits stolen from horror repertoire this time, but rather an authentic portrayal of the moment itself. Yet a part of me wonders if this works precisely because the TV soap opera (or Joan-on-the-soap-opera) functions as a parody of the film itself; in this scene, the film (for the first and only time) not only levels with itself and its audience but does so with an uncharacteristic flair for self-deprecating humor -- and in calling attention to itself in such a way has the effect of absorbing the audience in the narrative.