Serial Mom; Meatloaf and Sesame Broccoli

No matter what your mother is, we'll love her anyway.

Serial Mom (1994)

Director: John Waters

Had I seen this before: No

Mom: Beverly Sutphin

Loves: Birds, recycling, button-down shirts with khakis

Hates: Gum, insects, updated fashion rules

Good mom? Good mom, bad person

Welcome to Mother’s May! I thought I’d use this month to explore cinematic representations of motherhood in order to trace the various societal expectations of and reactions to a role that is simultaneously scorned and revered make myself feel better about my own parenting skills, and what better way to start than with Kathleen Turner on a bloody rampage through 1990s suburban Baltimore? Sam Waterston is also there! And according to the Dateline-style true crime time stamps, the events depicted took place during the week of my 13th birthday, which lines up for me thematically in the sense that I do recall the spring of 1993 as an emotionally volatile time.

The thing about Beverly Sutphin is: she’s insane. Not in a DSM-III sort of way (or even DSM-IV sort of way, which would be published the following year). She’s not displaying any sort of mental illness that could track on to our version of reality. She’s movie crazy. Cartoon crazy. Wild eyes and cuckoo bird sound effects crazy. I had some idea of what this movie was before watching it and other than the most basic premise—Kathleen Turner is a suburban mom who murders people—I was pretty off-base with my assumptions, which is always interesting to discover! I was picturing a tightly-wound matriarch who valued her children’s happiness (correct) and keeping up appearances (less correct) above all else and who would eventually be pushed to the brink by some extreme circumstance, only to discover a latent skill for homicide. What I encountered instead is a woman who, when the movie opens, is waging an obscene-phone-call-based harassment campaign against one of her neighbors (whom, we learn in flashback, once swooped in to grab a parking spot at the grocery store that Beverly was eyeing). So the film is less concerned with following Beverly’s journey from upright citizen to shadowy avenger and more interested in society’s reaction to someone who looks like an upright citizen but is in fact an utter lunatic.

The first act of violence we witness is against a buzzing fly hovering over Beverly’s picture-perfect breakfast spread. She is immediately distracted from cheerfully doling out fruit salad and chastising her daughter (Ricki Lake) for chewing gum, engaging in focused pursuit until she successfully swats the invader and renders it a bloody pile on the table. But restoring the perfectness of the picture isn’t the end goal, because she happily leaves the bloody pile where it lies, content that the buzzing has stopped. This foreshadows her general care for crime scenes, which is to say: she basically has none. Eyewitnesses, forensics, who cares? As long as she can’t hear the buzzing anymore.

Reasons that Beverly kills people: suggested that her son is too obsessed with horror movies; stood up her daughter; ate chicken for dinner; didn’t rewind a VHS tape; didn’t wear a seatbelt; wore white shoes after Labor Day. All of these are spur of the moment attacks, entirely devoid of planning or strategy. This messiness means that by the midpoint of the movie pretty much everyone knows that she’s the one doing it, to the extent that two separate parties follow her to witness the non-rewinder’s murder. But no one really seems to know what to do about it—her husband (Sam Waterston) is concerned and supportive (“Is this…menopausal?” he asks sensitively), her children are half-terrified and half-proud (“Just try not to do anything that annoys her,” they counsel a friend). In the era of Lorena Bobbit and Tonya Harding and Amy Fisher, the general public is happy to make her a celebrity—one assumes that by the end of this week she will be featured in the SNL cold open.

I did not see this film in its original context, which is probably just as well because I was a seventh grader and had enough going on. But thirty years on, I struggled with finding the Beverly character funny or subversive because there is now an entire American political party full of middle-aged, middle-class white women who are rabidly bloodthirsty and largely deranged. Beverly wouldn’t seem at all out of place causing havoc at a school board meeting or yelling at a librarian about trans people or stalking the halls of Congress spouting pure gibberish. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but ladies are out here bragging about shooting puppies, which makes satire difficult. I don’t love the modern usage of the word Karen because a) there are a lot of real people named Karen and that sucks and b) it’s frequently used as a shield for saying whatever misogynistic thing you wouldn’t get away with otherwise, but I have no doubt that the blonde, buttoned-up wife of a dentist who murdered people for minor social infractions would be given the ÜberKaren crown today (and the attendant invitation to the right-wing grifter circuit).

Stray thoughts: 1) Happy to see Matthew Lillard and wondering, in a post-FNAF world, if we are due for a Lillardaissance? A Rennailillard? I’m here for it. 2) I don’t mean to suggest that there isn’t joy to be found in Kathleen Turner’s delight at hissing the word “fuckface” at someone because there definitely is. 3) The fact that it is suggested that Beverly might be menopausal despite Kathleen Turner having just turned 40 when this was filmed lends weight to the idea that people in their 40s used to be depicted as elderly in a way that is no longer the case. I am not saying this as a smug 43-year-old who does not wear pearls and twin sets. I am saying this as a bitter 43-year-old who thought the pressure to be hot would have evaporated years ago but has to deal with the fact that Ryan Gosling was born the same year as her and Rachel Weisz was born ten years earlier and 78-year-old Ernie Hudson looks like this for some reason. Please just let me be old I am tired.

Asian Style Meatloaf from Bachan’s and Sesame Broccoli from Foodie Crush

In a display of picture-perfect post-homicide domesticity, Beverly serves her famous meatloaf and her daughter’s favorite sesame broccoli. I whipped up something along the same lines but personally didn’t commit any carnage beforehand. Not of a math teacher, not of a fly. As if I could do anything except sit and stare. Like one of his stuffed birds. Why, I can’t even move a finger. And I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do…suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching, they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know and they’ll say, “Why she wouldn’t even harm a fly.”

Up next: An iconic closet-related meltdown