HBO’s Big Little Lies (streaming in India on Hotstar Premium) is by any standards one of the most remarkable TV shows of recent times, and approaching its final episode. Based on Liane Moriarty’s 2014 novel of the same name, the show brought together an ensemble cast including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and now Meryl Streep in the ongoing second season. The narrative follows the fortunes of the so-called Monterey Five, five women connected by a death that they all allegedly witnessed. Beyond its acerbic humour and its thoughtful critique of American suburbia, Big Little Lies gave us a masterclass in depicting trauma, sexual violence and intimate partner violence, among other things.
The second season does a wonderful job of showing us the perpetual scrutiny mothers (especially young mothers) are subjected to. In the very first episode, Madeline (Witherspoon) remarks that the first day of a new school session meant having to “earn our ‘good mother’ tags” all over again. It’s worth noting that according to almost every other character, Madeline is, if anything, a little too involved in her child’s school.
Single and on trial
The first season saw Jane (Shailene Woodley) battling a group of angry parents after her son Ziggy was accused of bullying one of his classmates — yes, the parents were angry on their kids’ behalf, but they chose to highlight Jane’s status as a young, single mother. Her youth and singlehood are both seen as proof of her incompetence as a mother — because mothers are supposed to be asexual creatures, young (but not too young) or old (but not too old).
In the ongoing second season, we see Celeste (Kidman) fighting a custody battle for her twins because her scheming, old-fashioned mother-in-law Mary Louise (Streep) feels she’s not a good enough mother. Every aspect of her personal life (sleep medication, therapy, one-night stands) is brought up loudly and persistently in court. Everything is fair game for the world to dissect. In a masterstroke, HBO even hired a famous TV mom to play the family court judge here (Becky Ann Baker from Freaks and Geeks and Girls ), amplifying the motherhood-on-trial angle. “I am a good mother, all this has nothing to do with my capability as a parent,” Celeste keeps insisting, but nobody has any intention of seeing her as a person. Strictly speaking, the mother is not corporeal.
Bunker mentality
This idea, of mothers being omnipresent, incorporeal entities — essentially empathetic voices — is explored in an impressive way by the recent Netflix movie I Am Mother , a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Hilary Swank and Clara Rugaard. The movie is set in a wasteland where, after a massive extinction event, a robot named Mother grows an embryo and comes to care for the girl, referred to only as Daughter (Rugaard).
Mother, tasked with repopulating the earth, raises the child in a hermetically sealed bunker designed for surviving a war-ravaged landscape. Soon, Daughter starts asking Mother why she can’t ever venture out. Mother’s response is a familiar one: which mother would risk her child’s life for a few, fun-filled outdoor hours? An even more interesting moment happens when Daughter asks why the robot hasn’t developed more embryos. Mother says she needs time in order to be a better parent. “Mothers need time to learn,” she says.
A robot is the source of these insights on motherhood — I Am Mother does a fair bit with this conceit. What’s even more impressive is the way it plays with the idea of ‘competitive motherhood’ — in the Monterey of Big Little Lies , it’s a plague, especially if you’re the long-suffering school principal.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, however, it’s precisely what a robot mommy is shooting for. Failure, after all, means having to start humanity all over again.
For real-life young mothers, however, both narratives will sound all too familiar, our judgmental world’s engines humming along as soundtrack.
The writer and journalist is working on his first book of non-fiction.
