(no subject)
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.
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.