Small fires everywhere is an adaptation of the novel by Celeste Ng which I saw people get carried away for the first time when I worked at the Strand bookstore. It was adapted from a Hulu mini-series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington respectively Elena Richardson and Mia Warren – two mothers from different socio-economic backgrounds who met in Shaker Heights, Ohio in the 1990s, and whose lives merges. The show has proven to be a master class on race, motherhood and class, but one of its most courageous actions is to make the protagonists at once so deeply unsympathetic.
(Spoilers for Small fires everywhere)
I know we often talk about allowing women to be hateful in the media, but I think even with that in mind there is a desire to turn malicious forces into girls. Again Small fires knows that you can take stock of race, class and other issues without making someone a clear “hero” or a clear “villain”. Elena is the well-intentioned white woman who probably voted for Donald Trump because there was something about Hilary Clinton that she didn’t like.
Elena recounts how she “walked with Dr. King” and that her mother helped integrate high school into their town of Shaker, Ohio, but when she comes into conflict with people of color, they instantly become “them” and “other”. “They infest his perfect world and instead of being someone with emotional and social empathy, he is someone who smiles at someone’s face and tells them that they are garbage. her lesbian daughter, whom she has clearly isolated in their family unit, she does not see how her actions harm her own child.
What makes Elena interesting is that she is not one note. When she first sees the situation of Mia and her daughter Pearl (and assumes that they are homeless), she indeed wants to help them. However, the darkness is that she wants to be praised for this. Her selflessness is supposed to be rewarded – if not by her peers, then absolutely by the person she helps. Elena is also frustrated in her career because having four children, back to back, prevented her from achieving her own journalistic dreams.
It is a person.
Kerry Washington’s Mia Warren (née Wright) is also an incredibly complex character as she is also deeply not very friendly. We spend a lot of episode six “The Uncanny” to see the story of Mia as a young woman. She was the child of Jamaican religious immigrants who half supported her artistic dreams in New York. She thrives in the city with her art, her teacher (who becomes her lover, a lot to unpack there, but not yet), and has her beloved brother as the only family link.
When Mia is asked by a black couple, the Ryans (played by Jesse Williams and Queen Nicole Beharie) to be a surrogate for them because of her resemblance to Mrs. Ryan, she agrees. Then a series of tragedies led her to decide to keep the baby, lying to the Ryans about what happened to the child.
The relationship between her daughter Pearl and Mia is difficult to break. Mia clearly loves Pearl, almost as stuffy as Elena, and it is clear that Pearl is a well-groomed and intelligent young woman. However, the transitional lifestyle to which Pearl was subjected as a way for Mia to maintain her artistic independence and not risk losing custody of her daughter is emotionally abusive. In addition, despite Mia’s progressiveness and racial awareness, she clearly did not pass this on to Pearl, who is easily sucked into the Richardson white suburban domesticity despite the way the children speak to her.
May’s decision to keep Pearl will undoubtedly divide people, especially because surrogacy, especially for the money, is a complicated issue. For anyone not familiar with the Baby M case of 1988, it was a case where a woman agreed to be inseminated for a family but then decided to keep the baby after birth. Finally, the baby was placed in the care of the family of his biological father, his biological mother having been visited. Years later, when “Baby M” reached the age of majority, she was able to decide for herself the identity of her parents.
Surrogacy is controversial for reasons like this, due to problems with the reproductive organs and the fact that if you are poor and need money it may seem like a promising thing. It does not prepare you for possible emotional consequences like postpartum depression or the risk of attachment. Even in the situation where the Ryans were black as well as Mia, their class and Mia’s financial desperation put her in a position where it was difficult to refuse this kind of money.
Author Celeste Ng spoke of the fact that she did not initially specify the race of the Warrens. “I knew I was involved in race and class,” said Ng Buzzfeed. “And I had lessons in there [Mia is an artist and makes ends meet as a server at a local Chinese restaurant] and they literally come from outside of Shaker, and they behave differently. But then run, you look at my face, and people tend to think I’m not from here. There is this visual impairment. “
But Ng did not want to do the Warrens Asian American, because of the central scenario involving the adoption of an Asian American baby and also because she “did not want [she] was the person who could give life to a black or latina woman. “
The change occurred when Witherspoon and Small fires co-producer Lauren Neustadter raised the idea of launching Washington.
“I don’t want to do JK Rowling and pretend that, all along, I thought about it. I thought of her as a white character, but I always explored these more important power questions. With Kerry, you have a way to explore the racial dynamics that I have not been able to explore in the book. And that, for me, told me that they looked at the show in the same way that I looked at the book. these questions of power. “
Mia’s failures as a mother do not detract from the racism Elena has toward her and the character of Bebe Chow, another low-income woman of color. This is important because people like Elena are not only racist towards the “wrong” types of people of color, they are racist towards everyone; they just pull exceptions to add to their circle. Because when you live in a reality of privileged white decorated with taste, a little color does not spoil the decor.
Elena’s own difficulties with a sexist world have not made her a nicer or more compassionate person, because she thinks that the lack of struggle she gave to her children means that she is a good mother. . His abandonment of a promising career to have children is the “right” thing, while berating someone like Bebe who had to abandon his child because otherwise they would both starve.
Watching the last episode with Bebe Chow fighting with Linda McCullough was a perfect example of how the series manages to highlight the complexity of motherhood with tough choices. Both Linda and Bebe sympathize with me. Linda has dealt with infertility and she loves Mirabelle / May Ling. However, Bebe’s situation of abandoning her daughter in a fire station is tragic because she was alone, poor and suffering from a postpartum episode. She did not have the capacity to take care of her child and abandoned her in order to protect her baby. However, she did not stop looking for her child.
When asked how she plans to maintain Mirabelle / May Ling’s cultural ties, you can see that this is a problem of which Linda only slightly understands the importance. It was an impactful moment for me because even though “race is not everything”, the McCulloughs total inability to empathize with Chow, their own micro-attacks and their ignorance (like having fortune cookies) on the girl’s first birthday), show that while they have a lot to offer this child, they are not at all prepared to face the race. Given the absolute contempt with which they treat the biological mother, are these people ready for the day when someone treats their Chinese daughter with contempt because they do not immediately see her wealth? Are they ready for their daughter to be different? Having to endure the same micro-aggressions as the Warrens?
It’s a complicated question and there is no easy answer, that’s what makes the show so complicated. There are no heroes, just people who do their best and sometimes it is not enough.
All filled to the brim with melodrama, Small fires everywhere uses this element to expose the limits of sympathy for fictitious female characters and ask: do you need to love them so that they have a valid point?
(image: Hulu)
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