Fametracker audits Teri Hatcher’s fame, ultimately deciding to exact some severe penalties:
Teri Hatcher’s already had fame once and lost it, which may be why she’s digging her talons into it so hard this time around. Perhaps if we stopped paying her so much attention, her grip would loosen. Let’s find out!
I couldn’t agree more with their assessment of Hatcher’s talent, works, or general appeal. Of all the characters on Desperate Housewives, hers suffers the most from the now-we’re-edgy-now-we’re-not writing. “Dramedy” has turned Susan’s story arc into a Lifetime movie laced with humiliating pratfalls. I suppose I shouldn’t blame Hatcher for having such a twitchy mess to work with, but, well, I do. I do.
It’s also gratifying to read someone else complaining about the knot of irritation that is Desperate Housewives. It is possible to write searing comedy. It’s difficult, in fact, to write entirely human drama without lapsing occasionally into absurdity. Gosford Park. The Sopranos. Deadwood. Battlestar Galactica, even. Desperate Housewives, on the other hand, uses “drama” whenever it’s accused of being fluffy, and “comedy” whenever it worries about becoming too heavy. You need both, not neither. When you write really well, the characters will swing back and forth from noble to horrendous to dignified to deranged, but like human beings, not like open-source Sims.
This squeamishness, the confusion around what “edgy” really means, is directly related to the fact that Desperate Housewives’ protagonists are women. That’s why the writers sat down to write compelling, sympathetic characters, and came up with Susan. That’s why they feel compelled to shove Susan down a flight of stairs anytime anything gets too interesting or scary. Whooo! Ha ha! Aren’t we the wackiest!?
I’m with Lisa Schmeiser at Teevee:
But ultimately my biggest problem with the show is this: it tries to have its cake and eat it too, and it fails. There’s a genre in mystery publishing called “cozies,” wherein murder and mayhem are balanced by cookie-baking heroines or people whose talking cats solve crimes. This is the cozy of the suburban satire genre: it’s attempting to make us think about women’s roles in society, but it’s managed to completely eliminate larger society from the equation. Which is, in the end, kind of weird, given that the same women being shown bouncing around their airtight bubble are the ones who, in reality, drive the economy of this country, people the grass-roots movements that politicians respond to and — when they have time — raise the next generation of voters.
The fame audit linked to another article about Hatcher. (Sexual-abuse triggers.) I’m trying not to think about how Desperate Housewives would deal with a storyline like this, if they’d ever touch it at all (Tearful confession over mimosas? Susan accidentally brains the bastard with her old track-and-field trophy? She’ll probably accidentally put her own eye out with a letter opener):
On the first page of the Vanity Fair article about Sunnyvale native Teri Hatcher is a picture of the actress wearing an unbuttoned shirt and white panties, staring at the camera with a wounded look.
I would have gone with “windblown” and “sultry,” myself. Also, “chilly.” Moving on:
“In an exclusive interview, the breakout star of `Desperate Housewives’ reveals the abuse she says she’s hidden all her life,” the blurb on a facing page says.
The writer goes to great pains to emphasize that Hatcher did not start talking about her abuse for publicity’s sake, which is sad. Is being a molestation victim sexeee? I wasn’t aware:
I’m well aware of the elaborate dance between editors and publicists that goes on before an actress is put on the cover of Vanity Fair. And I think you can make a case that Hatcher, 41, told her story now to writer Leslie Bennetts because her career is on firm ground: She can’t be accused of pandering for public sympathy as an over-the-hill actress.
Then again, Fametracker apparently thinks otherwise:
If we’ve all heard the story of what a has-been Hatcher was, maybe she needed to give us a newer, bigger reason to pay attention to her — one that gave her public persona depth and tragedy — and apparently she found one. Which is not to say that we doubt the story or that we don’t abhor the man who victimized her…but when the photo accompanying the story is of her in her panties and appears on the cover of Vanity Fair, the timing of the disclosure just seems a bit convenient.
If Hatcher had not gotten this role and the publicity flood that followed, if she were an “over-the-hill actress,” would her decision to tell her story have been dismissed as so much self-aggrandizement? Did she have to think long and hard about how it might impact her career if she revealed that she had a real life and history with all kinds of human pain wrapped up in it?
I’m finding Hatcher really interesting these days. I enjoy Desperate Housewives quite a bit, and find Hatcher’s character to be positively loathsome. In fact, Susan’s existence puts forth a never-talked-about message in this show: that men are unbelievably stupid. Susan lies, cheats, has no brains, no boundaries, is a questionable parent, and not a very nice person, but men are always falling at her feet and doing anything she wants them to do.
I am also in the minority (perhaps alone?) in the feminist community for not thinking Hatcher’s coming forward in the sex abuse trial makes her a hero (http://thedeesdiversion.blogspot.com/2006/03/nothing-heroic-about-hatcher.html). I see this stuff every day in my office–women who were abused by relatives but–even though they know children are being abused as they speak–do not intervene. They don’t want to get the perpetrator “in trouble.”
Of course, this protecting of the perpetrator at the risk of children is part of the women’s sickness, but it is a very dangerous part. In our culture, we want nothing to do with the sickness of perpetrators–they are just criminals–but we are quick to forgive the women who collude with them.
Hatcher’s half-naked photo on the cover of Vanity Fair is total proof that she is still pretty deep into her sickness. I know that photographing women half naked is all the rage, but for an incest survivor to pose that way for a cover story about her incest is, sadly, a textbook example of how untreated incest survivors behave. (I remember, years ago, seeing a woman who became famous for writing an account of her childhood incest on TV to talk about her famous book. She had so much cleavage showing, it was shocking. I knew then how well her “treatment” had actually gone.)
And as art so often imitates life, it is interesting that Hatcher plays a woman with no boundaries at all on Desperate Housewives.
…Yeah, I think I’m gonna have to opt out of that minority, too. Hatcher agonized over the decision because revealing her abuse–to millions of people, in her case, many of whom would dismiss it as a publicity stunt–would have meant reliving it.
She may or may not have had any qualms about how her uncle would feel–the abuse survivors you talk to may or may not actually care or believe they care about their abusive family members. The family, as well as society at large, are often so concerned about the wellbeing of the perpetrator that they punish the survivor for coming forward. An abuse survivor concerned about the damage to her abuser’s reputation is not necessarily concerned for his sake.
What is certain is that she was worried about the harm to her own psyche, and justifiably so.
I’m very bothered by you labeling Hatcher a collaborator. She was this man’s victim, just like his later victim. Her fear stems from her vulnerability; her vulnerability is a result of the damage he inflicted on her.
That’s half naked?
Most of the sex abuse survivors I see wind up colluding in some way with the perpetrator. This is a systemic problem, a family problem. It’s what keeps incest going for generations. The reasons behind it are complex, but almost every survivor I have ever treated–and I have been treating them for almost two decades–cites not wanting to get the perpetrator “in trouble” as one of the reasons for not warning other families that their children are probably being abused. You are correct that there are other reaons, and the main other reason is that the message from the family–do not talk about it, do not talk about it, do not talk about it–is still very strong.
In the area of incest and sex abuse, being a victim and a colludor are not mutually exclusive. That is why I say it is a systemic problem. It is not linear. The thinking of many incest survivors becomes so irrational that the protection of children simply goes out the window. There is also a powerful unconscious move to stay within the tent of abuse: Women often wind up making friends with other women whose husbands are sex abusers, though the women do not consciously know it. Or they want so badly to believe that “it didn’t happen” that they send their own children, unsupervised, to visit the perpetrator.
Over the years, the women I have seen–once they have been able to freely express anger about everyone involved–have said, over and over, that they felt more betrayed by their mothers, sisters, aunts, etc., who on some level, knew what was going on, than they did by their perpetrators. It is a family sickness, not just a sickness of perpetrators.
I agree with you that society often punishes victims for coming forward. So do families. But when survivors do not get help for their problem, then they become part of the cultural wave that puts anything before the protection of children. It is sickness that makes men (and women) perpetrate, and it is sickness that makes people cover for perpetrators. What Hatcher did (and I’m glad she did it–better late than never) gives an Oprah-fed America a feel-good moment, but it does nothing to address the reality of the family illness known as incest.
Well, and what do we call it when a female celebrity who isn’t an abuse survivor shows up half-naked on the cover of any given glossy?
Most people call it “sexy,” I suppose. I personally don’t care for it, but that is not the issue at all, at least not any issue that I discussed. The issue is that a cover story that is about the object’s sex abuse and features a seductive photo of her on that cover is quite telling about 1. the lack of senitivity of the magazine, and 2. where the photo object is in terms of her abuse (looked at in combination with other things, especially).
OK, I’ll admit it – I’m a Fametracker addict. I don’t watch TV and I still check it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for updates. Heck, with FT, you don’t need TV – FT must be much, much better.
How do you know that that’s what the article is “about” and not just one issue raised in the article?
That sounds to me like a social sickness, where we all blame women for not stopping men from doing horrible things. This greater, irrational anger at women who don’t rescue children from men (greater than at the men who harm them) is as much a product of conditioning as the horrible inaction of those women is.
Diane, your comments are offending me, and I’m not easily offended. I was molested by my alcoholic grandfather once when I was about nine years old. I told my father immediately afterward, he confronted my grandfather (his father), my grandfather denied it, and my father chose to believe him over me. To this day (I am 29), I have never spoken to anyone in my family about the incident again. Because I did not feel like being accused of lying, I chose to deal with the emotional aftermath all on my own. Should I have warned all of my aunts and uncles (total number: 6) so they could protect their children (my cousins)? That’s a hell of a burden to place on a nine-year-old, don’t you think? Or is that a responsibility that fell on my shoulders when I turned 18? I don’t know if my grandfather molested anyone else in my family. (He’s dead now.) If I had to guess, based on the way child molestors operate, I’d say he probably did. The reason I chose not to talk about this with anyone in my family ever again had nothing to do with covering for or protecting my grandfather and everything to do with protecting myself, emotionally speaking. If any of my relatives were victimized after me, I feel deeply sorry that that happened to them, but I will absolutely not allow myself to feel one iota of blame or guilt for it (which is what you’re suggesting by saying victims “collude” with their abusers by not coming forward). I’ve felt enough blame and guilt about my own abuse, thank you very much.
Okay, I just read your blog post Diane, and now I see that yes, that responsibility fell on my shoulders when I became an adult.
Of course, that’s exactly what Teri Hatcher did. So your gripe seems to be that she “agonized” over the decision. Do you not think it would be agonizing for a victim of sexual abuse to decide to speak out about it publicly, to testify at a trial, etc.?
Sorry to make it three in a row, but I just want to make it clear that I do understand the problem you’re talking about, Diane. I understand that there are cases where family members blatantly cover for abuse that they know is going on. But that’s not what Teri Hatcher did. You said that what she did “does nothing to address the reality of the family illness known as incest.” But how so? She came forward. There’s no indication that she knew that this girl was being abused until after the fact.
As for your opinion that that Vanity Fair cover is “total proof that she is still pretty deep into her sickness,” all I can say is, good lord. Judgmental much?
It’s okay, raging red. Yes, an adult; in fact, a child, knows that the perpetrator is going to perpetrate again. Many children go out of their way to protect other children in their family. Yes, she knew he would continue to perpetrate. The fact that she did not step forward earlier does not make her a bad person–far from it. It makes her a frightened victim. My point is that as long as our society can see only that some celebrity came forward in the clinch and then feel relieved over it, we are missing the point.
I am looking at this, again, systemically. A family sickness causes someone to perpetrate and later causes the victim to very possibly do any or all of the following things: 1. not tell other family members, even though those familiy members have children who live or near with the perpetrator; 2. marry a perpetrator; 3. ship their children off to be with the perpetrator; 4. rekindle a friendship with the perpetrator; 5. invite the perpetrator into their homes.
These are not unusual occurrences, but are actually more the norm.
Yes it true that women who are sexually abused are victims of the worst kind. By the same token, abusers generally fall into two categories: 1. pedophiles, who have some kind of messed-up brain chemistry, and 2.people who abuse because they were abused. Most of that group fall into cateogry 2., meaning they are also victims.
Some of you are getting all excited over the use of the word “collude,” which I am using in a clinical, family systems sense. This collusion may be unconscious or caused by extreme internal stress. Part of successful treatment of sexual abuse problems is to stop the collusion by removing unconscious barriers and by empowering victims to live for themselves and for their children, rather than for their (also colluding) families who are smothered in denial.
This is my final statement on this matter. I have interviewed, listened to, comforted, and confronted sexual abuse victims for 19 years. I have heard things too shocking to repeat, and I have seen the hostility of family denial close up in my office over and over. Saying that our culture needs to understand the issue better so that victims can not only heal but take responsibility in breaking the abuse chain is something I stand by.
I have similar experience as Diane, only on the other side of the fence. Used to work for a psychologist who had a large practice, evaluating sex offenders’ mental competence and ability to stand trial, and treating the relatively small number of offenders for whom effective psychotherapeutic treatment was a possibility. A big part of my job was writing up life histories on all these (mostly) guys. The data we collected was unambiguous; the structures and dynamics Diane is describing are exactly on target.
And God, it’s tragic. She’s quite right – this is an area where the culture has to change to support victims in the effort to break out of the destructive cycles.
How is snarking about a survivor’s motivations for speaking out doing anything to help survivors break the destructive cycles of violence and silence?
You’re using it on a blog. I appreciate you clarifying.
Robert, I understand and agree with Diane’s clarification, but she wasn’t exactly talking about too little support for women like Hatcher in her initial comment. “I am also in the minority (perhaps alone?) in the feminist community for not thinking Hatcher’s coming forward in the sex abuse trial makes her a hero (http://thedeesdiversion.blogspot.com/2006/03/nothing-heroic-about-hatcher.html).” And, “In our culture, we want nothing to do with the sickness of perpetrators–they are just criminals–but we are quick to forgive the women who collude with them.” I think that her comments about the society in which Hatcher is forced to function were right on; I think her comments about Hatcher’s heroism or lack thereof, and agency or lack thereof, were a little less so.
It’s funny and instructive that there is an acknowledement that even coming forward to authorities and to family is ofttimes ineffective and only serves to isolate the victim from their entire family yet the conversation is not about how laws should change or how to change societal perceptions but about how victims need to “do more”.
One of my close friends is exactly like Teri Hatcher’s character and she was never abused. Not having any boundries seems much more a quality of an abuser than an abused person.
I’m pretty sure that what she said she “agonized” about was the decision to speak about it publicly, not the decision to testify at the trial. (Her testimony was secret.) I saw an interview with the journalist who wrote the Vanity Fair story, and she said that Hatcher never debated testifying.
I actually think that her qualms about going public are sort of interesting and complicated. She wasn’t worried that people would pass judgement on her for having been abused or for how she dealt with it, although judging by Diane’s comments, maybe she should have been. She was worried that people would see her as another over-the-hill celebrity milking her personal pain for publicity. The trial took place several years ago, when she was in between projects, but she didn’t speak about it publicly until after Desperate Housewives was a big hit, and she no longer had any problem generating publicity. I think it says as much about the effects of reality t.v. and celebrity journalism as about our attitudes towards sexual abuse. People could easily see two irritating reality show conventions colliding: on the one hand, the tendency for washed-up celebrities to cling desperately to fame on shows like The Surreal Life, and on the other the tendency of shows like “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “America’s Next Top Model” to use people’s genuine pain to score cheap emotional points with the viewers. We, the viewing public, are conditioned to be fairly cycnical about that stuff, and it sounds like she really couldn’t deal with the idea of people rolling their eyes when she talked about her truly terrible experience.
The cover of the magazine seems to suggest that the main focus of the article is Ms Hatcher’s hot and sexy no-pants secret.