“Bad Moms” as a Lesson in Protest: Cinematic Representations of Maternal (Self)-Surveillance

• In Event: Media and Narrative Analyses of Women and Girls' Behavior

Abstract

The 2016 film, “Bad Moms,” reflects a comedic, formalized, Hollywood treatment of the hyper-surveilled culture within which mothers (in this case, those who are elite and predominantly white) mother. Yet embedded within this film are deeper aspersions about the nature of motherwork, expectations of good mothering and, most important, the processes whereby mothers might reassert agency within this highly regulated and ideologically constrained world. In this presentation I consider the regulatory experience and context of mothering within “mom culture,” including the strategies used by mothers to manage and control deviance and compliance alongside efforts at resistance to these strategies, including the outcomes of such resistance. Using critical feminist film analysis I argue that “Bad Moms” portrays an important tension between self- and other-expectations of good mothering within the context of heavily socially policed maternal demands, even as it comedically and problematically reasserts a single understanding of neoliberal mothering.

Author

• Michelle Hughes Miller, University of South Florida