Wer hat Angst vor Betty Draper?

(via)

Vielleicht müßte der Titel auch eher lauten: Wer hat Angst Betty Draper zu sein? Nach und nach kristallisiert sich bei Mad Men heraus, dass weder Don Draper noch Peggy Ohlsen sondern Betty Draper der komplizierteste, weil gefangenste Charakter der Serie ist. Das ist keine Neuigkeit, aber dass sie auch die Figur ist, die am wenigsten gemocht wird, an der sich die meisten Zuschauer und Fans reiben, ist ebenfalls sehr spannend.

Sady Doyle vom Blog Tiger Beatdown hat sich Betty Draper angenommen und einen sehr lesenswerten Artikel geschrieben.

Zitate:

"Because the consensus is that the show is “ruining” the character, or forbidding us to like her, or generally trying to turn her into a monster or a caricature or a villain, and that this is a mistake or a misogynist ploy or a flaw in the show’s normally amazing understanding of and respect for its characters. And I just don’t think any of this is true. Betty Draper made me cry more this season than she ever has. She’s truer than she ever has been."

"Because, let’s start here: Betty, in her own estimation, has absolutely no power. Oh, sure, she’s got the rich lady power. And the white lady power. She gets to be an unforgivably racist fuck to Carla. (...) Nothing about Betty’s grossness is excusable, but she has the power of privilege, and this power (along with her abuses of it) is invisible to her because of how privilege works. She can only see the ways she’s not privileged. You know, sort of like Peggy! Who you love! But in her mind, in terms of her subjective experience of her life, she’s never had power."

"This is the second truth of Betty: She’s never had goodness, or healthiness, but she knows what it’s supposed to look like. As far as she’s concerned, what it looks like is what it is. She can’t tell the difference between an apple and a ball of wax made to look like an apple; she’ll eat either, probably, but she’s more used to how the second one tastes."

"And now there is someone you are actually allowed to be angry at. Now, finally, you have someone that it’s okay to blame. That’s the third truth: Betty has always been this angry. She’s always wanted to just stand there and scream that she hates somebody, that she wants him (her, them) dead. But now, she has an excuse. It’s him, Don, that bastard, that cheating drunk lying fraud son of a fucking bitch, the one place in the world that she is allowed to aim her anger. It’s all his fault."

"And it’s not Don’s fault. Maybe it was, but that’s over now; what happens to Betty is pretty much exclusively Betty’s fault from here on out. She grew up thinking that there were two roles to play, abuser and abused. Now that she wants power, now that she’s sick of being abused, she’s chosen to become an abuser. She honestly does see that as her only other option. She’s angry at something that happened to her so long ago she can’t even exactly name it, but she’s playing that thing out with her children, and especially with her daughter, every single damn day."

"She still needs love, so badly, but she just doesn’t deserve it any more, and giving it to her is just too risky. Help came too late. And how many stories is that, really?"

Hier geht es zum Artikel "No-One’s Ever On Your Side: Betty Draper Francis Still Needs Your Love"