Lifetime Movies

I know that this borders on an obsession, however, I feel as if there are some interesting feminist gems to be mined from LMN. Last night, for example, I watched, with my beautiful stepdaughter an older lifetime movie--The Eyes of a Stalker. This older film, I thought it was definitely from the 80s, but actually it was made in 1995 has a very classic, more formulaic structure than many lifetime movies. In this film, a young college girl is being stalked by a professor, albeit a pseudo professor, who is described as a "wily legal consultant" whatever that is. He hangs around the courthouse and campus offering people advice on how to use the small claims courts--(Everyone keeps saying, 'Hey Dr. Prime--I took your small claims class a couple of semesters ago!' What?!) At the beginning of the movie, the viewer is told that two years prior the heroine's father died, leaving her and her mother (who is a judge) to cope with life together.

So far, look at the elements: 1) The heroine (Beth) begins the movie as a ninny basically, but by the end of the film, thanks to the supportive relationship she has with her mother, Martha, who is formidable and the struggles she goes through, she becomes empowered and determines to make the stalker stop ruining her life.

2) The men in the film--her father, by all accounts a real prince, is dead. Her love interest is a jerk for a lot of the film and is always acting like Beth has brought the stalker upon herself. Stephen the Stalker is a "smooth" weirdo who is, in my opinion, very well cast. The only other male character is an old wizened PI who Beth's straightlaced mother initially resists but eventually comes to trust. Essentially, none of the men in this movie can be trusted, except for the most seemingly untrustworthy one--the PI.

3) May I venture to call this a Lifetime network Bildungsroman? The trajectory of the plot--young kid who learns some valuable lessons and becomes a woman certainly seems to qualify.

One interesting moment is when Martha tells Beth that she can't believe she is hanging around with the PI, and Beth says that he is "nice". Martha tells her that this is her problem--she is too nice for her own good. The interesting point about this encounter is that both women learn from each other--Martha learns eventually to overcome her prejudices and stereotypes, and Beth learns that she needs to toughen up a little.

To me this is exactly the kind of film that one expects Lifetime to make. It is much harder for me to categorize some of their other movies. I mean, why are women so interested in really sick crimes, and the aftermath of such crimes? (Eg Amber's Story)I guess there is something about what women relate to and the unimaginable but it is less obvious why these movies belong on a television station dedicated to women. Same with the movies where a women is the mayhem-maker, (eg the Trophy Wife's Secret). What fuels these kinds of fascinations? It seems to me that Lifetime producers thought that they would be making more movies like Eye of the Stalker and fewer movies like the Trophy Wife's Secret or that crazy one I reviewed previously about the cheerleader turned porn star. Man as enemy seems more like what you would expect all Lifetime movies to have as a common theme, but surprisingly, lots of times this is just not the case.

Lifetime Movie Review

So, over the break, I somehow managed to fit in a Lifetime movie marathon. Below I describe my favorites.

CASUALTIES OF LOVE: THE LONG ISLAND LOLITA STORY

This film is truly a LM classic, starring Alyssa Milano as Amy Fisher. The sheer amount of acid wash makes it entirely worth watching. I was totally wishing I had Joey B.'s denim jacket and poor Mary Jo's mile high white acid wash jeans. The acting is classically bad, and there really is no plucky heroine, which breaks the classic LM formula, as previously described. But, the story was so sensational that Lifetime could not help itself from making this movie.

It is kind of funny, I think that the director tried to be as neutral as possible, because at different points in the movie, you feel sorry for all of the different characters. First, of course, you feel sorry for Mary Jo Buttafuoco, but then she starts to get all righteous and her desire for vengeance is more important to her than the maintenance of the family business, and I started to feel like, wait a minute here Mary Jo, the family business is important. And we all know Amy is going to go to prison, it is just a question of how long.

You also feel sorry for Amy (momentarily I might add) because she is so young and stupid, and she gets herpes. Which is just sad. But, her prostitution and ridiculous ideas soon turn you against her.

And Joey, you feel sorry for him, because he made a mistake and boy does he end up paying for it. The director leaves the whole relationship between Joey and Amy very vague, so the audience is never quite sure what happened between the two of them, although you suspect that Amy is not lying when she is talking to her high school cheerleader chum about all of the places that they had "encounters".

But his refusal, time and time again to admit that he had an affair is frustrating and tedious.

I tried to watch the Nora Roberts' adaptations, but I just couldn't stomach it. Even with Heather Locklear, a semi bona fide actress. (I still miss the Melrose years.) Lifetime does better, I think to make movies that are either based on true incidents, or movies that are created solely with the Lifetime viewer in mind.

For some reason, the older that the LM is, the more I like it. I think it is because they date themselves so badly the older ones are more amusing. Plus, then you can tell yourself that you are watching it in a truly ironical fashion, and although you are sucked in, it is because you are so amused.

SHATTERED INNOCENCE


This film is another classic, and I just checked and it is playing again on 1/13. This is the true story about an all American cheerleader turned "actress" (I mean drug addicted porn star). You watch the demise of Shauna Grant as she spirals deeper and deeper into the world of cocaine and porn films.

This movie is based on a true story, which you can tell by weird details like when Shauna shows her nude pictures around to her kid sisters on a visit home. No writer would come up with that, I don't think.

Lifetime Movies

I have a sad addiction to Lifetime movies. Why is this, I always wonder. What is it about a Lifetime movie that I find to be so interesting and entertaining. I usually consider myself to have pretty good taste in movies (some of my faves include The Seventh Seal, Seven Samurai, The Barbarian Invasions, Badlands) but not when it comes to Lifetime. I will even rewatch the same Lifetime movie if it reappears.

I tell myself that I appreciate the irony of Lifetime movies, the bad acting, predictable plots, plucky heroines, but I am never sure if I am being honest with myself. My sophisticated sense of humor and subtle appreciation of the cultural underpinnings from whose loins Lifetime movies spring, I tell myself separate me from the normal viewer. I am a "metaviewer"--I watch Lifetime movies while imagining the "typical" viewer enjoying herself, jumping at all of the plot twists and turns, feeling empathy for the hard done by heroine, but no this is not true. I AM the typical viewer, who am I kidding? I am a young television watching mother who spends a lot of time around the house.

The Heroine--Lifetime movie heroines, though they vary widely in age, attribute, profession etc. always have a few common characteristics. Unfortunately, they usually find themselves in a horrible predicament--a detective hot on the trail of a murderer and the murderer is HER son; a teenage kid whose drug abusing mother is unfit to take care of her kids so she must adopt her siblings at age 15; a detective hot on the trail of a serial murderer and the murderer's mother works in HER office, but she is having trouble scraping together enough evidence to pin it on her (there are alot of these kind); a mother whose ex husband fakes his and his son's death in order to kidnap her son. In the face of these horrible disasters, the heroine always 1) is appropriately shocked 2)then scraps everything together, puts together all of the pieces 3) finds herself or the party on whose behalf she is acting in even more danger due to her intelligence and diligence and 4)saves the day.

The Villian: Either a dumb but mean man, or a sick and twisted conniving kind of woman. Men in Lifetime movies are even more superficial than the women. They are either physically evil (the raping, murder in cold blood type, but without any intellect) or totally flat and "perfect" for the heroine (the winsome dumb-bunny neighbor, the sweet but dumb, always count on the woman detective partner). The truly evil villians of Lifetime movies are almost always women--see above examples, the mother who comes in and out of her four children's lives at her leisure, sometimes forgetting to feed them for days, continuing to date the same dumb-bunny that tried to rape her daughter, the scorned ex-wife who arranges for a young women to seduce and once he is totally hooked abandon her ex husband, the mother who never thinks any woman is good enough for her son and so emotionally bullies him into murdering his girlfriends.

The things that every Lifetime viewer must find to be appealing deep in her psyche are the ability of women to be extremely cruel to each other, and the violence. Violence is a common element in lots of movies, I think there must be some kind of psychological benefite to watching violence acted out in movies. I think the settings are also appealing, the heroines always find themselves in some ordinary woman kind of setting.