Bad Sisters and the dream of revenge
Hi all, Hannah here. Kelsey and I have missed you all so much! This is the beginning of a verrry slow return to this newsletter. We probably won’t be monthly again for a while, but I wanted to check in, say hello, and share something that’s been on my mind this year. We’re thrilled that you’re still here and we can’t wait to come back full force with more gifs, thirst, and palship in the months to come.
Dear Kelsey,
I am writing to you on a dreary Wednesday morning in Connecticut, at the beginning of the holiday season, and I’m thinking about the opening scene of Bad Sisters.
Bad Sisters (2022) is a series on Apple TV+ about a family of sisters who (not a spoiler) murder their brother-in-law. The season cuts back and forth between the past—where the five sisters get progressively more and more furious with their abusive, blackmailing brother-in-law—and the present, where the sisters are dealing with the fallout of his murder. It’s funny at times (Catastrophe’s Sharon Horgan plays the protagonist after all), but it’s also infuriating, tragic, tender, and cathartic.
The opening scene I am referring to takes place on Christmas Eve. All the sisters and their families have gathered to open presents and celebrate, including Evil Brother-in-Law (JP, played by Irish actor Claes Bang). JP is immediately deplorable, making fun of the sisters, particularly Eva (Horgan), who he calls a “spinster” and jokes about her infertility. Over the series, JP evolves from merely grating to almost sociopath, but in this first scene he resembles the worst of the relatives we dread seeing at the holidays—cruel, but generally harmless.
The power of Bad Sisters lies in its believability. As the sisters (and the audience) continue to learn more about JP, descending into murder plots and blackmail, neither JP nor the sisters step into tropes about “bad men” or “vindictive women”. Part of what makes JP such a compelling villain is how disgustingly mundane his life is, how predictable, how tedious. He is your friend’s awful boss, the gross guy at your gym, the academic in a Q&A who “has more of a comment than a question.” The murder is so obviously wrong, but the sisters’ desire to kill JP feels so understandable. We get why Eva would want JP out of their lives. We feel the deep injustice in how JP repeatedly escapes accountability for his actions. When JP finally dies, the audience breathes a sigh of relief alongside Eva and her sisters, grateful to no longer suffer his presence onscreen.
Bad Sisters is a classic feminist revenge fantasy, but stripped bare of the light humor that made 20th century feminist revenge fantasies more palatable to a male audience. Movies like 9 to 5 and First Wives Club (which I love, for the record) bring light humor and slapstick to revenge, minimizing the brutality of women’s desire to seek vengeance. While I think the #MeToo movement is largely overstated in its impact, I do think it influenced media portrayals of feminist revenge. Promising Young Woman, famously, shirks light humor in favor of a much darker thriller tone, where a murdered woman has the last laugh. Bad Sisters, in spite of its dry Irish humor, is a story brimming with rage, not just at JP but at the systems that allow men like JP to be believed and protected while women like Eva are stripped of support and resources.
I’ve always had a soft spot for feminist revenge stories, but especially since I started grad school. Grad school was full of experiences where I was helpless to provide justice or accountability for the bad behavior of men, and repressed rage became my modus operandi. My favorite song in 2018 was The Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice,” quickly followed by “Goodbye Earl” which topped my Spotify lists in both 2018 and 2019. I watched Bad Sisters this fall, while going through a very tumultuous and misogynistic experience that felt fundamentally unjust, and through the sisters’ suffering and ultimate success, I too felt the catharsis of a man facing consequences for his actions. These stories are so powerful to me because they give me a safe outlet to feel my own anger, and to see that anger rectified. Our anger for justice might not be actualized in real life, but we can create worlds that provide the catharsis we seek.
In Episode 4, Eva tells JP, “I’m not a wreck. I’m angry. And that doesn’t make me mad, or drunk, or hysterical. That just makes me angry.” JP is repulsed by her rage. Every woman knows the disgust in a man’s eyes when she makes her fury known. And while we silence our anger every day, bottling it with a smile, at the end of the day we can return to our books and music and TV and find solace from our rage, knowing that somewhere justice will be served. It just won’t be here.
Grateful to rage with you,
Hannah
<3 <3
Ok, now I seriously want to watch this because it sounds like a great show. Don't know if I could get my husband to watch, though 😉