The Antihero’s Wife - Home Is Where The Crime Is

i love my husband and i love god but my life is financed by crime his crime who is the tv anti-hero underneath the layers of lies and pretending his wife can tell us she's an extension of his self-image a physical manifestation of his desires and a mirror of him in the home as the anti-hero took over our screens in the early 2000s with iconic leads like the sopranos tony soprano mad men's dawn draper and breaking bad's walter white their wives carmella betty and skylar didn't just add complexity to their husbands characters they were complex fascinating women in their own right as far as i'm concerned as long as men look at me that way i'm earning my keep as an emblem of domesticity the anti-hero's wife enables him to self-identify as a family man and pretend that all his misdeeds are for the good of his wife and kids but they also serve to highlight that however much these men claim that their wrongdoing is separate from their unviolated pure family home it's impossible to cleanly close the door on dirty business and retreat into the realm of pure domesticity rather the anti-hero's life is a complicated interconnected web and his wife and children are inextricably caught sometimes even actors in it i have forsaken what is right for what is easy allowing my children to be a part of it because i wanted things for them ultimately this figure demonstrates that what we do out in the world is part of our home life and vice versa here's our take on how the anti-hero wife's internal conflicts play out in the domestic sphere who she is as a mother and how our culture is updating this trope so she can take center stage if you're new here be sure to subscribe and hit the bell to be notified about all of our new videos i've got this really cool new subscription service and bird an incredible fragrance subscription service it delivers new sense to your door every month this one is confessions of a rebel let's be real should we try it yeah let's try it okay this makes me feel very powerful this feels very much like a false scent doesn't it imagine wearing it while you're posing up i have a feeling of like you're being wrapped in cashmere gucci this is very floral sunfire carries so many top designer drinks it's such a luxury such a little pleasure to kind of unwrap it and what is your scent for this month i love these canisters you kind of twist them and pull it out it's quite a lot it's about like a month's supply this could be a whole new opportunity through cry out sense that might carry my same signature identity or feel like it represents me but i can still change up so i'm really excited andy warhol actually said that he would change his perfume constantly he wanted to capture that period of his life so there's this idea of you change your scent to capture these memories to freeze a moment in time and with scentbird if you really love the smell you can also order a larger bottle i don't really know how to pick a sense you can take the quiz the quiz was so cool it tells you this is a match for you your personality and what you want for that season or for that moment it can tell me what i want but i don't know that i want it it's just kind of this nice little thing you can do for yourself i think we all deserve that right now i always thought it would be a great perfect go ahead try it out it's just 16 a month but with our code you can get it for only 11 for your first month click the link in the description below and use our code the take for 30 off [Music] the anti-hero's wife often throws his villainy into sharp relief sometimes she's an extension of him the thing that legitimizes him rita we're connected you're what makes me real other times she's his unwelcome conscience occasionally she's more of an antagonist the auntie to an anti-hero to better understand her we're going to take a closer look at three of tv's best loved and hated wives from the peak prestige anti-hero era carmela soprano marked new territory for on-screen mob wives and her understanding of and complicity with the shady world of gangsterism the only reason you have anything is because of my sweat and you know every step of the way exactly how it works prior to carmela the mob wife was often a symbol of purity and opposing force to her husband and because she often knows little of the details of his business a shield between his evil and the innocence of his children in the godfather series michael corleone's wife kaye is not italian and therefore an outsider and depicted as a morally upright obstacle to his sinister business michael is it true don't ask me about my business kate is it true carmela postures as pure in a similar way making a dramatic show of her catholicism immaculate house and manners as catholics we place a great deal of stock in the sanctity of the family but her responsibility to her faith rarely goes deep enough to challenge the immorality on which she knows her financial security depends you know i'd go to my priest and i would cry and say how bad i felt about how my husband made his money but that was [ __ ] in fact carmella goes so far as to twist her religion into an excuse to stay with tony my priest said i should try and work with him help him to be a better man ultimately her devotion to god is revealed to be a hollow part of a facade she creates to imply she is morally superior to tony when really she loves the benefits being his wife brings and is in her core choices the same as him tony goes to lengths to keep his wife and home life separate and unsoiled by his business dealings or his numerous affairs and we can see how livid carmela is at the violation when he fails to you have made a fool of me for years with these [ __ ] now it's coming to our home even though she knows what he's up to being openly confronted with the fact of it is too much for her because her whole life depends on layers of denial an act of purity and respectability that allows her to pretend the underlying foundation of violence and sin isn't there but all that messy overlap the fact that tony's home is not protected from his immoral and dangerous life outside of it is representative of the stain tony's dealings inflict on the entire family did the cusamano kids ever find thousand dollars in krugerrands and a 45 automatic while they were hunting for easter eggs carmilla does have a genuine desire to be virtuous inside of her sometimes has periods where she doubts her life choices considers leaving tony or is capable of a deeper reflectiveness on life and death he came out of the coma for a minute he said who am i where am i going i feel the same way but ultimately her bursts of flirting with being good or better also make her like tony both spend a lot of time in the show weighing up psychological emotional or moral improvement but in the end commit to a path of being corrupted ruthless and selfish and while it's easy to say we'd never do what tony does it might be easier for viewers to see parts of themselves in carmella if we had her house and her money and comforts with occasional pangs of guilt would we really take the leap to change our situation or do the right thing on my second date he brought me and my mother each a dozen roses and my father a 200 power drill i knew that behind that power drill there was probably some guy with a broken arm you know or worse ultimately through carmela the show paints a portrait of how american materialist consumerist culture relies on overlooking a lot of details of where wealth comes from carmela counters the assumption made by many an anti-hero and if we're honest many of us that work can be kept separate from the home life that what we do out in the world doesn't have to be part of who we are in private with our families but the evil we do out in the world follows us home and shapes who we and our family are everywhere outwardly don and betty are the perfect pair and it makes sense that a guy as slick as dawn would pick a wife like betty a former model from a wealthy wasp family who puts infinite energy into appearing the seemingly perfect housewife having a woman like betty on his arm is dawn's ultimate legitimization an announcement that he belongs in the upper echelons of american society somewhere he's always felt he couldn't fit in she's from a good family and she's educated but even though betty's waspy eliteness is dawn's means of assimilating she also reflects his internal struggle of feeling like a fraud don is a fraud in the literal sense after all don draper is a stolen identity and betty is an emotional fraud she creates a perfect facade but underneath she is deeply unhappy and feels out of control are you unhappy of course i'm happy betty's form of domestic anti-heroism then is the way in which she chooses appearance over deeper more meaningful connection something we're always told is corruptive betty also appreciates dawn for surface deep beauty and the way she knows their joint aesthetic is enviable to the world yet he's the caricature of a casanova and can't ever make her happy you never say you love me she's also so preoccupied with what she looks like to others that she is incapable of expressing herself or truly understanding her own emotions though she remains passive-aggressive to the end it's your child bride she wants to spend time with after divorcing dawn and giving up this pursuit of perfect imagery she becomes a little more able to call him on his behavior express her desires and indulge in her fantasies in season six she actually becomes his other woman with her second husband henry betty experiences being loved for more than her appearance we actually see her eating something she never seemed to do with dawn mommy doesn't like tea and when she puts on weight mostly due to a tumor in her thyroid henry is just as accepting of how she looks it's nice to be put through the ringer and find out i'm just fat i don't see it still to her her weight gain feels like a loss of self once she loses the weight she regains confidence as if feeling like her own person again look at me can you believe i've had three children whereas dawn does make some strides and self-acceptance by the finale but he remains still so wrapped up in her beauty as her identity that she continues to represent that choice of living for appearance until her tragic early death where carmela and betty reflect and mirror their husbands skyler is an example of how the wives of anti-heroes can oppose their husbands someone has to protect this family from the man who protects this family show creator vince gilligan was actually shocked at the level of vitriol that skyler and anna gunn the actress who played her received from some viewers but while the show's writing is critical of walt it's also built into the show's structure that morally upright skyler not unlike kay in the godfather series is anti the high octane drama walt creates she wants the good man she married back but if she gets him there's no show at the beginning of the show walt works hard to protect skyler's innocence and her personality is a great illustration of how out of character walt's business interests initially are for him it's unfathomable to skyler for example that walt could even be smoking marijuana he sells you are you out of your mind let alone anything more sinister the scene where he finally reveals the truth highlights their fundamentally different approaches to ethics walt sees his meth production as a complicated decision he's had to make due to intelligently weighing a number of factors there are a lot of angles to this okay it's complicated but skyler acting as a much more rigid moral compass sees it as a matter of right and wrong you're a drug dealer after he uses intimidation to prevent her from divorcing him she eventually due to a combination of stockholm syndrome and her natural instincts to fix messes becomes enmeshed in his business she directs her detail-oriented intelligence toward legitimizing the money he earns using the car wash to money launder is her idea took the seed money when gambling you invested it in the car wash that you helped run for four years you hired your wife as a bookkeeper because guess what she's actually a bookkeeper but in these later seasons skyler is increasingly fragile lost and emotionally underwater despite walt's fake justifications of cooking meth to provide for skylar and the kids in the end skyler doesn't even want the money i gave it to ted and ends up with worse than nothing fighting public shame and illegal threats all she ever wanted was a loving safe suburban life with her family the thing walt said he cared about but actually actively destroyed so her ravaged broken state in the end is all the more devastating forcing walt to stare at the choice he made to sacrifice his family in his quest for power we're a family [Applause] [Music] the anti-hero wife is also typically an anti-hero mom and it's often when it comes to their children that these women tend to most imitate their husband's ruthless gangster tactics carmella the gangster mom is the prime example of this just as tony or any mafioso uses force or the threat of fear and violence to muscle others into doing what he wants when someone doesn't want to write a college letter of recommendation for meadow carmella makes it known she's not asking i don't think you understand excuse me i said i want you to write the letter are you threatening me and anthony junior's teacher accuses her of sleeping with him to help anthony at school and improve his college prospects i think you're a user carmella what maybe you saw an opportunity in me and you just took what you needed even though she starts seeing him due to seemingly genuine feelings she thinks nothing of pressing him for increasingly demanding favors to benefit her son do you think union college is a good place for aj i don't know it could be maybe you could tell them how he's a lot like you or when you were his age and it's telling that carmella is so used to her mafia world that she just thinks this is the normal way people operate in ozark the first hints we see of wendy bird's ruthless descent into anti-heroism also come when her children are threatened with my daughter you come near my house again it'll be you the vultures are picking at this scene where wendy threatens the langmore boys over the intimidation of her kids comes after she's gone to absurdly extreme lengths to find a particular ice cream flavor her daughter likes and even lashes out at a supermarket employee over it i'm sorry i drove an hour and a half to come to this particular supermarket because one of your employees they told me that you had pistachio ice cream i understand no i don't think you do it's an illustration of the double standards of both anti-hero parents personalities they can justify all kinds of bad behavior if they're acting for their families but for the anti-hero mom that ferocity can be especially strong when linked to a primal urge to protect her kids in the kitchen after kathy's husband endangers their children as part of a power grab you put your ego before a children's safety this marks a turning point in her transition into a full cold-blooded gangster herself the reason is maternal rather than business of course not all anti-hero mothers are animated by the desire to protect their kids for example the americans anti-hero matriarch russian spy elizabeth uses her all-american kids as part of her seamless assimilation into life in the u.s elizabeth is shown to be more committed to russia than her husband is she's an ideologue eternally returning to her mission and as her marriage is a part of her espionage her motherhood although biological often seems like a furthering her disguise behind some anti-heroes is the anti-hero mom as villain mad men made a joke of how terrible a mother betty draper was i'm going to break your arm next and some viewers vilified her for it even though don was just absent and not even trying but perhaps the best example of this trope is olivia soprano i could stick this fork in your eye arguably the ultimate anti-hero's wife in the sopranos is tony's father's wife his mother livia his psychologist dr melfi proffers that tony seeks relationships with women who remind him of his mother i didn't just meet you not in your mouth in life my mother was just like you bottom was black hole and in the prequel movie the many saints of newark many viewers noticed the younger incarnation of livia in the movies looks a lot like carmella livia is fearsome but her means of violence are psychological she manipulates her children and resents being confined to the domestic sphere everybody thought that was the ruthless one but i gotta hand it to you if you've been born after those feminists you would have been the real gangster despite perhaps resembling livia and also having those gangster instincts in some ways carmella is tony trying to get away from his childhood life the beautiful manicured wife with a lavish lifestyle in a palatial home is both the symbol of how well he's done for himself and a stable reliable presence unlike his mother despite your mothering you made one good decision in your life vis-a-vis women you're not gonna throw that over tony has spent years trying to get his mother to love him the way he wants her to and she repays him by almost getting him whacked so while tony is the anti-hero of the piece it's livia who's the bad guy to the point that the audience is almost rooting for tony when he goes to smother her in the hospital [Music] in recent anti-hero shows we're being treated to an ever more nuanced portrayal of the home as a microcosm of the wider world while the complex anti-hero wives of the early 2000s began to articulate the ways in which criminality enters the domestic sphere shows like ozark give us a full-blown nuclear family crime business arguably wendy bird is not an anti-hero's wife but the show's lead anti-hero she's even deeper in and more natural at the mob mentality than her numbers man husband marty and way more likely to get her hands dirty you're not just involved with the cartel you are the cartel she even engages her kids in the family's criminal activity would it be possible to open an offshore account with that you want to launder money through no i can do it just this once her descent from stay-at-home mom into the cartel also highlights the way that power can become intoxicating especially for women who felt impotent in or unsuited to a more traditional housewife role elsewhere and kevin can make himself the kevin character who has emerged in different incarnations since the advent of the sitcom isn't the hero but the villain of the piece you're gonna have to come up in 45 with a beer in a sandwich he's a boorish selfish controlling misogynist with very little care for his wife he didn't like something that was my own and so he took it away from me like my friends like any shred of life that is my own as she slowly realizes how terrible he is and makes her own plan to kill him alison becomes an unlikely anti-hero getting us to actively root for her to kill this man who has kept her down each anti-hero is of their time tony soprano symbolized the richness and excess of the late 90s walter white represented a post-crash anti-hero alison is the anti-hero for the post-hashtag me2 era no longer does the anti-hero's wife have to be a reflection of him or limit her transgressions to the domestic realm when a wife or mother is centered in the anti-heroic family story we uncovered different motivations and different modus operandi yielding new insights about the ways we all might break bad it could have been a big deal it could still be a big deal this is the take on your favorite movie shows and culture subscribe so you can watch all of our videos [Music] you

Channel: The Take

Views: 150,732

Keywords: betty draper, don draper, mad men, breaking bad, skyler white, walter white, the sopranos, carmela soprano, tony soprano, many sinats of newark, livia soprano, dexter, rita, succesion, marcia, the kitchen, kathy, i'm your woman, jean, kevin can fuck himself, allison, the godfather, kay, goodfellas, karen, ozark, wendy, game of thrones, cersei lannister, the americans, elizabeth, house of cards, claire, anti hero, wife, tv, gangster, mobster, criminal, web

Id: xoEEkwMruyI

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 20 2021