Murder and Mommy Issues—Elizabeth Binge-Watches Killing Eve
I just can’t get enough of sadism, murder, serial killing, and so-called sexual depravity. Juliette by Marquis de Sade is one of my all-time favorite books. I read it as a teenager, along with Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom. As an adult, I once performed Philosophy in the Bedroom at a banned books event with my Groovy Girls dolls playing the different parts. In an especially memorable scene, teenage daughter Eugénie sews up her mother’s vagina after participating in her brutal torture and rape and expressing the desire to kill her. A favorite quote from Angela Carter’s The Sadeian Woman is “A free woman in an unfree society will be a monster.”
So it’s no surprise that I loved binge-watching the series Killing Eve on Netflix. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But it was made for me. Over the course of four seasons, 32 episodes, lots of creative, sadistic murders and assassinations are carried out in vibrant, colorful, blood-gushing detail, mostly by the trained assassin Villanelle. Villanelle’s elaborate costumes and ruses elevate her kills to captivating performance art, making the series engrossingly watchable. Plus she’s beautiful with a wicked sense of style. I binged watched over several evenings, neglecting chores and sacrificing sleep time.
Is Villanelle (portrayed by Jodie Comer) a psychopath? The British Intelligence investigator Eve Polastri (married to Polish-British husband Niko and portrayed by Korean-Canadian-American actress Sandra Oh) certainly thinks so as she becomes increasingly preoccupied with the female assassin responsible for the deaths of powerful international figures.
At times, Villanelle expresses dissatisfaction with her angry, murderous, killing self. Though she relishes her acts of murder and enjoys watching the light fade from the eyes of her victims as they die, as the series continues, she expresses a desire to change, an unhappiness with her life, her feelings, and her self-concept. But of course, ultimately, she can’t be anything other than the fine-tuned killing machine that she is. Killing is what she’s good at. A killer is who she is.
Do Villanelle’s attempts to change make her any less of a psychopath? Is Villanelle craving acceptance and love, so that when she feels rejected, her rage kicks in, so she must kill? Are the cravings for affection and recognition not at odds with being a psychopath at all? Psychopaths need love too.
When Villanelle (née Oksana AstanKova) finds her mother, who abandoned her as a child at an orphanage in Russia, she is rejected by her mother again. After Villanelle joins in some family activities, her mother tells her to leave, that this isn’t her family, isn’t her home. “Get out of my house,” her mother Tatiana says. Villanelle tells her mother, “I think I need to kill you, Mama” before doing exactly that. Villanelle kills her mother and then blows up her house with other stepfamily members inside. But she spares her brother and younger stepbrother, making sure the younger stepbrother gets out of the house before it blows up and leaving him money to go see Elton John in concert—a parting gift before she walks away, the mother’s house in flames behind her.
I’m self-conscious about my ineptitudes, the things I’m not good at, my awareness that I’m different from other people without being able to actually know what it’s like to be like other people, to be normal. No doubt these are Mommy Issues. But was my particular mother the cause, or is it just the way I am and I would have enraged and disappointed whatever mother I got? I’ve pondered this dilemma, but of course there is no way I could actually ever get an answer to that question. I try to focus on the things I can do, things I’m good at, so I don’t feel like I’m so awful I don’t deserve to exist. I like to read, think, and write poetry. These are things that come so easily to me that they’re like bodily functions. My critics might consider me a lazy, stupid, do-nothing waste of space, but they can’t do what I can do and can’t see any value in my activities or accomplishments. My murderous rage finds its outlet in the poems I write. So even if I am awful, at least I’m not actually physically hurting people, not killing strangers in the street, despite my elaborate fantasies. So, a little credit where credit is due, please, (she says to herself and the brutal bitch of an internal critic who also lives in her head).
Are my Mommy Issues unique to me and a small subset of women, or are they the result of sexist expectations, rigid gender roles, coercive conformity? I think that there are larger feminist issues at play here, although that does not let any especially horrible mothers off the hook.
In the various interactions amongst the powerful women in the show, many of whom are older, financially independent, wealthy, sexually active, and unashamed, I detect flirtations with faux-nurturing behaviors which are transactional, fleeting, performative. Whereas the constraints and expectations of femaleness and motherhood—the obligation to nurture and care without reciprocation—are oppressive, amongst these women, the behaviors are freely chosen as temporary dalliances, and easily abandoned when they become inconvenient or uninteresting. I’m thinking of the Carolyn Martens character (Fiona Shaw)—initially Eve’s mentor, eventually her betrayer. Carolyn has an unsatisfying relationship with her actual adult daughter, finding her tiresome and disappointing, especially in her relentless urging to talk about feelings. Hélène (powerful member of The Twelve, the chaos-seeking organization employing assassins such as Villanelle) explicitly expresses contempt for powerless, helpless, weak women. There is a bathtub scene in which Eve gets in the tub with her and shaves her legs. Then there’s Eve’s ominous yet playful kidnapping of Hélène’s eight-year-old daughter.
Villanelle’s attraction to Eve, the investigator pursuing her, seems like an attraction to a mother figure (in some ways at least). There are age and personality differences. When Villanelle breaks into Eve’s home, she says she wants to have dinner with her. So Eve microwaves the leftover shepherd’s pie her husband Niko made and serves that to Villanelle. There are many food preparation, presentation, and consumption scenes in Killing Eve. Villanelle isn’t much of a chef or hostess, but she does enjoy being provided for by others. There is also Villanelle’s love obsession with her former teacher Anna, whose husband she killed. This also (maybe) indicates longing for a mother figure.
The connection between Eve and Villanelle endures, despite serious injuries caused by stabbings and shootings, angry verbal exchanges and physical abandonments. In this way, it is like a mother-daughter relationship, fraught with drama between two who are bonded, connected—the unbreakable link enduring through joy and, alternatively, heart-wrenching agony.
I have torture fantasies that involve turning the body parts of people into food. Chopping babies into pieces and then baking the parts, the dismembered limbs, into something resembling a macaroni and cheese casserole. Or chopping off penises and preserving them in some way so that they become sliceable like deli meat, like charcuterie, and slicing the penis logs very thinly and then serving the slices on crackers. I don't know that these recipes would actually work in real life. Probably not. I’m not a good cook at all. Don’t have the interest, patience, organizational skills, or executive functioning. There were times in my life when I really tried, because I had been indoctrinated in the belief that cooking was something competent and desirable women were supposed to be able to do. But now I’ve decided it isn’t a good use of my time or effort.
There is a lot of eating and sausage shopping in Killing Eve, which other commenters have noted.
I’m anti-veganism and pro-cannibalism. We are all meat.
Real women (free women) eat meat. They need it for strength. Also, they are not shy about their needs and desires, do not sacrifice their health, do not go hungry for the sake of others. They take what they need to fulfill their ecological and evolutionary roles.
Feminism requires murder, the murdering of the faux-mothers in our heads. I would say the corporate and political denizens as well, but as The Twelve’s founding member Carolyn Martens explains, you can kill them, but there will be more to take their places. Power corrupts, and even the best-intentioned are corrupted, once they take their places in various regimes.