My grandfather used to go to deer hunting. One time he told us a joke about a father who brings home some venison meat from a hunt. His kids are unaware of what it is because it doesn’t smell like beef or pork. He tells his kids, “I’ll give you a hint. It’s something your mother calls me all the time.” His son takes a bite while his daughter jumps up and screams, “Spit it out, you’re eating an asshole!”
As we move more and more into the digital information age, fewer people are farming and ranching for numerous reasons. But even still, we can’t deny that what’s on our plates every day was once a living animal. I have a friend who no longer eats beef but she does eat chicken and pork. I know people who don’t eat pork but will eat beef and poultry. And then there are those who won’t eat anything from an animal, not even milk.
I used to have chickens. We never did eat them, but we ate the eggs. My neighbor has had hogs and has shared the pork with me because I helped feed them. Do I feel bad? They weren’t pets. Growing up, I watched Charlotte’s Web and Babe, which were movies that took a harder look as the main characters in both movies are pigs concerned with being butchered. They might be entertaining but still, we don’t want to watch how the sausage is made.
A movie like Parents works on the concept that young kids never do really think about where the food comes from, especially if they live in the suburbs. Released during the winter of 1989 and set during the summer and fall months of 1958, it’s about your typical WASP idealistic nuclear family. More people were moving from the rural areas to the suburbs. Mchael Laemie (Bryon Madorsky) is the awkward 10-year-old son of Nick (Randy Quaid) and Lily (Mary Beth Hurt), who have moved from Massachusetts to California. Nick works at the Division of Human Testing at Toxico developing Agent Orange.
Even though Quaid has gone overboard during the last 15 years, he seems to look out of Central Casting from a 1950s dad. He has just a creepy as he walks around with bright-colored sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses that make him look like a science teacher. And Hurt seems start out of a Good Housekeeping photo spread. Since they’re living in the suburbs, there’s no need to grow your own food or even raise it on the pastures. All they have to do is go down to the butcher shop or local supermarket.
But is Lily visiting the local butcher for the countless meat they consume? Directed by actor Bob Balaban in his first movie as a director, Parents seems to let the twist out first that Nick and Lily are cooking and consuming meat. From the start of the movie, Michael is awkward and has nightmares of himself falling into his bed that turns into a pool of blood. He’s not allowed in the basement in their split-level house but when he looks, he things he sees leek on a meat hook.
Michael seems to only find a new friend in another new student, Sheila Zellner (Juno Mills-Cockell), who is very much an extrovert to Michael’s introvert behavior. What makes the movie work is how everyone thinks Michael is the strange one but he’s just worried that things aren’t right at home. When he gets up at night, he sees Nick and Lily engaged in sex but thinks they are doing worse.
This adds to the mystery that Michael is unaware of what is happening, he just knows it’s something bad. Everyone is expecting him to be normal that when he turns something different that what his teacher expects about “normal families,” she turns it over to the school counselor, Millie Dew (Sandy Dennis), who acts herself like she needs her own psychiatrist. Sheila’s parents, Marty and Gladys (Graham Jarvis and Deborah Rush), seem too busy enjoying the high life that comes with suburbia. Marty is Nick’s supervisor and as long as the high paying jobs and nice houses are there, why ask questions?
The 1950s were viewed as a time of quaintness and serenity but it only applies to other WASPish families. Balaban grew up during the 1950s. This decade has been the subject of so much work by writers and filmmakers to cut through the lies of the decade. My mother grew up without electricity. It wasn’t a great time for everyone. Ask any non-white person who lived during this era.
By the 1980s, there was a resurgence in the love of the 1950s but only seen through rose-collared glasses. I’m almost certain the 1950s were closer to Porky’s than it was to what Norman Rockwell showed us in the Saturday Evening Post. The criticism is that Balaban and writer Christopher Hawthorne never do pick a tone. Parents is considered a black comedy but I think it’s more about tone. At 81 minutes with credits, it’s a slow burn (no pun intended) horror movie.
It turns out that Nick and Lily are consuming human meat. But Nick is bringing home human meat from the corpses at Toxico where he is developing Agent Orange. Cannibalism in movies is often shown as people killing others and consuming their flesh. We’ve seen it in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Cannibal Holocaust and so on.
But when Michael doesn’t want to eat the meat anymore, Nick and Lily begin to worry there is something wrong with him. And Nick grows ever more increasingly agitated with him. It’s funny how parents often see their children as extensions of themselves instead of real people. This was the era in which kids didn’t question what their parents did or said.
Yet Nick and Lily aren’t bad parents. They provide for their son and yet there’s also an feeling like Michael should be more and more grateful. It’s a shame Balaban and Hawthorne couldn’t exam more of this. But with a meager budget of only $3 million. Worse it was made through Vestron Pictures, which by 1989 was already falling apart a few years after starting up.
And thus the movie was dump into theaters with little to no marketing. But it found its audience on cable and video. One thing Balaban and cinematographers Ernest Day and Robin Vidgeon do is making the cooking of meat so unpleasant that even Hank Hill would be creeped out watching Nick and Lily standing over the grill. Shots linger on meats searing in the kitchen skillets and there’s just something off as they turn the meat and season it. You may just want to eat a salad after watching this movie.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 