re: The Haunting of Hill House-Netflix

quote:

---

Enjoyed the show but it had some issues in my opinion. The child actors were pretty bad overall. The pacing was slow at times. The Matrix style green tinting is an over-used tactic to make a production seem more polished nowadays.

The house as a metaphor for our patriarchal society was interesting and the "red room", or heart of the house, represents the womb which can be a nurturing and fulfilling environment, but can be made toxic when women are only able to be mother and nothing else.

Father represents toxic masculinity for the most part, all though at times the writing waffles on that. While he is capable and protective, his children don't feel love from him because he is focused on fixing things and not understanding them.

Mother is pre-feminist overly concerned with her role as mother and unable to let go of that role when she is no longer needed (her babies are growing independent). She literally cannot think outside this model, thus repeating the mother trope over and over by inserting her "forever home" into the boundaries of the Hill House in a manic attempt to be fulfilled in a system that doesn't value her as a person.

Children represent the different types of people that have developed from this patriarchal model, broken and lost in a world that no longer accepts the either-or type of dichotomy the system is built on. The masculine lesbian unable to be herself. The cheating spouse finding no fulfillment in being the man-of-the-house bread winner (opposite gender role), the father emulator who wants to be like his dad resulting in a duplicitous life where he's neither honest nor a father because modern society doesn't value genuineness, and the twins: the effeminate man and the emotive female (the world isn't ready for their sensitivity).

The mother and father have to die in this context in order for the children to progress into a new world in which the patriarchy and it's proponents/victims have crumbled (the parents and the house).

The theme was a little overbearing especially when the dialog was beating you over the head in its overtness.

---