this has probably been said before but I keep thinking about how much of the violence in Sharp Objects is predicated on the legacy of slavery. The south as a society was/is founded and defined by intense brutality. It's a society where white women weren't the lowest rung on the oppression totem pole because there was always a class below them to torture...a society made up of white women that, in the decades after the end of slavery, have been forced to externalize this desire to control, manipulate, dominate, and torure slaves onto each other. This legacy of pain had to go somewhere or else the teeth of being seen as less than, or property of, their white male counter parts would be harshly felt. That's why Joya tortures Adora who tortures Marian, Camille, and Amma. Amma goes onto to torture other little girls to reaffirm her self worth but Camille seemingly breaks the cycle by redirecting that pain onto herself. Camille is the liberal of the show for doing so (I don't think it's an accident that the only person who notices her self-harm is the black woman who knew her in high school.) But she is just that, a liberal, who understands this legacy of pain but is dismissive of it (making fun of Calhoun day for one thing) and thus is unable to truly reconcile with it to truly move forward (much like how America refused to deal with/reconcile with slavery and the evils it wrought.) I think that's why Sharp Objects ends the way that it does. Camille writes her little article on the events of the show but, because of this lack of reconciliation, is shocked to see the cycle of violence repeat in Amma and can do nothing to truly end it.
