#hbo sharp objects

Sharp Objects

Texture-less illustration below the cut

" ...Cherry. That made sense. We were so shiny - luscious on the outside. But on the inside there's that dark, hard pit."

Sharp Objects - (2018) dir. Jean-Marc Vallée

Camille Preaker x episode finales

By Prachi Bhatia

Sharp Objects is a 2018 psychological thriller HBO miniseries based on 2006 Gillan Flynn novel of the same name. It stars Amy Adams as Camille Preaker, a crime reporter who comes back to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri to investigate the murder of two young girls. While in Wind Gap, a lot of Camille’s childhood trauma resurfaces as she meets with her mother, Adora (Patricia Clarkson) who is very well known and praised in town.

No one would even suspect who killed the girls as we progress further in the show. Camille’s alcoholism and her history of self harm mingled with her living under Adora’s roof and having to deal with Amma’s (Eliza Scanlen) nightly adventures kind of leads us astray but when we do get a rough idea that it might be her mother’s sick and twisted ways that lead those two girls to their deaths, we’re met with another shocking twist at the very end of episode 8. If 13 year old Amma’s “don’t tell mama” followed by a quick snippet of her brutally strangling the victims doesn’t send a chill down your spine then you’re truly invincible.

How we, as a society, view women plays a lot into this. They’re seen as fragile, non violent creatures and that even when they are violent, it is never something direct, it’s always a whack in the back, it is subtle, much like poisoning. Their type of violence always appears to be of secondary nature (almost how some of us view women’s issues), quick and barely painful. Through Sharp Objects, Flynn reminds us that women are capable of extreme violence too. When we do get a chance to evaluate someone’s evil, a woman’s exterior is never really questioned. There were a number of times Amma’s behaviour could’ve brought her under suspicion but no one reads into it.

Which raises one very important question. Why are usually only male characters portrayed as these complex, almost impossible to decipher mysterious beings in mainstream media and women, the complete opposite? A female character will be introduced and that is all. She’s immediately an open book, every aspect of her is laid out on a platter then and there when, in the real world, it is believed to be the other way around. This does not mean that men aren’t capable of complex emotions but the exaggeration and the sheer ignorance towards the character development of their female counterparts is honestly getting sort of boring at this point and desperately requires change.

“I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”

sharp objects headers 🥀

happy sharp objects anniversary, two years ago aired first episode “vanish”.

I like violence, she’d shrieked at me. I blame my mother. A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.