Sympathy for the devil: Streep’s Iron Lady vs Theron’s Monster

Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003)

I wanted to do some prep work before going to see The Iron Lady. I was predicting the obvious arguments from liberals as well as the right after I reviewed the film. ‘You just can’t stand seeing an authentic, humanised portrayal of Thatcher because you’re a raving lefty,’ they’d smugly assert. ‘This film isn’t some black and white polemic, it’s brave, daring and necessary to view Thatcher as a human being, whatever her flaws. Humans have rights too!’ they’d whine, extrapolating incoherently; but the cogency of their arguments would not matter, by this point they’d have the moral high-ground. Or so they’d think. The rebuttal came to me simply, the natural respiration of a mind under siege (well maybe not, but you get the point.) I’d review a film that also provoked empathy with and understanding of its protagonist, but that wasn’t politically comatose and contrast the two. So here it is. Enjoy it. If you dare…

It takes a brave, bold actor to delve into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most controversial women and bring us a tragic performance packed with empathy, ruthlessness and danger. I’m thinking of Charlize Theron’s devastating performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Patty Jenkins’ Oscar-winning Monster (2003).

Whereas Monster focused on the brief period of Wuornos’ killing spree, avoiding her formative years -her abuse as a child, her attempts to look after her family who subsequently rejected her for being a prostitute- The Iron Lady goes to great lengths to illustrate Thatcher’s ‘steely’ determination and ruthless ambition, her against-the-odds struggle for political power in a party (let alone a society) riven by class and gender divides.

By de-emphasising Wuornos’ early life experiences we are less able to understand (not condone, understand) the tragic social and psychological factors behind her destructive actions. By de-emphasising the destructive actions consequent to Thatcher’s political struggle (by emphasising her accent to power), we are unable to understand the material effects of her ambition, the widespread social destruction she unleashed.

Two ‘monsters’

Meryl Steep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2012)

Thatcher was a woman supported in her ambitions by a steadfast family, a supportive husband, and the privileges of middle class origins. However relatively socially disadvantaged she may have been in contrast to her ruling-class compatriots, she never had to break the law in order to survive, and was never at the mercy of the state apparatus. One scene in Monster depicts Wuornos being raped by a policeman who claims that ‘it seems you might owe me one’ because he didn’t send her to jail for ‘hooking’; ‘Yeah you sure went easy on me,’ she replies, ‘you almost broke my fucking jaw.’

Wuornos was a woman doomed by her class who would ultimately, for all her violence, become the victim of class society. ‘Thank you judge, and may you rot in hell,’ she rages at the film’s end, ‘for sending a raped woman to death!’ Thatcher was a woman who defied her class origins only to become the leader of an oppressive and exploitative class. She may have been doomed to suffer dementia, but that is in spite of her protected, privileged position in society. Her destructiveness (which, perhaps like Wuornos, she would never admit to) is obscured by an avalanche of mainstream praise for the real life ‘Iron Lady’, evoked by Streep’s undeniably excellent performance. For Wuornos there was no understanding, no sympathy for the devil.

Sympathy for the devil

There is very real virtue in film portrayals of controversial, and even downright despicable, figures. It is quite right that lazy demonisation is challenged by nuanced, authentic depictions. We do need to see bad people, whatever their crimes, as human beings, whose individuality, however strong, is secondary to the historical context in which they are shaped. That is the only way to understand how the general relates to the specific, how one person’s actions are in part determined by wider historical currents, which they may either be only dimly aware of (like Wuornos) or single mindedly attuned to (like Thatcher who understood her class objectives and understood the strengths and weaknesses of the working class only too well).

Monster, like The Iron Lady, was a very difficult film to watch. Wuornos, in real life and on screen, was a woman who demands understanding; a terribly sad, angry, violent, destructive woman, who was shamefuly rejected by society, abused by her family, her clients and the police and rejected by those she loved, who justifiably killed once in self-defence, and then became a pseudo-rationalised vigilante executioner, looking for, and often finding, the very worst in the men who solicited her for sex.

In one scene in The Iron Lady, an enraged protester bangs on Thatcher’s car window during a demonstration (punctuated by chants of ‘Can’t pay, won’t pay!’) and shouts, ‘you’re supposed to be a mother. You’re not a mother, you’re a monster!’

Feminist icon or another ‘monster’?

To my mind, if Wuornos is a ‘monster’ then Thatcher is a monster too. Because to understand the social value of any individual we have to look, not at their struggle to overcome societal obstacles, but at the social consequences of their actions. We don’t celebrate former Prime Minsiter of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) Ian Smith for his ‘steely’ battle with colonial Britain for the simple reason that he was a racist who lead a white minority government against Rhodesia’s black majority population.

The Iron Lady fails to grapple with Thatcher’s fundamental contradiction. Here is a woman who overcame gender and class prejudices to secure a social role that could have been a springboard to the further emancipation of women in British society and beyond. Instead she used her hard-won influence to further entrench both class and gender divides.

A victory for one woman, and a symbolic victory for many others, was negated by Thatcher’s class objectives, namely to win advantage for a minority of (ironically) predominantly male, wealthy individuals; the bosses and the bankers. Had she, for example, fully socialised child care, brought in equal pay for women and criminalised marital rape (which didn’t happen until 1994) then her legacy as a feminist icon may have had some weight.

As it was she pioneered a neoliberal resurgence as the capitalist class took its revenge on the power built up by organised labour since the post war welfare settlement. The long term trend of social decline in Britain over the past 30 years (which runs parallel to wholesale global decline) was the conscious political outcome of Margaret Thatcher’s achievements (how hollow that word sounds).

Class acts

In stark contrast, Wuornos’ life, and those of her victims and their families, was destroyed by her social status, her profession, her gender, and the class bias of the US state – it is only after killing a retired policeman who solicits her for sex that the police suddenly find a lead on the string of killings (of rapists, perverts, adulterers, and just sad old men) and send her to Death Row.

Ultimately, Monster makes me feel sorry for Wuornos; her violence, as shocking as it is, has a tragic logic to it, her final fate is both inevitable and futile, only widening the gulf between and the possible understanding of social problems and a grasp of their ultimate resolutions. An as with the real life Wuornos case, just like the Iron Lady’s fictional portrayal, the class dimension is completely, reprehensibly, lacking.

The Iron Lady, for all of Streep’s mastery, invokes no such sympathy as does Monster, because this was a woman who knew exactly what she was doing, and who stood to actually gain from her actions (both in terms of her personal achievements and by being protected and legitimised by the establishment) in a way that Wuornos never actually did. Wuornos is universally acknowledged to have left behind a legacy of destruction. Thatcher should be understood as someone who caused far greater suffering, which includes the killing, however indirect, of ordinary people- through state aggression, through social neglect. It is shocking that she is held up as an icon, and not decried for her devastating neoliberal project, which failed so catastrophically in 2008 and threatens the onslaught of another Great Depression.

It’s the most oppressed and exploited, whatever qualities their social conditioning brings forth in them, who are deserving of understanding, and worthy of sympathy. Thatcher will one day die in the comfort of a private hospital bed, surrounded by those who loved her and lauded her- for the rest of us it is right that we hold her legacy in contempt.

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