E S S A Y boy to do something he is reluctant to do, she tells him to “Stop being a pussy,” a phrase her mother always
him with social interactions. His parenting is very unconventional at best: he takes his daughters on a trip to another island to find his wife’s lover and to let him know about her impending death, and he enlists Alex to help with Scottie and makes her his confidante in regard to Joanie’s lover. As Kavenna writes: “Hemmings relishes this interlude, a carefully fashioned perversion of the family holiday: the wife declining The Descendants (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2011): The family walks along the beach. in the hospital, the cuckolded husused when she wanted Matt to do band stalking the lover, the children something (57). She thus uses the splashing far from innocently in the wrong lessons in how to treat people. waves.” At the same time, he wants Also, she asks her sister to apologize his daughters to have fond memories to their mother for the fact that they of their mother. This does not work at are girls, while their mother wanted all. When they walk along the beach, boys (131). Instead of dangerous he reminds them of Joanie’s love of sports, Scottie likes her scrapbook in adventure and her sense of humor, which she documents family histelling them a story that Joanie loved tory, having “ripped out a few pages to tell, but his daughters have not from three local history books before heard. (He does not tell them what I [Matt] caught her” (36). While this he alone knows, that the story is not seems strange behavior to Matt early true). Scottie has thus tried to crein the narrative, it shows him that ate situations in order to impress a she, like he, cares for his family tradimother whose own stories are made tion; later on, he takes an interest in up. They have begun remembering her scrapbook, wondering about the other stories when Scottie asks Matt sequence she has chosen, and calling what he loves about Joanie. He cannot her “our keeper. . . .Our family histocome up with anything substantial, rian” (275). settling on random aspects of their Initially, Matt believes that he relationship, the fact that she “forgets wants to show his wife that he can to wash the lettuce and our salads are handle everything, even “correct” always pebbly” (174). Alex gets angry some of her parenting, and he wants at the randomness of this list, but neiJoanie to wake up in order to help ther she nor Scottie can add anything more substantial; Scottie likes the fact
8
WEBER
THE CONTEMPORARY WEST