Christine Caruana
Reese27The United States Of Tara: Pilot Episode
January 28th 2009 11:55
First off, I’ve adored Toni Collette since she blazed out of Porpoise Spit yelling ‘Bye you bunch of cock suckers!’ way back when in the days of Muriel’s Wedding. I was only nine, and had to ask mum what a ‘cock sucker’ was, since she had to stop me yelling out the same message to the Westfields parking garage after we’d seen it. Of course, she was Muriel to me then, the overweight lovable bogan loser obsessed with ABBA. Toni Collette might’ve been her real name, but she’d be Muriel to me forever. Or, so I thought.
But here she is, fifteen odd years later, and all traces of Muriel Heslop are gone. She’s come into her own as not just an Australian actress who’s made it big overseas, but one of our absolute best. And it really is true, she is absolutely brilliant, and if I wasn’t convinced before now I certainly am after seeing the pilot episode of her new series, The United States of Tara.
Tara is 40, has two teenage children, and dissociative identity disorder (or Multiple Personality Syndrome, as it used to be called). When she gets emotional or distressed, a personality comes out and takes over. In the pilot we’re introduced to T, a 15 year old personality who gets on exceptionally well with her 15 year old daughter, and Buck, a redneck dude who calls her 12 or 13 year old son a faggot. The family take it in stride, recognising the transitions almost immediately, and treating it as normal behaviour.
I read an article criticising the show for presenting the family as somewhat non-plussed about the whole thing, and I disagree entirely. It seems more realistic to me that in the last 15 or so years this family has learned to deal with something quite peculiar, and in doing so have acclimatised. Most of us do. Of course, the teenage daughter, Kate, has a miniature spat about people always looking at her funny, but teenage girls complain about their parents regardless. More alarming is the attitude of Buck to Tara’s son, Marshall, who enjoys drinking chai tea, reading, and baking. I don’t think he’s necessarily gay, who knows he could be, but Buck calling him a faggot and putting out cigarettes in cupcakes he’s baked for his sister was a bit much. I don’t know anyone who could handle their mother, kissing them and thanking them for being supportive the night before, be a total douche the next day.
Even so, I’m looking forward to more of this series already. It’s well written (by Diablo Cody of Juno fame, and who, I just found out, used to be a stripper!) and Toni Collette is flawless as Tara. Absolutely. Well, I think so, and I can be insanely picky. It’s funny, it’s going to get dramatic, but for the most part it’s just real. It doesn’t seem forced, or set up, or anywhere near presenting a delusional perfect American world.
One thing that will be interesting will be how and if they explain why Tara has multiple personalities, or alters in the first place. If you don’t know, in a crudely basic explanation, when some children experience extreme abuse and emotional trauma when they are very young, their main personality goes into a sort of hibernation and an alter ego is created in it’s place to protect them from having to experience something so terrible. Once the distress is over, the alter ego retreats and the main personality reappears, most of the time with no memory of the incident. When the abuse reoccurs, or emotions associated with it, the alter comes back, or a different one, and so on. In a way, it’s the brain trying to protect itself from harm. There’s a bunch of different theories, and famous cases, and even claims by a lot of people that the condition doesn’t exist at all. As far as I’ve read, Tara has three different personalities other than herself. At one point in the episode Tara walks in to say goodnight to Marshall, and he hides a book that he was reading. The book is Sybil, by Flora Rheta Schreiber, which first brought highly controversial attention to multiple personalities back in the seventies, and is about a woman who reportedly had 16.
Anyway, again it will be interesting to see where they go with this, and how Diablo Cody chooses to explain the condition seeing as it only arises in people who were abused as children. Maybe she won’t, and will sidestep the issue to avoid unpleasantness in an otherwise superb new dramedy.
Oh, Muriel! Ya big dork.
But here she is, fifteen odd years later, and all traces of Muriel Heslop are gone. She’s come into her own as not just an Australian actress who’s made it big overseas, but one of our absolute best. And it really is true, she is absolutely brilliant, and if I wasn’t convinced before now I certainly am after seeing the pilot episode of her new series, The United States of Tara.
Tara is 40, has two teenage children, and dissociative identity disorder (or Multiple Personality Syndrome, as it used to be called). When she gets emotional or distressed, a personality comes out and takes over. In the pilot we’re introduced to T, a 15 year old personality who gets on exceptionally well with her 15 year old daughter, and Buck, a redneck dude who calls her 12 or 13 year old son a faggot. The family take it in stride, recognising the transitions almost immediately, and treating it as normal behaviour.
Collette is brilliant as Tara. And Buck. And T. And Alice.
I read an article criticising the show for presenting the family as somewhat non-plussed about the whole thing, and I disagree entirely. It seems more realistic to me that in the last 15 or so years this family has learned to deal with something quite peculiar, and in doing so have acclimatised. Most of us do. Of course, the teenage daughter, Kate, has a miniature spat about people always looking at her funny, but teenage girls complain about their parents regardless. More alarming is the attitude of Buck to Tara’s son, Marshall, who enjoys drinking chai tea, reading, and baking. I don’t think he’s necessarily gay, who knows he could be, but Buck calling him a faggot and putting out cigarettes in cupcakes he’s baked for his sister was a bit much. I don’t know anyone who could handle their mother, kissing them and thanking them for being supportive the night before, be a total douche the next day.
Even so, I’m looking forward to more of this series already. It’s well written (by Diablo Cody of Juno fame, and who, I just found out, used to be a stripper!) and Toni Collette is flawless as Tara. Absolutely. Well, I think so, and I can be insanely picky. It’s funny, it’s going to get dramatic, but for the most part it’s just real. It doesn’t seem forced, or set up, or anywhere near presenting a delusional perfect American world.
One thing that will be interesting will be how and if they explain why Tara has multiple personalities, or alters in the first place. If you don’t know, in a crudely basic explanation, when some children experience extreme abuse and emotional trauma when they are very young, their main personality goes into a sort of hibernation and an alter ego is created in it’s place to protect them from having to experience something so terrible. Once the distress is over, the alter ego retreats and the main personality reappears, most of the time with no memory of the incident. When the abuse reoccurs, or emotions associated with it, the alter comes back, or a different one, and so on. In a way, it’s the brain trying to protect itself from harm. There’s a bunch of different theories, and famous cases, and even claims by a lot of people that the condition doesn’t exist at all. As far as I’ve read, Tara has three different personalities other than herself. At one point in the episode Tara walks in to say goodnight to Marshall, and he hides a book that he was reading. The book is Sybil, by Flora Rheta Schreiber, which first brought highly controversial attention to multiple personalities back in the seventies, and is about a woman who reportedly had 16.
An interesting, and disturbing, read.
Sybil, played by a young Sally Field in the 1976 film version of the above, is a decidedly more dramatic look at multiple personalities or D.I.D.
Anyway, again it will be interesting to see where they go with this, and how Diablo Cody chooses to explain the condition seeing as it only arises in people who were abused as children. Maybe she won’t, and will sidestep the issue to avoid unpleasantness in an otherwise superb new dramedy.
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Comment by Brianna J
By the way: As far as I can tell, the cause of dissociative identity disorder is unknown. While it is highly associated with abuse (95%), that's not every case - and it's all quite uncertain (PDF). So, it seems to me that her condition wouldn't have to be caused by abuse. (Correct me if I'm wrong, though. I'm certainly no expert - apologies if you are!)
Comment by Jade Devlin
From what I can gather they don't know the cause in terms of the personality splitting in one brain and not in another. I think the most interesting thing I find about it all is that it doesn't happen to everyone, that you can put two kids in the same situation and only one of them might develop it, because it takes a certain type of brain.
Anyway, anyway, I guess I mean that abuse doesn't cause it, but it is, in most cases, the trigger, or at least some kind of terribly stressful event is. (You know, other than suggestive therapy, which seems to be a major cause of the doubt surrounding it's existence at all)
God, if you can't tell I could really go on about it forever. So I'm going to stop before I bore you to death! In conclusion, I'm so very interested to see where Cody takes it, and I'm so impressed with Colette. And I'm so grateful that you commented! Thank you!