Having spent half the novel with Ma
and Jack in Room, I was at first really shocked by how people criticized Ma and
how defensive she had to be. It seemed to me that Ma routinely did superhuman
things in Room from creating tons of great activities for Jack while always being
patient with him to constantly trying to escape or get rescued to acting in her
interactions with Old Nick to get as much of what she needed from him as
possible.
The scene that angered me the most
was the one where Ma did the interview. The interviewer asked a lot of terrible
questions, whether they completely ignored what Ma had said previously or
showed a total lack of empathy and understand of what Ma had been through, but
I’ll transcribe just part of the interview here:
“[…] did you ever
consider asking your captor to take Jack away?”
“Away?”
“To leave him
outside a hospital, say, so he could be adopted. As you yourself were, very
happily, I believe.”
I can see Ma
swallow. “Why would I have done that?”
“Well, so he could
be free.”
“It would have
been a sacrifice, of course—the ultimate sacrifice—but if Jack could have had a
normal, happy childhood with a loving family?”
“He had me.” Ma
says it one word at a time. “He had a childhood with my, whether you’d call it normal or not.”
“But you knew what
he was missing,” says the woman. “Every day he needed a wider world, and the
only one you could give him got narrower. […]” (237)
When the interviewer says “the only
one you could give him got narrower,” it seems like a direct attack on the
world Ma was able to create for Jack. Of course Ma’s ability to take care of
Jack was extremely limited but she made so much out of the very limited
resources she had and the interviewer dismisses it as nothing.
I’m also not sure that Old Nick
would have taken Jack away. I don’t want to delve very far into his mind but when
we started the book, I wondered why he was willing to provide (even to the very
limited extent he did) food and clothing for Jack. Since Ma stopped trying to directly
attack Old Nick after Jack was born and instead worked on longer-term plans and
on persuading him to the extent she could, Jack was in a terrible way useful to
Old Nick. The interviewer doesn’t ask about or consider that complexity.
Ma also immediately makes it clear
that she didn’t (and still doesn’t) consider sending Jack away an option. Yet
the interviewer continues to press her on it and continue insinuating that Ma
did something wrong, which I think shows a lack of empathy.
I guess overall the amount Ma has
had to defend herself has made me realize how little the rest of the world can
understand her or tries to understand her without trying to make her something
pitiful or an aberration. It’s also made me even more impressed with Ma, since
she continues to defend herself and Jack even as she absolutely should not have
to.
Great post! I was also appalled by many of the questions when I read that interview scene. I totally agree that even if Ma had decided to send Jack away there was no way Old Nick would have let that happen. He must have noticed how Ma changed to protect Jack and there's no way he would give that up.
ReplyDeleteI love this post because I really hated the interview scene. The media often has little to no empathy when asking invasive and sometimes pointed questions to get answers out of people that will bring in an audience. I was impressed with how long Ma was able to sit there with the interviewer, especially after she violated the contract. This also seems like a more severe version of the problem Ma has with people questioning her parenting with seemingly innocent comments (like Dr. Clay and they Play Doh).
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I feel like TV interviewers are just invasive and rude. I was angry just like you. But I suppose in a way, it makes sense that Ma has to defend herself all the time. At least for the interviewer, the minimum amount of information about Ma's situation is public, so it's back to square one with Ma having to explain everything. But Ma is also defensive with the doctors a lot, and I understand that. People judge other people's parenting all the time, but this is a whole new level. It's not fair to judge how Ma raised Jack because it's so different from any other situation that no other parent has experienced it and truly knows the limitations. So it's understandable that Ma is getting defensive all the time whenever she thinks someone is judging her. I think it's also a bit of an insecurity with her -- I don't think she's sure she's raised Jack right. She's second-guessing herself constantly on if she's done the right thing, especially with framing Jack's world as Room and Outer Space/Outside. It's only natural that she's going to defend it.
ReplyDeleteReading the scene with the interview was SO infuriating. Ma shouldn't have to answer questions like that at all. It's hard to even imagine what the outside perspective would be of this situation since we've been with Ma and Jack from inside Room through the Escape to now. But it's hard to see Ma going through such a terrible ordeal for the past seven years and once she finally escapes to have to defend her choices that were made under such extreme pressure in such extreme circumstances, that no one else can even try to comprehend. She shouldn't have to defend herself but she does very well.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I think the scene is quite emblematic of what media had become. Their ultimate goal wasn't to share and enrich the knowledge of others regarding the crimes committed and ensure his sentence, but to garner the most attention possible. And we see that here, where so many people who supporter who exist, to create something that emblemizes her further will ultimately garner less attention than creating drama around something without the view of the larger picture. And it's just feels so much worse to us the reader, after we've seen all that they went through and just how tired they are at this point, to become prey to monetary values most public figureheads hold.
ReplyDeleteThat interview might've been the toughest section for me to read so far. That and her meeting with her lawyer where he said that she could write a book about living on less. The number of times when I wanted to hold the book up and yell at the "puffy-hair woman" (something about Egg Snake that may have contained several expletives) defies enumeration.
ReplyDeleteMy least favorite aspect of the exchange was how clear it was that Ma's comments were going to be editorially mangled into some false confirmation of the public's preexisting beliefs about her situation. Especially when the interviewer basically yells Cut! to the people backstage. Everyone in the news media seems so out-of-touch with the reality of Ma's condition. It reminds me of how people tend to glorify mental illness (so what has having anxiety taught you about life?) People think that Ma's ordeals have made her into some kind of holy figure of minimalist parenting, like those people who "try X for a year" and then write a book about how it changed their life. But all Ma wanted, all those years, was to be Outside and to live normally.
PS: I hadn't even thought about how impossible it was to send Jack away for adoption. What's Ma going to do -- just tell Old Nick to take Jack to the nearest police office in his truck? Why on earth would he, possibly a wanted criminal, also definitely not someone with Jack's best interests at heart, abide by that request at all? How are people as insolent as Puffy-Hair Woman allowed to host television shows?
I HATED reading the interview section, especially the part you quoted in your blog post. Few others have managed the patient, loving parenting Ma has (as we see with Deana and Bronwyn), even outside of the conditions that she had to endure. I hate how everyone - Morris, the interviewer, even the doctors from time to time - sterilize her experience and make it into a defining abnormality. It's so terrible that, just as she's given the chance to escape Room (both physically and mentally), the media is trying to trap her within that identity and poison the better (not GOOD, mind you) parts of their captivity. Ma shouldn't have to deal with others' questions and judgements about her parenting of Jack - she did an amazing job, and it infuriates me how no one seems to recognize that.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with what you said about the interviewer. It's easy to see that they're just doing and saying whatever they can to make the story as interesting as possible to get more readers. Also, the specific words that the interviewer uses are not the best. She asks "(...) did you ever consider asking your captor to take Jack away?" When you put it that way, with harsh words, why would anyone respond politely to that direct attack of a question. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteLike a lot of media today, the TV show seemed to really want to spin Jack and Ma's tale into an emotional and dramatic one to get more views and publicity. In the quoted section especially, they're trying to make it sound like Ma had to make a difficult decision when it really hadn't been considered at all.
ReplyDelete