I think it is unfair to lable Joanna as a villain...if she had stayed with her son and went off the edge and hurt him...people would say "why didn't she just leave if she was having these feelings?" I think she did the right thing by leaving and by letting Ted raise the boy..of course ideally a mother would not leave her child..but it is better to leave than to drown them in a tub or throw them in a river (it happens) ..just watch Nancy Grace..
shareTowards the end I actually felt more sympathy for her than I expected. Yes, she did a terrible thing at first but she didn´t act unreasonable at the court. Of course I felt a lot more Sympathy for Ted but that´s mostly because the movie focused on him.
The real villains are the lawyers. They acted ruthless and showed very little understanding for the true situation.
The real villain was self-absorbed Joanna Kramer.
shareShe leaves without notice, she abandoned her kid, she comes back and wants to be a parent all of a sudden, she keeps the kid.... She was the villain. Put it to you this way: if your dad left your family, because she was a drunk (had personal problems), showed up 2 years later out of the clear blue sky, took you from you mother who was taking good care of you, wanted your mom to pay for him, and then keeps you... would he be viewed as a villain? Yes he would. Joanna is the villain. She is the antagonist, which is code for : villain.
shareWait--you actually think the antagonist is the villain? Really?
shareWhat about taking that 2000 dollars out of their savings account, which is essentially taking 2000 dollars out of Billy's mouth. She - like any man who abandons his family because he just can't deal is justly considered the villain in that scenario.
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To my mind, it's very clear that the storytellers don't like Joanna very much. She's selfish, she's unkind, she's even gratuitously cruel (for instance, when leaving, when she writes to Billy, and when she picks Billy up, she makes no attempt to acknowledge Ted even as a person, let alone as the guy she was married to for eight years). There's no suggestion that she ever gave Ted a chance during their marriage, or talked to him the way she's alleging he never talked to her. But it does seem clear -- from her hearing testimony, for instance -- that her wanting Billy is primarily about her image of herself, and maybe nothing more. It's not even about her punitively not wanting Ted to have him, which would make her a villain.
But it occurs to me that the character of Joanna is also a representation of the early days of the "Me" generation, and that it's that that the film-makers really don't like. And that's why she's self-absorbed, blameful, verging on claiming victimhood status and not taking responsibility for her own actions or their consequences. It's interesting that they pulled a switch and made that character a woman, at a time when feminists were growing and promoting their own self-obsession and budding victimhood, and maybe that's why some people struggle so hard to find Joanna understandable and sympathetic -- the archetypes of Woman as Nurturer and Man as Destroyer still run very deep, and have been actively tended by feminists, as part of their own blame game. And the film doesn't play along with the overwhelming misandrony that we're all used to in current social depictions, which I imagine many people would find challenging.
Parenthetically: I'd never seen it before, for specific personal reasons. I've just watched it for the first time, and I have to say the acting is awesome.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
Well said.
The problem is not that men are known as "The Destroyers" while women are seen as "The Nurturers," it's the way people choose to approach these roles as bad or good. No matter what, that puts complex human being into black and white boxes than we just can't tolerate... since human beings are so complex. Why can't people just accept and love the differences between men and women and how we approach parenting? Ted can be rougher than Joanna in certain situations and she can more caring and tolerate in other areas. Meanwhile, Ted can be more understanding and accepting about certain things in Billy, a boy just like him than Joanna. It's a wonderful dance. Dad provides this. Mom provides this. We're a puzzle that is supposed to fit together, not be forced to fit together and if we're not trying to fix together, we're all nothing but purposeless puzzle pieces.
But it occurs to me that the character of Joanna is also a representation of the early days of the "Me" generation, and that it's that that the film-makers really don't like. And that's why she's self-absorbed, blameful, verging on claiming victimhood status and not taking responsibility for her own actions or their consequences. It's interesting that they pulled a switch and made that character a woman, at a time when feminists were growing and promoting their own self-obsession and budding victimhood, and maybe that's why some people struggle so hard to find Joanna understandable and sympathetic -- the archetypes of Woman as Nurturer and Man as Destroyer still run very deep, and have been actively tended by feminists, as part of their own blame game. And the film doesn't play along with the overwhelming misandrony that we're all used to in current social depictions, which I imagine many people would find challenging.