This is victim blaming rhetoric laundered through film "criticism."

@crushsong theres like...a whole thing where despite every white person in town trying to stop her, including with literal poison, she goes to washington to demand the president do something about all the murdering

@JordanFreiman Quite fucking literally got the brush off from President Calvin Coolidge while she was sweating off the poison cocktail her husband had given her.

@crushsong @BarrelJumpist And who made decisions! She chose to marry Ernest, keep believing him and eventually not forgive him. She has agency as a character, the fact she takes til the end of the movie to make the “right” decision doesn’t mean she isn’t making decisions.

@crushsong I feel like I’m seeing so many posts like “well why didn’t they re write the life of this woman to be more Badass”, she and many others had conservators and rarely actually got to advocate for themselves and had a lot of their agency ripped from them IN REAL LIFE SO

@crushsong HA "why didn't she have any agency??" THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT LIKE 🫠

@crushsong they must've slept through the scene where Mollie (while heavily poisoned) took a train to DC and convinced the sitting president to send federal agents to investigate in her town.

@crushsong I swear the bulk of these criticisms were written months before the movie came out

@crushsong The also intentionally poison here to "slow her down." Like she is a stubborn, headstrong woman they have to take out of the equation. (Also curious if no one has watched old noirs & Hitchcockian thrillers like SUSPICION, NOTORIOUS, THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL, or GASLIGHT?)

@crushsong Like where is the agency of a real life victim that was being manipulated and abused and almost murdered by people she trusted … they took away her agency by literally poisoning her. That’s where it was. That’s literally the movie. „Slow her down“

@crushsong Unrelated to the point you're making, but the sentence "I am taking the word 'agency' away from you" is very funny

@crushsong The whole point is she didn't have agency 😭 Do they want a Green Book style revision of history where she helps solve the murders directly and everybody applauds Hale getting convicted even though it meant nothing in the grand scheme of things?

@crushsong @EEAAOPILLED everybody knows every action that every character takes in a story is a direct reflection of the morals of the writer. if a character isnt the paradigm of a healthy well adjusted human thats bc the creator HATES THEM and thinks thats how all ppl should b. hope this helps

@crushsong The most devasting part of the film for me was that she knew she was trapped and no amount of money could help her.