Little Miss Pretty

Motto: lots and lots and lots of mommy-hos
nobody's ever said no to.

Rebecca de Mornay is this chick that looks intimidatingly pretty to some peopleⁱ that's also done a ton, and I mean a ton of cinematic work during the lengthy, active career of a hardworking woman nobody's ever heard of. Because you had no idea who she was before you looked her up, right, never heard that name before, never seen that face before, never seen anything she was in, how the fuck on hellwheels is this even possible ?!

It's not, to get the ideological angle out of the way, any kind of problematic. To the best of my knowledgeⁱⁱ all her wraps consist of run-of-the-mill, lowest-common-denominator-chasing mainstream nonsenseⁱⁱⁱ, exactly, and I do mean exactly like Seinfeld's. She's about as funny, too, so why him ? Why not her ?

Why exactly would a pretty, driven, hard-working girl that didn't do drugs^iv entirely and completely miss the mark ? Thirty years is a lifetime!

You know who Shannon Doherty is, right ? They were working at about the same time. The psycho junkie bitch from hell didn't do absolutely anything! What did she do ? What was she in ? Yet on the strength of that absolute zilch she got a meal ticket^v in some parody about failed Spelling stars. Why is it A-ok to tongue in cheek Shan's utter failure but nobody can even mention Rebbie's^vi cuz that'd be mentioning Reb which is just not done ?^vii

I've been a collector of female failure for many years now ; you perhaps recall the discussion of Ellen Barkin. You certainly recall the passing mention of Maria Schneider for (her absence in) Caligula^viii. There's more, including the current piece. The good news is that collecting^ix is not entirely a waste of time : it sometimes provides one with the basis for the occasional theory!

I suspect the reason Rebecca de Mornay ended up stuck playing the role of obscure starlet irl might well be given in the motto.

Consider the mechanism here involved : she comes up in a world where they tell her that... that she's her own creature, right ? She's not brought up to be a slave, she's brought up to be a Master, even if limited to the dismal domain consisting of naught besides her unremarkable own frame crowned as it finds itself by her pretty blond little head. She's to make her own choices, and aside that : she's to act as if she is making her own choices. Even if she isn't. Even if she can't. Especially if she couldn't possibly. All the more so then!^x

So in her formative years she runs into an actual Master, just like sheep have been running into rabbis ever since the dawn of time^xi. The result of this encounter is going to be exactly what you'd expect -- but the remarkable part isn't that MP ain't gonna think much of Perianne Boring. Ofcoursehewouldn't! Why the fuck would he!

The remarkable part instead is that Perianne Boring ain't gonna think much of MP. So what if he's a big deal ? So is she! They've been telling her, and she's believed them. She's got a pair of hands just like everyone, doesn't she ? She's got a head on her shoulders, an' her gammy used to tell her it's a good head indeed, so why can't she organise her own life to be Your Fair Lady ? Why's she need professor what's-his-name for ?! She could do it as well as anyone.

While appealing in theory, this approach doesn't generally work in practice. Obviously. Yet sometimes it does work, and when it works what you get is Rebecca de Mornay. Some islands, bare rock in the ocean, afford the solitary intelligence cast upon them a painful but quick death. Starvation ain't pretty, but it doesn't outlast the month! Meanwhile the very few fertile islands are so very much worse : the solitary intelligence cast upon them will work the patch of soil to barely support their hunger, so that they can endure the torture longer, and after thirty years of toil...

There's a reason the convicted titan whose liver Zeus' raven picks is immortal. And so there you have her, little miss pretty, as smart as a whip and as confident as all get-up, locked in a solitary prison of "You go girl!", followed by a "Preferably as far away as possible while everyone gives no shits whatsoever kthx." coda muttered underbreath.

"Man is a social creature" doth not mean what you think it means^xii.

1. Slightly albino blonde with sweet, round facial features sitting atop a clinically unremarkably proportioned female body. Why albinism-with-a-C-cup would look intimidating to anyone is an open question, but other than observing some are easily intimidated we could also offer in expiation that she's got some vague uncanny valley going facially, which men that really haven't seen all that many women could conceivably misidentify as some kind of beauty. [↩]
2. I haven't reviewed her complete body of work. To my knowledge no single person has, outside of the author herself. Tempting as the flourish may be, the same can not be said of the author himself, tyvm. [↩]
3. There's a "drama procedural mystery" in which she's a very successful lawyer that ends up stalked by a gigolo that's also secretly a serial killer. Admit it, on the strength of that one liner you'd want to see this obscure item with no-one in it, wouldn't you ?

   It's not even a bad film, honestly, the quality of the writing is above par in being reasonably credible and reasonably free of inept Aesops and annoying plot holes, while the quality of the acting is certainly head and shoulders above what the current crop of "I used to work reading books for the blind but I've always thought myself an actress" Game of Thrones ninnies are capable of. And she's convincing, too, her depiction of "driven female that smells no beta whatsoever on the psycho and consequently can't stop herself opening her mouth and grunting sexually whenever his thumb's threatening around her neck and would dump her currently ensnared provider in a heartbeat too" is exactly true to nature.

   Or there's the "woman joins FBI for quota, stays for merit, brings about changes" agitprop piece, as fine indeed as any propaganda work ever done by the best of them (I don't give names because they generally speak "foreign languages" and so "who's ever heard of them" rite). Everything's finely balanced, the "loser" girl she "teams up" with very convincingly pencilnecks without the use of eyeglasses as a prop, she wins a pizza eating contest through grossing out the 6 foot 5, 250 lb male competition like they're 12 year-olds in the establishing scene, there's quitting and there's chasing bad guys on a wing and a prayer and really, if any censor anywhere can find any fault whatever with this item I'll fucking eat it (or at the very least a pie baked to look like it).

   Or there's the thing where she's an always-dressed hooker working (of her own free will! nobody owns her!) for a 19 yo Tom Cruise in one of those The Graduate coming of age flicks of the ~70s. That fished up an Oscar ; hers didn't. How come she wasn't in the one that got the Oscar ?

   Anything and everything could in principle be said about Rebecca de Mornay, and some of it will even be true. All of it will be true before anything in the vein of her ever courting controversy or being in the slightest bit risque will be true. She just wasn't, at all. Exactly like Seinfeld and the guy everyone hates in Some Came Running, she's a Mainstreet America gal. [↩]

4. Her first DUI arrest happened in her mid-50s, it was 0.1 over the 0.8 limit and she was "very cooperative" as teh SOPS involved do attest. [↩]
5. She gets to say "you guys aren't even trying anymore, are you!" which is still one line. [↩]
6. Hey, if Madonna can be Maggie why can't Rebecca be Rebbie, amite ? [↩]
7. What, tell me you don't shorten the name of random hookers and assorted talent that's entirely not worth the overhead of the full item ? [↩]
8. Retarded bitch got kicked off the set for doing utterly seamstress nonsense like sewing up the gowns they were giving her to wear so that people couldn't see her tits anymore. Cuz that's what you wanna see instead of tits, industrious she-thead or however you portmanteau she into shithead. [↩]
9. You want a hard one to translate, there you go. [↩]
10. And especially if she's pretty not-outright-ugly to the level of disability! Because "Holy hell girl, if you don't stand up for yourself, what hope do we have!!eleven!"

    Makes sense, dunnit ?

    Yes, that's right, they're trying to live off your own bone marrow, that's what the zombie "people themselves" are all about. Surprised ? [↩]

11. It's easy to understand why rabbis wear the wooly beards now, isn't it ? Yes, they're trying to blend in with the sheep. See how Trilema clarifies and explains the infinity of the perceptible universe into well structured forms ? You're welcome! [↩]
12. This is common in Greek. [↩]