Michelle Hall (she/her)
Falling UP!
created, written and performed by Michelle Hall © 2021
Camera and digital editing by Georgie Ivers, Technical Assistance by Catherine O'Donoghue
Digital video/Performance
5:07 minutes
Falling UP is a short video, of a work-in-progress project, that aims to bomb the ubiquitous action hero narrative and present an alternative story of Mom Rage. Falling UP is a reference to the film Falling Down, a 90’s action movie, male victimisation narrative and Men’s Rights anthem. As with many action blockbusters, Falling Down harks back to the standards of Western culture, the epic poems of the Christian patriarchy such as the Iliad with its Wrath of Achilles or Tragic Hero parable that centres male violence and trivialises the voices of women.
Falling UP is a bombastic counter-narrative about a woman who burns out, ditches her ‘nice lady’ act and becomes a Bad Clown Mom, who goes on her own rage rampage and roars, “You think you’ve had a bad day!” In an outrageous parody of the action hero, Falling UP subverts the narrative line of patriarchy and war which dominates mainstream culture, demonises maternal rage and omits complex stories of motherhood(s) as authored by actual mothers. With this work-in-progress, I am creating a new story about female rage, one that proposes the emotional labour of care and the intimacy of motherhood as true feats of heroic action.
The Covid 19 global pandemic has seen a rising wave of carer burn-out and Mom Rage as mothers navigate home-schooling, elder care and earn-from-home workloads. In mainstream, male encoded culture, authentic stories of domestic inequality, care work and motherhood, as authored by mothers, are rarely platformed. I want to contribute a story that explores the complexity of care, and a woman’s struggle to exist within and beyond her care roles.
Falling UP will be an important catalyst expanding the global conversation around reproductive rights to focus in on Mom Rage and the mental health of mothers and caregivers during Covid 19. Using choreographed movement, spoken word poetry and song, audio score design and integration of screen technologies Falling UP problematises the old binaries around mothers - good mom/bad mother, Glenda the Good Witch/Joan Crawford-Mommy Dearest – and explodes taboos around maternal rage. Our first creative development will dive deep into the problems that arise for women because of the fact that care roles in our society are still deeply gendered and grossly undervalued.
Falling UP will tear down the façade of the patriarchal foundation myth with its false male pride and heroism and expose a cultural malaise of exploitation that sees mothers and carers pushed to burn-out at a time when care is our most crucial human resource and caregivers our most abused frontline workforce. Falling UP is a comical rollicking, ballistic bollocking that breaks out of the house and into your streets, right when we need a new kind of hero!
@thedirtymother