Kayla's Presentation on MA

The film MA is about a middle aged women (Sue Anne) who befriends a group of teenagers after purchasing alcohol for them and letting them consume it in her basement. The characters throughout the film are all linked together through Sue Anne, who attended high school with the children's parents, and is now seeking revenge. The significance of these relationships is revealed to be rooted in the trauma that Sue Anne suffered in high school and her need to fit in. 

Sue Anne partying with present day teenagers in her basement 
while her own teenage daughter is locked upstairs. It appears 
Sue Anne suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy. 

Sue Anne laying next to one of her victims. The man was her 
high crush turned bully and the father of one of the teens she
interacted with. The two are laying in Sue Anne's bed as the
man bleeds to death and the house burns.  

 

The trauma that the antagonist, Sue Anne (Ma), suffers is at the hands of her white peers and she later associates herself with their children. Both generations exhibit the same unctuous manners while a visual shift from assimilation to resentment takes place within Sue Anne. And even though we do see this difference between an adolescent Sue Anne and adult Sue Anne, the reasoning behind it lacks depth. The lack of responsibility put on race during her traumatic high school experience denies the opportunity for cultural change throughout the film. The idea of a middle-aged Black woman kidnapping and torturing various white people could have easily created an opportunity to present Ma as a caricature of an angry black woman or focus on the difficulties that a Black woman would face in the small-town environment. 

Discussion Questions

1. In what ways do you think cultural assimilation hinders the authenticity of Black characters? (Is it better to have a film that avoids black stereotypes, but offers a character that would be racially indistinguishable were it not for the color of their skin? Is it better to have a character that takes on some on the cultural identifiers we use to determine race, but risk the character's value be placed on their blackness?)

2. The film was released in 2019, prior to the Black Lives Matter movement and covid. How do you think these events would have altered the film?