The director of American Psycho seeks empathy with the devil in Manson Family drama Charlie Says
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Mary Harron’s film adaptation of American Psycho has been celebrated for taking the blunt-force satire of its source material and sharpening it to a fine, feminist edge. Her latest, the Manson Family drama Charlie Says, similarly revolves around a howling void of toxic masculinity, but with a twist: This time, rather than turn their focus to the void itself, Harron and her American Psycho collaborator, screenwriter Guinevere Turner, go digging in the rubble such chaotic, destructive energy leaves in its wake. In this case, that means the shattered minds of the women who Manson manipulated into serving as unpaid sex workers and his personal slaves—three of whom, Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray, a.k.a. Game Of Thrones’ Gilly), Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon), and Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendón), went to prison literally singing his praises.
Charlie Says urges us to see these women as victims, a provocative and potentially divisive ask considering Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Atkins all participated in— and were convicted of—acts of violence so sadistic and shocking, they shattered the utopian ideals of the 1960s practically in one night. Even more challenging, Harron and Turner offer no comfort to the actual murder victims, nor to Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Atkins. Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever), the graduate student who takes it upon herself to try to deprogram the Manson girls in prison, acknowledges that it would be kinder to let them live with their delusions than to wake them up to the horrifying reality of what they have done. But letting them continue to believe in the racist lie of “Helter Skelter” would be letting Manson win, and so Karlene shows up every morning in the cell block where Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Atkins have been isolated from the rest of the prison population, dog-eared copy of Sisterhood Is Powerful in hand.
Based on Faith’s memoir of her time working with the Manson girls, Charlie Says does effectively eviscerate one of the ’60s counterculture’s most enduring lies by breaking down the soft coercion of “free love.” Manson simply took the mindset that banished female members of the Students For A Democratic Society to secretarial and support roles and took it to its logical extreme, coalescing thousands of male assertions that, for women, being “liberated” meant having sex with any man who wanted it, any time, anywhere, and without protest, and spun it together with millennia of Judeo-Christian conditioning and intense acid burnout to create brainwashed zombies. Manson’s “girls” couldn’t read books, carry money, use their real names, or eat until all the men in the “family” were served. And they had to ask Manson’s permission to have consensual sex with male visitors. If he told them to do so, they could not say no.
The dynamics of this physical, emotional, and sexual abuse are laid bare in an impactful dinner scene where Atkins makes a joke in response to Manson’s cruel critique of her salad dressing. He flies into a rage, leading to a battering that subtly shifts into a sexual assault as Manson first slaps Atkins, then wrestles her to the ground, then forcefully kisses her in front of the assembled “family.” When Van Houten goes to comfort her friend, Atkins tells her, “Getting hit by the man you love is no different than making love to him.” In their world, to be a woman is to have no thoughts or desires of your own, and to always be available for, and receptive to, sex as well as violence. How is this state of affairs any different from the “straight” society Manson and his followers all claim to hate? They’re too high to really think about it.
The threads of these contradictions are pulled out one by one, as Harron cuts back and forth between the time Krenwinkel calls “B.C.” (before the crimes) and three years later, when Faith tried to unravel Manson’s brainwashing in prison, with brief cutaways to her discussing the case with other teachers at the prison for some (universally hostile) outside perspective. Although Charlie Says does suffer from some of the telltale signs of an underfunded indie production—an uneven sound mix, flat digital exterior lensing—and the shooting style is mostly functional, Harron does a good job of conveying both the late-’60s period and the surreal surroundings of the Spahn Ranch where Manson and his followers made their home. (For the uninitiated, the “ranch” was actually a prefab Wild West town owner George Spahn rented out to movie studios; by the late ’60s, the Western genre wasn’t as popular as it once was, and so Spahn let the “family” live there rent-free in exchange for upkeep.) And unlike many fictional and documentary retellings of the Manson story, Charlie Says also makes very clear how racist the Manson ideology really was—even if it lets Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Atkins off the hook by implying that they weren’t really racist, just suggestible.
To be clear, Charlie Says does not paint Manson himself as a sympathetic figure. In fact, it barely considers his psychology at all. As portrayed by Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, the Manson of Charlie Says talks out of both sides of his mouth from the moment he appears on screen, preaching freedom while establishing himself as a dual father/God figure a lot like the “Man” he railed against. Over the course of the film, Smith’s Manson grows increasingly agitated when he doesn’t get the record deal he believes he deserves, but he’s still only intermittently convincing as a tyrant. Indeed, Manson’s at his most insidious in this film when he’s not physically present but instead evoked in loyal foot soldier Krenwinkel’s near-constant refrain of “Charlie says…”
For as much as Charlie Says tries to reframe everything we know about the Manson Family, its characterization of the women remains shallow. It’s chilling when Krenwinkel scolds Van Houten not to talk about her past—again, because “Charlie says” not to. But by not breaking that rule itself and telling us where they came from, the film tacitly reinforces the idea that they didn’t exist before they met Charles Manson. Harron and Turner treat Van Houten, Krenwinkel, and Atkins’ susceptibility to Manson’s brainwashing as a sort of a priori condition of American culture at the time—which may be true, but limits opportunities for these characters to evolve, or even for us to truly understand or empathize with them. The potential for other paths is briefly teased in a scene where a budding new “family” member is brought to the ranch, then dismissed by Manson when she says her mother “raised me not to take shit from men like you.” But that character just as quickly disappears, leaving Van Houten to daydream of riding off into the sunset with a gentle biker she spent one night with on the ranch. The tragedy of her enforced helplessness is implied, but not truly felt, save for through a frustrated, mutilated grief that she was this close to getting it and getting out.
Van Houten, who serves as our entry point to the story and is its ostensible protagonist, is an interesting case. Charlie Says was made without her participation, but hews closely to her version of the truth, which is that she “was weak in character… I sought peer attention and acceptance more than I did my own foundation… I looked to men for my value, and I didn’t speak up,” as she testified at her ultimately unsuccessful 2017 parole hearing. Harron is more interested in the psychology of Manson’s followers than their crimes, and the Tate murders only get a perfunctory airing in Charlie Says. (The LaBiancas get a little more screen time, but the focus turns once again to Van Houten once the murders actually start.)
The taste level of that approach is debatable; it’s better than the ghoulish glee that The Haunting Of Sharon Tate seemed to take in these deaths, at least. But it doesn’t change the point Harron and Turner are trying to make in Charlie Says, which is that the ’60s counterculture’s inability to truly let go of white privilege and male privilege tilled the soil in which the Manson murders blossomed. That could be difficult for baby boomers who participated in that counterculture to swallow. After all, it’s much simpler to call an individual evil than to indict an entire system—especially if you’re one of the people benefitting from it.
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The new wave of fascination with cults is definitely at its best, and in general an advancement from the previous zombie fascination, when it seeks to understand and empathize with people who fall prey to charismatic madmen.Both are driven by the political fervor of their times though.
“the ’60s counterculture’s inability to truly let go of white privilege and male privilege tilled the soil in which the Manson murders blossomed. That could be difficult for baby boomers who participated in that counterculture to swallow. After all, it’s much simpler to call an individual evil than to indict an entire system—…”
Maybe I’m not reading this right, but I’m not sure indicting the entire 60’s counterculture movement is any better than chalking the whole thing up to individual evil when a lot of really amazing social reforms came out of the movement.
What really sunk the social change (particularly from the perspective of feminism) in the 60’s in for me was my mom telling me that she wasn’t allowed to wear anything but skirts to a regular public school growing up in the 50’s, and imagining a childhood where I couldn’t really play sports, or ride a bike without the inconvenience of not being able to wear pants or shorts.
It certainly didn’t destroy the patriarchy or sexism entirely while ushering in a utopia of social inequality, but ignoring the very real positive changes that the movement made doesn’t seem entirely fair considering the sacrifices, hard work, and suffering so many people went through to change the world for the better.
We’d be a lot less further along than we are now without it, that’s for sure.
All the online Boomer bashing is getting really tired. Those kids in the 60s were pretty cool in my book.
Many Boomers are still rational, progressive people. Many, however, went through the “fuck you, I got mine” 1980s and came out the other side willing to sell out every subsequent generation in pursuit of wealth and prestige, all while bitching about the “entitlement” and “softness” of younger people.
True, but I think that’s probably also true of every generation. People tend to get somewhat more conservative, less optimistic and just downright crankier as they get older.
I remember Grace Slick, about 20 years ago, talking about the problem of the counterculture being naivete. She said she felt that if you did enough drugs and read enough books, you could solve the problems of the world. And that didn’t happen.
I can see how that would be her perspective considering her profession and the life she led, but there was a lot more going on than just the music, intellectual, and drug scene.
Stuff like this, one of the major originators of the concept of the bra burning feminist and eventually to a Miss Black America pageant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_America_protest
There were a lot of people out there engaging in public protests (rather than just reading books and doing drugs without acting to create change) like this that did, in fact, have small lingering effects, and managed to change society in small ways.
I think dismissing their victories because they weren’t absolute is doing them a disservice.
And in the subsequent decades, a lot of those same people tried to engage in “public protests” and change society in the same small ways. None of those efforts managed to prevent the United States from becoming absolutely anathema to everything they were ostensibly trying to prevent. Now we have President Trump. “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”I know it must suck for all the ex-hippies to be reminded that they failed – that they weren’t saving anything, just squandering time and energy on self-indulgent utopianism rather than real, durable progress – but it’s a myth that needs to be undone, now more than ever.
The girl on the left looks like a female Mark Wahlberg
If you mean the header image, I think that is Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s daughter.
How so? She isn’t assaulting a Vietnamese man.
Isn’t that Kevin Bacon’s daughter? Maybe he needs to ask for a paternity test because holy shit the Marky Mark resemblance is uncanny. I didn’t notice it at first but after reading your comment I can’t unsee it.
Turner grew up in a patriarchal cult and probably saw a bit of her mother in these characters. I am interested to see this, it looks better than a lot of Manson fare.
How many Manson movies are going to be released this year? There’s this one, Tarantino’s, some other one with Damon Herriman playing him again and the Haunting of Sharon Tate from a month or so ago. Am I missing any?
There’s a 3 episode documentary called I Lived with a Killer: The Manson Family released this year as well if you count that.
50th anniversary of the murders and all. 🙁
Damon Herriman is playing Manson in Tarantino’s film, along with season 2 of Mindhunter.
Well this sounds gross. What could be more feminist than arguing women aren’t responsible for their own actions?
It’s possible to be a victim of abuse and brainwashing and still be responsible for your actions.
As a Doctor Who fan, this might be harder to watch than Jessica Jones.
I am not a big fan of pushing wigs, makeup and prosthetics onto actors and pretending it’s a performance, but that looks like Matt Smith just redoing the look he had in the Doctor Who season where he had shaggy hair and married River Song. He just looks dopey and silly.
He’s also way too tall to be Manson. I’ve loathed his casting ever since it was announced for that reason. That was part of what made Manson so creepy to me. His physical stature is so unassuming and seemingly harmless that it masks what a crazy, evil, demented fuck he was. The young women and men he was intimidating were, by and large, taller than him. They probably could have easily beat his ass in a fight, but they never would have thought of challenging him in that way because of the hold he had on them. Casting a guy with Matt Smith’s height—where he’s naturally going to have some inches on everyone and seem like a valid threat—makes his power a lot less psychological than it was.
I had no idea Manson was so short. Barely related, David Tennant is actually taller than Matt Smith. If you had asked me, I’d have said Tennant is around 5’10” and Smith around 6’4″, but I’d be wrong! Also, at 6’3″, Tom Baker remains the tallest Doctor.
Yeah I had no idea how short he was until I read Jeff Guinn’s bio of him last year. I think I literally did a double take and had to reread the sentence again. I’m an average-sized woman (5’4″) and was like, are you seriously telling me I’m taller than Manson?On the flip side, I’m surprised Smith is only about 5’11″/6’0″. I never watched Dr. Who, but when I watched The Crown, I kept thinking he was a 6’1″/maybe even 6’2″ guy.
His hair adds a few inches. 😛
WOW
So yea I just had to look this up. Charles Manson is only 5’2!? WOW
Yeah! Well, he was 5’2″. Right now he’s about negative 6′, if you know what I mean.
Oh my gosh! I totally forgot! The last thing I actually remembered reading about him was that he married a 26-year-old from prison in 2014.
Good riddance.
Unpopular opinion? I have never liked any role Matt Smith has been in. Idk really how he gets roles.
I’ve only seen him in The Crown. I had mixed feelings about his performance, though I’ll admit some of it was probably the writing, too. Sometimes, I thought he was excellent, and other times, I found him very underwhelming.
People called him a demonic elf for a reason. Someone just saw Hamilton and told me they were annoyed they made Madison such a tiny unimposing person. Madison was 5’4 and built like a 12 year-old girl.
There’s one major flaw in almost all Manson movies, TV movies, and any filmed recreations – the actors that play Family members actually take showers and have straight, white, actor teeth.Some of us that are old enough (and lived very, very close to Spahn Ranch) can recall just how gross those women and other Family affiliates actually were in person and in pictures. Proper hygiene was not important to them.Also ridiculous – Manson was super short with a small, proportional frame. Manson was a wiry 5’2″ in his prime, and knowing that Matt Smith is 6’0″ is just ridiculous casting.
I’m amazed that films made in england show the population having what are commonly identified as normal teeth at all
Wow. It’s never occurred to me that these women weren’t victims. Of course they were victims. This does not absolve them of their acts, but yes, they were victims.
Is it just me, or does Matt Smith look at lot like Viggo Mortensen in that header photo?
that’s what i thought, too
Having read Susan Atkins’ bragging about the physical act of stabbing Sharon Tate as she pleaded, I never, ever could empathize with her and find this whole thing kind of revolting. That whole quote is just seared into my brain as the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read. Ugh.
That she called out for her mother makes me want to cry every time I think about it.