Bio: Kelly Leow is an Erasmus Mundus scholar currently completing a joint Master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Bologna and University of York. Born and raised in Singapore, Kelly received a B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, then served as deputy editor at MovieMaker, a quarterly magazine about filmmaking. Returning to Singapore, she was senior communications manager at gender equality organisation AWARE, during which time she co-created the Anthem Award-winning podcast Saga. Kelly’s fiction writing includes the short story “Breakwater” which won the 2022 Epigram-Storytel Horror Prize and was published in Best New Singaporean Short Stories: Volume Six.
Abstract: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), which induces a parent or caretaker—typically women—to fabricate or cause illness in children for the sake of gaining attention and sympathy, has carved out a distinct place within U.S. popular culture over the past decade. While the psychological disorder makes an appearance in films and television series It, Sharp Objects, Ma, Run, A Haunting in Venice and more, it takes center stage in 2017 documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest and 2019 series The Act and The Politician, which all follow the heavily publicized real-life case of Clauddine “Dee Dee” and Gypsy-Rose Blanchard. The grip that MSBP holds upon our cultural imagination signals a collective anxiety about maternity gone haywire. Arguments have been made that MSBP heralds a subversively progressive step for women on the one hand, and a sexist and classist reaction from the medical establishment to banal mothering behaviors on the other. Yet little has been written about the prominent use of camp aesthetics in recent media portrayals of MSBP. What makes camp such a potent aesthetic vehicle for narratives of MSBP? This essay applies theory about camp to MSBP as popularly understood, finding a version of Susan Sontag’s “naïve” camp in its workings, then identifies the specific ways that camp manifests in Mommy Dead and Dearest and The Politician. Finally, it surveys the feminist implications of camp and its mode of parody—its ability to reveal the performative nature of motherhood and gender writ large—and what this may say about monstrous mothers.
Welcome to Camp Munchausen: Camp in Contemporary Media Depictions of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy
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