JULIA MASON
Mags Bennett, isn’t your typical TV mommy. She’s the strong, powerful matriarch of the pot-growing, outlaw Bennett clan of rural Kentucky, continually engaged in dangerous, illegal practices.
Mags is well aware that she’s outside of mainstream conceptions of the good mother: “I had every intention of living a simple life. Raising my boys, keeping house. Then Purvis got killed and I accepted this role. Did what I had to do for my family” (“Full Commitment”).
Mags understands her rejection of traditional motherhood as an intentional strategy necessary to preserve her family. Her role includes violently managing the Bennett clan and its illegal enterprises, and she clearly perceives that her position is more complex than mere single motherhood.
Apple Pie Moonshine
Viewers are introduced to Mags in the first episode of Season Two “The Moonshine War.” She asks Raylan if he’d like some apple pie, which turns out to be moonshine. “I make 180 proof, I cut it with apple cider, cinnamon and vanilla. Reach me that glass, would ya, could have done with a pinch more cinnamon, cinnamon really sells the pie.” Thus apple pie, the home-baked symbol of motherhood in America, has been subverted by the Kentucky outlaw staple, moonshine. This is just a taste of how Mags Bennett operates, outside the law and outside of conventional motherhood.
As the scene progresses we learn more about Mags. At first she claims to be a simple storeowner providing a valuable community service. “I run a store. Help these poor people from the holler, with food stamps, when’s anybody seen me cultivating herb?” After Raylan reminds her that he’s not with the DEA, she does admit to being a “reefer farmer.” Later in the episode she feeds a poisoned version of her apple pie moonshine to Walt McCready, who had been growing weed without her permission and most egregiously had called the state police to report a sex offender. She tells Walt “you never go outside, you know that.” As Walt is dying she explains the nature of the poison she has just feed him: “Mixture is all natural, from up in the hills. All kinds of knowledge up in them hills. I learned it from my grandma, who learned it from her grandma.” This scene demonstrates the outlaw code that Mags operates under and reveals her to be a murderer who is connected to previous generations of women and who has a long history in that community.
This Is Gonna Hurt Me More than You . . .
As well as being ruthless to community members who cross her, Mags is also tough on her sons when they step out of line. Mags’s deviation from the traditional nurturing role is illustrated in a scene from the episode “Cottonmouth” where she takes a hammer to adult son Coover’s hand for betraying her. In the context of outlaw justice and from Mags worldview, Coover needs to be punished. Mags even believes herself to be benevolent for not hurting his dominant hand: “I’m saving your gun hand. Cross me again and I will leave you nothing.” She also explains that she isn’t physically punishing her other son Dickie because he’s already dealing with a physical impairment.
Throughout this exchange, Mags makes it clear that she believes she’s only doing what’s necessary for the greater good of the family, which in her view, benefits from preserving her power. Coover begs for forgiveness, explaining how sorry he is. Mags responds “Coover, I know you’re sorry, that’s why it’s gonna hurt so much to have to do this.” The hurt Mags is referring to is her own hurt, from being forced to break her son’s hand.
This scene provides insight into how Mags operates as a mother. She is unforgiving, physically abusive, and willing to put the family business above individual children. Throughout Season Two viewers learn that Mags is universally feared, both in the community and within her family, and that her reputation for violence is well-deserved, as Messer says “Ain’t enough money in the world to cross the Bennetts” (“Bloody Harlan”).
You Look Real Purdy
Mags’s general appearance falls outside what’s allowed for the traditional good mother, who is expected to be beautiful and feminine. Feminist television criticism continues to draw upon the influential film theories of Laura Mulvey, who first theorized that visual images encourage viewers to look pleasurably at females through the male gaze. While Mulvey’s work has rightly been criticized for not adequately addressing lesbians, many contemporary visual images continue to position women as objects to-be-looked-at while simultaneously denying women’s subjectivity and agency.
In contrast, Mags Bennett, is not portrayed as an object nor are viewers encouraged to look at her pleasurably. She’s an older woman, who dresses very simply and practically. She doesn’t wear make-up and her hair is unkempt. Her clothes are loose-fitting and typically in muted colors. They appear to be inexpensive, old, and quite worn. Her shoes are practical and she often wears a thick, utility-type belt. The overall impression is of a poor country grandmother; however, this image is misleading, as she is a powerful and feared woman, both within her family and in the surrounding county that bears her family name.
While Mags understands that she is neither typically beautiful nor feminine she recognizes the type of power beauty represents. She shares this knowledge with Loretta, the young girl she embraces as her surrogate daughter, who comes into Mags’s care after Mags has poisoned her father for going to the law. In a scene from “Brother’s Keeper,” while combing Loretta’s hair in preparation for the whoop-de-do celebration, Mags says: “You look pretty as a picture. Ain’t no shame in a woman looking beautiful. My time is past, ain’t nothing for it. But you, you’ve got something, a power you ain’t even come to understand.”
This statement reinforces a narrow vision of women’s power being tied to beauty. However, Mags is clearly powerful in ways that surpass the limited power beauty allows. A further exploration of the contrast between feminine power being linked to beauty and the challenges of a woman embracing masculine power is illustrated in “The Spoil” when Mags tells Ms. Johnson, the representative from Black Pike Mining: “It’s not easy being a strong woman, take it from me. But you just keep doing what you’re doing, don’t let ’em see you sweat.” Despite opposing Ms. Johnson and the company she represents, Mags feels a connection with her as a powerful woman in a masculine context.
We’ve learned a lot from Adrienne Rich’s analysis of motherhood in her book, Of Woman Born. Rich identified how mainstream beliefs about motherhood served to confine women’s options and opportunities. Despite almost forty years of efforts to challenge narrow philosophies of mothering, women with kids are supposed to be the so-called “good mother,” which can lead to tremendous pressure.
According to Marie Porter in her 2010 work Focus on Mothering: “I do not know a mother who is unaware of the ‘shoulds’ of motherhood. As the ‘shoulds’ are an impossible burden, all mothers with whom I have ever spoken have an undercurrent of guilt about their motherwork.”
Uninvited Don’t Mean Unwelcome
The good mother is a nurturer and provider of sustenance. While Mags typically fails to be nurturing, at least in the traditional sense, she does embrace her responsibility to feed her family and community. In “For Blood or Money” when Raylan shows up at Mags’s home during family dinner, she makes him understand both the rules and her role with the statement: “Uninvited don’t mean unwelcome.” In a show of deference to her hospitality Raylan gives her a store-bought apple pie. Mags lets Raylan know he does not belong but that she will play the hostess nonetheless. She offers to get him a plate and to set aside a jar of her apple pie moonshine when the next batch is ready. As the conversation continues she reminds him that he is intruding by saying: “Yet, you find it acceptable to bust in on my family dinner” and “You gonna sit there on my lumber.” She ends the interaction with: “Sure I can’t fix you a plate? How ’bout some dessert.”
Food and community are central to Mags’s identity. Her commitment to feeding her people is illustrated when she invites everyone to a whoop-de-do at her place. This celebration of the unique culture of rural Kentucky is designed for the community to remember what they stand to lose at the hands of Black Pike and also for the community to recognize the power and position of Mags Bennett. Raylan explains the proper way to honor Mags, telling Ms. Johnson: “Get up there and lay a chunk of firewood on her still, shows respect, that you’ve come here with peaceful intent” (“Brother’s Keeper”). Mags’s role as matriarch of the Bennett clan appears to extend into the larger community. When she chastised, and ultimately poisoned, Walt McCready, it was for going outside.
In the episode “The Spoil” Mags gives an impassioned speech encouraging the community to rally against Black Pike Coal. She talks about preserving the community’s unique food, way of courting, music, and everything that makes them special. This speech seems to be the genuine rallying cry of a maternal folk hero; however, in the following episode “Brother’s Keeper” Mags reveals that instead of being a true champion for her community and way of life, she has her own personal endgame. She has bought the properties needed to get the coal off the mountain and will sell for a stake of the company “sufficient to provide for my kin for generations to come.” Her earlier concerns about maintaining the unique way of life are sacrificed for financial gain.
A Maternal Side?
Even while conducting herself as a ruthless outlaw, Mags displays a more traditionally maternal side when she interacts with Loretta. Since she never had any daughters Mags views Loretta as a chance to do things over and perhaps give Loretta a different life than was allowed for Mags. In “Brother’s Keeper” Mags tells Loretta “You’re like a dream come true for this old girl” and “things are going to be different. You are going to be proud of your old Mags.”
However, this glimpse at a maternal side doesn’t erase viewers’ awareness that Mags killed Loretta’s father and used a hammer to break her son’s hand. As reviewer Tim Surette noted: “Even when she was gently combing out the knots in her adopted daughter Loretta’s hair, I thought Mags was just as likely to slit Loretta’s throat as she was to plant a kiss on her forehead.” While Mags appears to want something different for Loretta, she puts the fourteen-year-old to work weighing weed at the Bennett store.
Loretta learns that her father is dead, not away on Bennett business as she’d been told, and believes that Coover was the killer. In the final episode of Season Two she pulls a gun on Mags, who responds: “Breaks my heart seeing you holding that gun. I wanted to keep you away from this life. I wanted to let you be a child a little longer. Wasn’t Coover who did it. It was me.” Mags shows no remorse, instead she indicates that she believes that she was acting in Loretta’s best interest by telling her “I tried to make it up to you by giving you a better life here.” This is Mags’s vision of motherhood—violence, murder, and crime are all acceptable if you can eventually get at least some of your family a better life: “Someday when you have tads of your own you’ll understand that you do what you must to protect ’em” (“Bloody Harlan”).
Black Pike
From Mags’s perspective, selling out to Black Pike was justified. She rationalized that getting out was worth everything she had done as long as she was doing it to get her family a better life. But she could only manage to save some of her family, specifically Doyle, and his sons. Mags explains this to her other son Dickie: “Black Pike is the future. Its proceeds go to your brother and his family. They are the future, not you” (“Debts and Accounts”). She’s reconciled to all that she had to do to survive but “I’ll be damned if my grandchildren are gonna live it the same way. I got Doyle’s boys a path outta this holler. Ain’t nothing that’s more important to me than that” (“Reckoning”).
At first, Mags was planning to get herself out, but she realizes that isn’t possible. “I don’t know who I was kidding. Can you see your old Mama sitting on some suburb porch cashing dividend checks? This is where I belong” (“Bloody Harlan”). Later in the episode, after she finds out that Doyle was killed, Mags decides to take her own life by drinking apple pie from a poisoned glass: “Put an end to my troubles. Get to see my boys again. Get to know the mystery.” While this choice appears consistent with her character, it also represents a loss for the viewer. Mags Bennett presented a complex and multifaceted depiction of an outlaw mother.
Encoding and Decoding
Stuart Hall’s hypothesis of encoding and decoding in his 1973 article, “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” has been helpful in understanding that viewers can engage with a TV show or advertisement on a variety of levels that are more complicated than simple and straightforward communication of information. Hall advanced a four-stage model of communication that takes into account the production, circulation, use, and reproduction of media messages:
• Production refers to the first stage where the encoding of a media message takes place, and the producer of the message usually draws upon a particular society’s dominant beliefs and values.
• Circulation refers to how individuals perceive things, whether it is in visual or written form, and so the manner in which media messages circulate influences how audience members will receive the message and put it use.
• Use refers to the decoding stage of the media message where use, consumption, and interpretation of the message occur.
• Reproduction refers to the final stage in Hall’s hypothesis where audience members have interpreted the message in their own way based on their experiences and beliefs, and will either act or not act on the message.
One important implication of Hall’s hypothesis is that the sender of information can never be sure that it will be perceived by the target audience in the way that was intended, because of this four-stage chain of discourse.
Hall’s work continues to be used and adapted by feminist TV scholars who analyze the complex process of viewers making meaning of TV messages. Feminist TV scholars have resisted simplified analysis, focusing instead on ways that television can both present problematic images and be a site of empowerment. Mags Bennett illustrates these contradictions. She’s a strong, powerful woman, over the age of fifty, who is neither thin nor traditionally beautiful, elements that serve to disrupt stereotypical good mother representations. However, Mags Bennett is not positioned as a character to emulate. She is a violent, ruthless murderer who deals in illegal drugs. While Mags clearly displays elements of the monstrous, she also has sympathetic moments and seems to adhere to a code that is consistent with her worldview.
Challenging Roles
A redefinition of motherhood from a feminist maternal perspective will include subverting and replacing dominant narratives with additional and alternative visions of mothering. Some feminists have promoted the term outlaw mothering, primarily a metaphorical revision. According to Andrea O’Riley in her 2010 book Outlaw Mothering: outlaw mothers “do not always put their children first; actively question the expectations that are placed on mothers by society; challenge mainstream parenting practices; and challenge the idea that the only emotion mothers ever feel toward their children is love.” Mags Bennett not only conforms to Riley’s description, but is also literally an outlaw.