{"id":3855,"date":"2016-01-04T19:51:43","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T02:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3855"},"modified":"2016-01-04T19:51:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T02:51:43","slug":"saint-joy-the-agony-of-a-good-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/04\/saint-joy-the-agony-of-a-good-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Saint Joy: the Agony of a Good Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jennifer<\/a>
\nThe commercials for JOY<\/a>, created by and starring the spectacular crew\u00a0from Silver Linings Playbook <\/a>make the film look like a comedy, but that’s not what it is. \u00a0It’s a glum story about a much put-upon young woman with a good idea and a family almost as selfish as the siblings in Transparent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nobody in her overflowing household can take care of herself, or anyone else. She, along\u00a0with her divorced parents, ex-husband, grandmother and two children share a tiny house with a big mortgage. \u00a0 Each of them depends upon Joy for everything, \u00a0not just financial support but also plumbing\u00a0repairs,\u00a0accounting for the family business — and dinner.<\/p>\n

She’s sacrificed\u00a0what we have learned are her great engineering and creative potential as well as her crack at going to college to stay home and help her ridiculously self-occupied and soap opera-obsessed mother deal with her divorce. \u00a0Everything sucks.<\/p>\n

She’s always there – to pull up a couple of boards and stop a leak in the pipes, pack lunches, cook dinners, make money, raise the children, act as her mother’s therapist, her ex-husband’s landlord (for free)\u00a0and\u00a0her father’s refuge (also for free) when his second wife throws him out.<\/p>\n

At the same time, she manages to invent “the Miracle Mop” – a truly ingenious product that she knows other women will want because she<\/em> could sure use it at home when she’s cleaning the bathroom floors. \u00a0(Did I mention that she also does all the cleaning?)<\/p>\n

The film is the story of her victory over these enormous odds, even when her father sells her out to please his rich girlfriend.<\/p>\n

When we walked out of the theater, I was angry — trembling. \u00a0It took a while to figure out why. \u00a0The film closes with a description of\u00a0all that happened to Joy after we left: big house, great business, loyal friends, generosity with aspiring entrepreneurs she meets. \u00a0It then goes on the tell us how this virtuous, long-suffering woman, as she always had, continued to love and support her family — faithless father, feckless sister and hangers-on despite the fact that they even\u00a0tried to sue her to steal her company. \u00a0<\/em>As far as we know, except for her ever-loyal ex-husband, her best friend and supporter and her kids no one related to her in biology or spirit was worthy of her kindness.<\/p>\n

Forgiveness and love are important – and the fact that she “continued to love” this grotesque\u00a0crew is understandable. \u00a0What\u00a0the narrator\u00a0describes, though, is the classic “good girl” doing everything\u00a0she is supposed to\u00a0do no matter what. \u00a0She may have\u00a0had the strength to build her dream and fight for her vision, but she couldn’t ever say “‘Enough’ – go take care of yourselves you blood suckers” to those who betrayed her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The commercials for JOY, created by and starring the spectacular crew\u00a0from Silver Linings Playbook make the film look like a comedy, but that’s not what it is. \u00a0It’s a glum story about a much put-upon young woman with a good idea and a family almost as selfish as the siblings in Transparent. Nobody in her … Continue reading Saint Joy: the Agony of a Good Girl<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,42,28,2889,7],"tags":[3673,562,3674,3675,3671,3670,3679,3676,3678,3677,3672],"class_list":["post-3855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-family","category-film","category-grandparents-2","category-life","tag-bradley-cooper","tag-charlie-rose","tag-david-o-russell","tag-isabella-rossellini","tag-jennifer-lawrence","tag-joy","tag-joy-mangano","tag-miracle-mop","tag-patent","tag-qvc","tag-robert-deniro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-10b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3855"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3865,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions\/3865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}