The Undoing of the “Undoing”
I am not here to talk about the things I like about the “Undoing”, which are many, I am here to point out one of the series’ major flaws, in my opinion, that is how they marginalized the character of Elena Alves and so my question is did the “Undoing” white privileged Elena? For your consideration, the review is loaded with spoilers.
If you have watched the series, you would know that Elena is the third component of this central triangle formed by Jonathan, a prestigious paediatric oncologist (very rich), his wife Grace, a therapist (even more rich) and Elena Alves, a mom of two and a sculpturer from a humble neighbourhood (practically poor). After helping cure her son from cancer, Jonathan starts a sexual relationship with Elena, impregnates her and later she gives birth to a girl, their daughter. Things get complicated, as they may, and he gets her son a scholarship to study at the same lavish school where his son studies, later she becomes part of the school moms´ group and gets closer to Grace, kissing her at one point. Eventually, after sensing that Elena is getting closer to his own family and by her own confession wants to do so, in a heated confrontation, Jonathan savagely kills her and then flees. The series evolves around proving his innocence or culpability, while we as spectators are swayed this way and the other with multiple revelations and contradictory clues.
You might be tempted to think that Elena Alves is at the centre of this, that she would have a considerable weight in the composition of the story. But she does not. She only appears alive in the first episode, in a couple of scenes, and then we learn of her murder. All that we know about her from her brief appearances is that she likes to walk naked in locker rooms in fancy gyms and would probably flash you with her neatly trimmed pubic hair, or that she gets aggressive while breastfeeding her child, in this case almost shoving her naked boob and femininity in your face, especially if you were a wealthy lady, mostly white, organizing a fundraising event through an auction.
Here comes the “Undoing’s” most lamentable missed opportunity, in my opinion. In a drama where almost, every single character is extremely versed in psychology, in a script that does not shy away from detailing motivations and impulses, mostly for its white upper-society characters: Jonathan, Grace and her father …. Yet we are utterly kept in the dark when it comes to Elena Alves. It seems the storytellers of this show have decided that Elena does not get to have a backstory, no closer look at her struggles, the origin of her obsessiveness, her love story with her husband, how and why she became an artist, what kind of artist/sculpturer is she? How is she balancing her artistic side with being a mother of two, etc.
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Elena´s character was staged to appear as a ghost, as a series of shocking flashbacks (mostly achieved by close-ups at her face, never at her movements (which would have rendered her more human maybe). After her few appearances while alive, she is reduced to just another butchered pretty face in a murder scene. The heavy emphasis on her beauty, not her words, her looks mostly, not her actions, is unescapable, here I quote Eve Gerber in her article, “The Dangerous Blind Spot of The Undoing” in The Atlantic, Gerber says: “But before we get to see the murder, we get to ogle Elena. In the first episode, Elena bares a single breast to feed her infant daughter; we view the suckling from six angles for more than 20 seconds. Then Elena approaches Grace in a luxe gym locker room. We see Elena fully nude, front and back, for about 30 seconds… The storytellers pace this series like a striptease. By the time we get the full picture of Elena’s murder, in the finale, we’ve seen flashes of her slaughter at least nine times. The big reveal starts with sex”.
The story ghosted Elena by turning her character into a stereotype, a heap of clichés: the hot young Latina, the hippie free-spirited artist, the jealous competitive lower-class other woman, the obsessive possessive mistress, and finally, the victim.
The series chooses to solely focus on Jonathan and Grace, exploring every inch of their aspirations, fears, anxieties, connection, and falling out. Soon Grace turns into the leading female protagonist, and the centre of the story, drawing all the attention of the plot towards her; it is now her struggle, as a lover, her struggle as a mother, and as a human being to unravel the monster, while Elena is turned into a mere evidence in the persecution, a collateral damage with a pretty face. When killing her, in order to kill her, Jonathan would have had to dehumanize her, and I argue that the plot did something very similar to her character.
This is how the show could have been different, a show worthy of its historical role in the #Metoo era: if you want to be fair to a female character, you give her a story, a background story, an origin story, a screen time without her being fetishized or abused; you give her character a character arc and a unique voice, you create a way into her inner thoughts and struggles, you give her the chance to argue back, to lay down her perspective and to claim her righteous right to be comprehended, loved and ultimately forgiven.
To me, it is unnerving how the “Undoing” has silenced Elena Alves, fetishized her, ghosted her, then smashed her head into pieces, ironically, with her own sculpting hammer.
