Canary in the Coal Mine: Films That Highlight How Communities Gaslight Women

“gaslight. vb. to manipulate another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences or understanding of events. The term once referred to manipulation so extreme as to induce mental illness or to justify commitment of a gaslighted person to a psychiatric institution but is now used more generally….occasionally it is seen in clinical literature, referring, for example, to the manipulative tactics associated with antisocial personality disorder.”

-American Psychological Association

To celebrate Women’s History Month, this article is the second of three AwardsWatch articles that focus on the theme of women in film. Society’s treatment of women (and whoever has the least privilege) indicates the overall health of broader society. While women have come a long way, the twenty-first century reflects a steady erosion of progress previously gained. For example, while women can (theoretically) vote, work, and own property, they still do not get equal pay for doing the same work, no longer have the legal right to bodily autonomy, and often have the same domestic responsibilities as their antecedents without the benefit of a community to rely upon. Originating with the Patrick Hamilton play, Gaslight, which was adapted into a 1940 British film and the more popular 1944 US film starring Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, an intricate system of pipes pumped gas into households to produce light, and the light dims or increases based on how many people are using it. In the film, a husband’s furtive nocturnal activities produced this effect, which the wife noticed, but everyone dismissed her observation as the raving of a disturbed mind.

Gaslighting is a term that has grown in popularity among psychological professionals and armchair psychologists—TikTokers, self-help gurus, and ordinary people. Anecdotally, this term seems to resonate most with women to describe a relationship which purports to be mutually beneficial, not hostile, but is unequal, abusive, exploitative, and soul-killing. To avoid repercussions, the one with more perceived power betrays the trust of the other under the guise of good by destroying that person’s sense of self and demanding that the gaslit adopt the betrayer’s reality so the gaslighter can take power from the deceived party. Gaslighting does not just happen between two people but occurs within communities to groom people into accepting certain abusive behavior and encourage the manipulated person to ignore their good sense and disbelieve their authority. It is a way of enforcing entitlement without merit.

Set in the late nineteenth century, Gaslight starts with a murder of an unmarried, career woman, an opera singer, Alice Alquist, at her home in 9 Thornton Square, London, where she takes care of her niece, ward, sole heir, and possible murder witness, Paula (Bergman). There is no conspiracy, but like Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), the lead gaslighter and protagonist’s future husband, most people instruct Paula to forget her past. So when Paula falls for Gregory, she does not judge Gregory’s advice as a red flag and allows herself to forsake her memories or knowledge, the ability to protect herself from suffering the same fate of her aunt.

The people who are charged with protecting the vulnerable are the ones who put the vulnerable in danger and do not encourage people in jeopardy to possess the tools to protect themselves. Gregory only got access to Paula because Paula’s guardian, Maestro Guardi (Emil Rameau), hired him to accompany Paula on the piano. Guardi encourages her to choose love over work, but the identity of her lover remains a secret, which does not trouble Guardi. Men take care of her, and she has no adult women to guide her, so even though she is a grown woman, she is used to obeying men as she did when she was a child, which was expected in that era.

Being vulnerable should not be equated with not having prestige, talent, skills, or self-worth. If someone is taught that they need someone to become whole, which they already are, the lesson distracts them from noticing that they already have everything they need. The alleged other half could be the danger. Paula starts as a talented singer and adventurer who travels by herself to clear her head after a two-week whirlwind romance, i.e., a love bombing session, with Gregory. A train passenger and London neighbor, Bessie Thwaites (May Whitty), worries that she will not be safe if Paula travels alone, whereas the reality is that Paula is safer traveling with complete strangers. Thwaites triggers Paula’s childhood memories, so when Gregory surprises her at her destination, Paula does not register Gregory as not honoring her wishes because she is relieved to have the distraction from the horrifying homicide.

The misled person’s only flaw is not noticing that they are subordinating themselves to please anyone else. This behavior is a societal norm, not an inherent character deficiency. Paula and Gregory do not return to her home in Italy or anywhere that Paula listed, but go to London because Gregory confides in Paula, i.e., manipulates her by suggesting that he always wanted to live there. She sacrifices her psychological well-being to make his dreams come true, a choice that she will repeat, a default to obedience over self-preservation, for the duration of their relationship until the denouement. Against Paula’s wishes, who does not want to forget her aunt, Gregory will later order all the aunt’s possessions to be stuck in the cordoned-off attic so he can rummage through them in the middle of the night. Gregory never allows Paula to be alone or have associates outside of him and their employees because then, maybe Paula would think clearly about her predicament. Gregory hires Nancy Oliver (Angela Lansbury) to make sure that Paula does not go out unaccompanied. Nancy suffers from internalized misogyny and sees women as disapproving or rivals for men’s attention. If a man smiles at Paula, Gregory cross-examines her, but when he openly flirts with Nancy and trusts the servants more than her by taking their word over hers, it is considered reasonable. Paula knows that Gregory’s orders are not aligned with her desires or benefit her, but once she overcame her greatest reservation, the homicide memory, resisting was less feasible.

Before noticing the cause of the abuse, a community will side with the abuser and condemn an abused person for reacting normally, i.e., in distress. People notice Paula’s deteriorating condition but not what causes it because of misogynistic attitudes about women and systemic privileged assumptions about men, which leads people to trust Gregory and dismiss Paula. Gregory tells everyone that Paula is the problem, ill and demanding, while telling Paula that she has a mental disability and orders her to make unreasonable demands on Nancy, which only makes Nancy more resentful of Paula, her employer. Elizabeth Tompkins (Barbara Everest), the cook who is losing her ability to hear, notices Gregory’s influence, but does not act upon her observation because he is her employer and a man. She still perceives him as acting within accepted norms for men and husbands. When Paula has a reasonable emotional reaction, Gregory frames it as proof that she is unwell, but when he has violent outbursts, his flimsy excuses are accepted. He threatens to get doctors but gets no medical attention and does not treat her with genuine concern. The unspoken assumption is that husbands are expected to be harsh with their wives, allowed to have emotional outbursts and speak negatively about their spouses to people who are essentially strangers whereas women are supposed to be calm, reasonable and the perfect wife and employer.

Even when the abused possess all the positive qualities, and the offender has none other than an arbitrary status such as male or a corporation, the gaslighter is more valued than their outmaneuvered counterpart. This societal status outweighs actual positive qualities, which do not protect the double-crossed and make them a target. If one assesses Paula, she is a talented singer, owns property, and is a valued member of high society based on her family status. On a level playing field, without Paula or the community’s assumptions about acceptable behavior for men, especially husbands, Gregory has nothing in comparison to Paula. He works for a living and has no pedigree, relationships, or influence. Gregory gives her a sentimental, “cheap” brooch, then takes it back, commencing his accusations that she takes objects, forgets where they are, and then hides them. She escapes Gregory’s rebukes by accepting and echoing his assertion that she is tired and retreats to her home and bedroom. No one seems to question why Gregory needs to rebuke his wife if Paula plays hide and seek with her property. In that period, he may have become the presumptive owner of her property once Paula married Gregory.

The scammed are usually the most perceptive  in the community, like Paula, which makes them a target. Because Paula notices things that no one else does, her husband and others frame her as mad, thus demonizing an objectively positive, accurate perspective, which poses a danger to the established societal norms. Communal and individual gaslighting is about taking away someone’s natural, merit-driven, or inherited advantages over those who want to be powerful without earning it or obeying the established framework of how one rises in social standing. The police never solved her aunt’s murder, but Paula discovers clues and is on the verge of solving it, which results in Gregory speeding up his plan to make her believe that she is insane. He encourages her to speak frankly, and when she does, he alternates with rewarding then punishing her by withdrawing his warmth and reward. He seems to take pleasure in destroying her joy and ruining their time together.

In the end, it takes someone in a higher station above the gaslighter to correct the imbalance. In Gaslight, Inspector Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotton), a professional man with institutional backing, empowers Paula, “You’re not going out of your mind. You’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind…Perhaps because you know too much or because then he would have control of your property.” Let’s ignore the fact that everyone likes Paula because of her association with her aunt, not because of her independent identity. The implicit condemnation of Gaslight is that the community offers more benefit of the doubt to and through its actions, siding with a murderer over an ideal woman who is allegedly sick and annoying. Without someone who rules above the community and is willing to side with the abused, the duped person may not stand a chance.

Madness takes a double meaning in Gaslight’s denouement: crazy and angry. Paula embraces both and openly gloats at her husband’s downfall—a much-needed catharsis. She gets to have true peace over the past by catching her aunt’s murderer and recovering her sense of self, but Paula has a lot of traumatized sisters who suffer worse fates when there is no oversight of the community. In Midsommar, Dani (Florence Pugh) is like Paula without allies. Before suffering from personal tragedy, Dani struggles with mental health issues. After losing her entire family, she ends up hanging out with people who hate her, including her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), and his friends, who act like her natural grief is a burden and a sign of deeper issues. The people who like her belong to a Swedish death cult. Everyone gaslights Dani. She knows something is off, notices her fellow visitors disappearing and sees one girl flirting with her boyfriend. The dead giveaway was the ritual suicide cliff jump, but everyone reassures her to accept the community’s practices, ignore her reservations, and ingest psychedelic drugs. The gaslighting is not limited to Dani. The community is complicit when Christian steals a thesis idea from his friend Josh (William Jackson Harper). The community’s structure is innately abusive even though they make their practices sound good: they rape and murder people, abuse disabled children, and practice eugenics. When Dani gets validated in such a community, she ends up a drug-induced insane murderer with an obliterated identity.

Death cults are not just fictional, and there are real-life Paulas. In Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on a true story, Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Osage woman, cannot spend her money because the federal government required full-blooded Osage people to have a financial guardian. The government treated the Osage nation like children and wanted the majority to have access to the Osage nation’s money and would often not permit the rightful owners to spend their money, even when they needed it. The government appointed the guardian, and alternatively an Osage person could use a white friend or family member as a guardian, as Mollie did. This system creates a financial incentive for people like Mollie’s husband, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), to deliberately associate with people that they were biased against, treat people whom they despise as if they were friends or family, and then kill them. In Gaslight, director George Cukor rejected any notion that Gregory loved Paula and had that detail removed from the script, whereas co-writer Eric Roth and director and co-writer Martin Scorsese frame Mollie and Ernest’s marriage into a love story. Even filmmakers do not interrogate a murderer’s definition of love. Ernest rationalizes that by poisoning his wife, he is not killing the mother of his children, just silencing her objections so he and his biological family can kill their Osage family and friends in peace. The people who are supposed to be protectors are murderers and project their savage traits on the people whom they are exploiting. It takes a team of law enforcement from DC to intervene and a court to stop the criminal conspiracy, which would not have happened if Mollie’s money and persistence were not able to withstand the weight of personal tragedies and attacks on her body.

When systems and communities are accustomed to harming women and other people who are perceived as those who should not have a higher status but do, such through money or property, this behavior affects everyone, not just women. Films like A Civil Action, Dark Waters, and Erin Brockovich depict how corporations, who are state-authorized people, gaslight their neighbors into believing that anything except the improperly used chemicals cause a rash of neighborhood cancer diagnoses, which is a financial death sentence in a land without medical insurance. The legal system puts the burden of proof on the misled populace to prove otherwise—common sense is not a legal principle.

Sometimes, the antidote to a gaslit community is a woman who is comfortable with being angry or inappropriate, the key psychological weapon of a gaslighter. Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is emotional and driven, a profane nonconformist, and intelligent. She also refuses to defer to anyone she perceives as wrong regardless of their societal status, especially if they act as if they are superior to her. She notices medical records in real estate files, which she questions and is undeterred when her questions elicit rebukes of not understanding how to do her job. Erin screams profanities and tells it like it is when people try to act as if they are helping her but are harming her. She speaks to Donna (Marg Helgenberger), a person who believed the company’s claim that the chemical exposure was not bad and thought that the company’s offer to pay her family’s medical bills and buy her house were unrelated. Even with Erin enlisting her former lawyer, they do not have enough juice to stop the injustice. Erin sorrowfully says, “Basically, it all comes down to what this one judge decides.” A judge is only as good as the process who appoints them and the people in charge of that process. In Erin Brockovich, that judge rules in their favor, and it does not hurt that the judge lives near the affected community.

Another key member to stop toxic communities is former unwitting accomplices stepping forward to stop the wrongdoing. Elizabeth in Gaslight and Charles Embry (Tracey Walter) in Erin Brockovich are willing to stop bolstering the perpetrators and switch sides to those abused regardless of how it affects them personally. Embry, a former employee of the polluting company, decides to give Erin documents to support the plaintiffs. They transform from accomplices into witnesses once an official figure intervenes. Elizabeth could lose her job. Embry could be sued. Imagine if their sense of justice was triggered earlier when their suspicion was piqued.

It is possible to stop perpetuating communities that exhibit antisocial disordered behavior, which is what gaslighting is. If you feel gaslit, pat yourself on the back. You may be a unique, natural leader, insightful, or a steward of great resources, even if that resource is just historical, eyewitness knowledge. Abusers are people who seem trustworthy. Be wary of giving endorsed blank checks of confidence if actions are not aligned with stated intentions or seem like natural byproducts of healthy associations. Sometimes, within the span of the same day, each person can be allied with entitled, abusive power or someone in danger. Everyone carries a certain amount of sway, from the housekeeper to the judge, and should strive to intervene so communities can be rehabilitated, relationships healed, and wrongdoers corrected instead of accepted.

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Sarah Vincent

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