Author: Judy Berman / Source: New York Times
Episode 5: ‘Closer’
There is no Calhoun Day in the Gillian Flynn novel on which “Sharp Objects” is based. And that probably explains why “Closer,” the fifth episode of the mini-series, is so much more cinematic than everything that came before it.
Previous episodes — with their short, tense scenes, their attention to detail and their long flashbacks — had a literary feel. But “Closer” does something only a visual medium can do: It gives a panoramic view of the town that is, as much as the murder mystery, the show’s central subject. Calhoun Day is a mirror held up to Wind Gap.The reflection it reveals is a hellscape straight out of Hieronymus Bosch. It was already clear that sexualized violence permeated the town’s subconscious, from the End Zone to the hunting shed decorated with hard-core pornography and bloody animal parts. Now we know that it is inscribed in the origin story Wind Gap cherishes enough to keep reliving.
Willis is the episode’s audience surrogate, drifting uncomfortably through the Crellins’ barbecue. It’s Camille who gives him the holiday’s back story: “Zeke Calhoun, our founding pedophile, he fought for the South,” she deadpans. “And his child bride, Millie Calhoun — she was my great-great-great-grand-victim or something — she was from a Union family.” But when Union soldiers came looking for Zeke, Millie refused to betray him. “It’s how she resists that people in this town just love,” Camille tells Willis. “The Union soldiers, they tied her to a tree, did horrible things to her — violations. But Millie never said a word.” The fact that she was pregnant at the time, and the attack induced a miscarriage, only heightens the legend’s melodramatic appeal.
“And this is a holiday?” Willis sputters, incredulous. Camille’s reply is a bit on-the-nose, but that doesn’t make it any less effective: “We don’t have a lot of happy stories around here,” she says.
The Calhoun Day pageant illustrates how appealing the image of a beautiful young girl stoically withstanding rape to protect her husband — and, by proxy, the Confederacy — remains to the people of Wind Gap. Despite Amma’s futile attempts to rewrite Millie’s story from a feminist perspective, the pageant was always going to reaffirm traditional gender roles: The men commit various acts of violence; the women silently endure them.
When the town’s adult men giggle at the grotesque spectacle of three teenage boys pretending to rape Amma, it’s more disturbing than any other moment on the show so far. (Meanwhile, a dose of what appears to be MDMA, shortly before the performance, allows Amma to escape into a private fantasy in which Millie enjoys the assault.)
Wind Gap has strange ideas about victimhood, to say the least, and misogyny isn’t the only shameful tradition at the root of them. “Sharp Objects” didn’t explicitly engage with current American politics in its first four episodes, and you got the sense that political opinions were considered impolite conversation in the Crellins’ circle. But, without mentioning the alt-right or the events of Charlottesville, which happened a year ago next week, “Closer” becomes an inquiry into the psychology of “Confederate pride” and white supremacy.
Surrounded by Confederate flags, and by prominent members of Wind Gap society who are dressed in the gray coats of Confederate soldiers (not to mention less prominent members of Wind Gap society dressed in Confederate-flag suspenders and muscle tees), Willis is rightly disturbed. He assumes that Calhoun Day is a…
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