The Blanchard Family/Lifetime
The three C's of current TV documentaries are celebrity, crime and cults, and the new Lifetime docuseries “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” ticks off the first two with ruthless, precise efficiency. The subject, a young woman who arranged the murder of her deranged, abusive mother in 2015, has become a media sensation, the subject of a previous dramatic miniseries (Hulu's The Act, from 2019) and now a TikTok sensation on the verge of her Release stands own memoirs. The public appetite for such material cannot be underestimated, which includes another popular ingredient, the monstrous family member (see also ID's two recent Natalia Grace documentaries and HBO's relatively tasteful Great Photo, Lovely Life ).
People seem to love a type of Gypsy, a young woman from Louisiana with a high-pitched voice and seemingly guileless personality. On the eve of her parole hearing, she sits in front of the filmmakers in her prison khakis, which, as we're told ad infinitum over the course of five episodes, she really hopes goes well, and tells the sordid story of her late mother. Dee Dee Blanchard, a suffocating woman who allegedly handcuffed Gypsy to a bed for two weeks and had her daughter's legal age falsely and officially changed to make Gypsy and everyone else believe she was four years younger (more nuance by Natalia Grace, whose adoptive parents did this). her legal date of birth has been adjusted upwards, not downwards).
But wait, there's more. Dee Dee Blanchard appears to have suffered from a mental disorder called Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which a parent or other caregiver seeks medical care by inducing or feigning signs or symptoms of illness in a child. As Gypsy was growing up, her mother apparently made up stories about leukemia, muscular dystrophy, and seizure disorders, among other things. Dee Dee was involved in financial frauds involving Habitat for Humanity, Make-A-Wish and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Gypsy was their meal ticket. But she was more than that. She was a means of ultimate control – a lifelong subject, often confined to a wheelchair under false pretenses, dressed in princess costumes and tiaras, and essentially transformed into a perpetual little girl. Gypsy also claims she was sexually molested by her grandfather, whose lukewarm denials on camera do him no favors.
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Captured in reams of vintage stills—many photos and re-enactments are needed to fill six episodes—Gypsy sports a beaming smile that suggests both nervous terror and joy. When she speaks on camera from prison (she also took part in a series of telephone interviews in prison), she looks like a completely different person, someone who has eaten something – he often went hungry in his childhood – and is in his skin feels pretty good. She points out the key irony of the series: through prison, she found a previously unknown level of freedom. Without downplaying the fact that murder is murder and is never a good thing, even if you convince your online friend Nicholas Godejohn to do it – “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and all that – the filmmakers make it pretty easy to understand why Gypsy has captured the public imagination. She even married in prison, to a man who doesn't seem like a psychopath; The series responds to this development with sympathy and good humor.
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Gypsy Rose and Dee Dee Blanchard The Blanchard Family/Lifetime
It's remarkable and disturbing how easily Gypsy seems to have fallen through the cracks, especially in the medical profession. “I would say I'm sorry for letting you down,” her former pediatrician says when asked what he would say to her now. The series makes clear that Dee Dee Blanchard was a master manipulator of people and systems. This all makes it easier to root for Gypsy.
However, there is also a strong current of schadenfreude and emotional masochism when watching The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, especially in the wake of like-minded documentaries and series. We can rant and shudder at each shocking revelation and feel relieved that at least our families didn't have it so bad. It's hard to blame her for capitalizing on her story; It is her story, after all. We're just the voyeurs who keep eating it up. This part could form the public's confession. We like trauma when it doesn't come from us and when it comes from the safe distance of our screens.