White Oleander Reality Check

Armed with buttered popcorn and supersized sodas, four young women went to the movies to see if Hollywood could get foster care right. They are writers for Foster Care Youth United (FCYU), the magazine written by and for teens in foster care that I edit. They viewed White Oleander, the current film chronicling the odyssey of teenaged Astrid [Alison Lohman] through Los Angeles’ child welfare system, and her conflicted relationship with her incarcerated mother Ingrid [Michelle Pfeiffer].

All of the FCYU writers had themselves done time in care—Princess Carr and Christine McKenna recently “aged out” of the system after living in a string of group homes and foster homes; Shannel Walker lives in kinship care, with her grandmother; Anne Ueland signed herself out of foster care this year, and now lives in a building for former foster youth having difficulty living independently.

Some had seen trailers of the movie and worried that Michelle Pfeiffer looked a bit too glamorous behind bars and Alison Lohman too wholesome to capture the gritty truths of growing up in the system. But in the end, the four young women dubbed the movie “real” and “traumatic.” They gave it eight thumbs up, but not without reservations. Here’s what they had to say:

Shannel: The movie shows that foster care’s not easy, that it’s not like, ‘Oh, you’re going to a foster home where they’ll love and adore you.’ What happens in the movie really is what happens. You get beat down. The movie doesn’t sugar coat nothing. It’s like what we do here—we write about what happens in foster care—but it’s on film.

Anne: I could relate to it a lot, how Astrid had to move all over the place to different environments with different people, trying to be brave about it.

Christine: She was a chameleon. With every foster home she put on a new skin. That was totally me in group homes and foster homes. I would adapt to what was around me. I wasn’t my own person. I was what everyone around me was. But I liked the book better. The book talked more about Astrid’s foster care experience and I didn’t like that the movie was more about the mother-daughter relationship. Also, there were some stereotypes in the movie, like every foster placement she was in had big issues. There are good foster homes and there are good group homes out there.

Princess: The movie is just skimming the surface, but it shows how a lot of foster kids don’t do anything to deserve to be where they are, that their parents’ actions put them there. In the movie, Astrid’s mother went out and killed some man and wound up in jail for 35 years. Astrid had hell from that time on and it wasn’t her fault. So I would recommend the movie to someone who has a stereotype of what foster care is like and who foster kids are, or to someone who works in the child welfare business. Maybe then they could understand foster care better.

Shannel: It would show them to not just look at what a kid is doing, but look at what happened that caused her to be that way.

Princess: Because all children are products of their environments. As much as we wish that it wasn’t like that, as much as we want to get away from our past—foster care—we will always have some kind of hang up because of it. I know I will. I’m an adult now, I’m no longer a child, but it still hurts.

Christine: And even when you’re an adult you’re still looking for someone to take care of you.

Princess: Exactly. I loved the point of the movie where the mother says to Astrid, “Stop attaching yourself to anyone who shows you a little bit of affection.” And that is true. If you have not been loved or properly loved, anybody who tells you, “Oh, you know, you’re cute, you’re darling”—anybody!—you’re going to want to be with them. You don’t know what real love is.

Some cases you might luck out and find someone who generally loves you, or you might fall back on the same situation you came out of, and end up with abusive love. In the movie, Astrid’s mom was a damn psycho. Astrid knew that, and she fell into that again with Star, the first foster mother. Star was a psycho too.

Shannel: Yes. Michelle Pfeiffer [Astrid’s mother] was real crazy.

Princess: Astrid’s mother probably didn’t know what it was to get love either. She said near the end of the movie that she felt like throwing Astrid against the wall when she was little. That was the most honest thing she said.

If you go to a mother-child program, you’ll see some of that. Some of these young girls feel just that way. They can’t deal with a baby constantly calling them, depending on them. They’re just babies themselves.

Christine: First Astrid’s mother was really distant toward Astrid, and their relationship was all about art, then when Astrid broke away from her, she suddenly got possessive and said, “You’re mine. Don’t ever forget you’re mine.”

When I was in foster care, my mother signed away her parental rights to me. But she still held this power over me. That’s why Astrid reminds me so much of me—you’re trying to be good—and then your Mom says one thing and it cuts you down.

Shannel: But that last foster home Astrid was in gave her some balls. For some reason it gave Astrid courage to ask her mother about her past. Before everything was her mother. But when she moved in with that Russian lady, she looked at reality. She looked at her mother and said, “Can I have my life back now? You did everything you could for me, but can I have my life back?” That’s all Astrid wanted was to know her past and to have her life back.

Princess: The Russian lady was in some ways a terrible foster parent. She drank and partied and smoked. But that foster parent told Astrid what was totally common sense and what no other foster mother had told her before: that you can’t go back to what you had been, you can’t go back into the past. All you have now is yourself and your future. Your mother is not coming back. You’re never going to be 12 again, you’re not going to be in the house with your mother, sitting on the roof, you’re not going to be Mommy’s little girl anymore.
The mother owned Astrid through the whole movie. But she gave her back at the end. She let her go. And that was really sweet, that was really good. Her mom came through in the end, unlike some of our moms, who haven’t yet. I’m still waiting for mine.

Resources:

• Foster Care Youth
• White Oleander trailer

Kendra Hurley is co-editor of Foster Care Youth United, a national magazine written by and for teenagers in foster care, which is published by Youth Communication.