Shades of Mommie Dearest: Why TV Can’t Get Enough of the Killer Cheerleader Mom

Mothers and motherhood have long occupied a vexed place in the American imagination, in part because while social norms encourage mothers to love their children unconditionally, culture also consistently warns them against taking those feelings too far.

We seem to have a particular fascination with the overbearing or overindulgent mother, whether it’s Joan Crawford’s deranged and campy disciplinarian in Mommie Dearest (who set the standard for monstrous motherhood), Cersei Lannister’s pampering of her monstrous son Joffrey in Game of Thrones, Adora Crellin’s (literally) poisonous nurturing in HBO’s Sharp Objects, or Elena Richardson’s willful refusal to see her daughter’s failings in Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere.

Then there’s the murderous mother who, obsessed with her children’s success, takes deadly action to ensure that their dreams come true, a figure poised to play a central role this weekend in Lifetime’s “Fear the Cheer” event, the network’s third annual Shark Week-styled slate of TV films focused on the darker, deadlier side of the effervescent world of cheerleading.

Airing this Saturday, Killer Cheer Mom focuses on Riley, a young woman who comes to a new town with her father and stepmother and, as one does, joins the cheerleading squad. Things seem to be going well for her, but when bad things keep happening to her fellow cheerleaders, she begins to suspect that her stepmother might be taking drastic steps to ensure her success.

Killer Cheer Mom’s murderous stepmother is in good company, both in the world of popular culture and in real life. Wanda Holloway, the infamous Texas woman who hired a man to kill her daughter’s main cheerleading rival, was given the made-for-TV movie treatment not once but twice, first in HBO’s The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (starring Holly Hunter as the mother) and then in ABC’s Willing to Kill: The Wanda Holloway Story (with Lesley-Ann Warren).

The murderous mother figure gives us an opportunity to indulge in the darker side of the maternal instinct, to rebel against the strictures that so often govern how mothers are supposed to behave. Of course mothers aren’t supposed to murder on behalf of their children, no matter how intense their devotion to them might be, but movies like Killer Cheer Mom engender a peculiar rush of adrenaline that comes from throwing off the demands that society places on mothers (and women in general), showing how pleasurable such rebellion can be.

It's worth pointing out that not all of the mothers in this year’s “Fear the Cheer” slate are hellbent on murdering their daughters’ rivals. The description for Sunday night’s Cheer for Your Life, for example, notes that when cheerleader Cindy disappears, “her mother will have to race time in order to save Cindy from becoming the next dead body.” Taken together, Killer Cheer Mom and Cheer for Your Life reveal how deeply conflicted American society and culture remain about motherhood. On the one hand, mothers are still seen as the passionate and fierce protectors of their children, willing to go to any length to save them from harm. On the other hand, they are also prone to letting that very protective nature spiral out of control, with deadly results. These two belief systems remain thoroughly intertwined, inseparable from the other.

Lifetime’s “Fear the Cheer” allows viewers to indulge in all sorts of wicked behavior, packaged in a cartoonish “lowbrow” aesthetic. At the same time, since so many of these movies are ultimately morality tales — in which the “good girl” cheerleader triumphs over her “bad girl” (or “bad mom”) rival — they reassure viewers that some form of justice will ultimately prevail. In so doing, these movies allow us to have it both ways, to inhabit the role of both the persecuted victim and the sadistic persecutor. Shades of Mommie Dearest, indeed.

Killer Cheer Mom premieres on Lifetime Saturday August 28th at 8:00 PM ET, while Cheer For Your Life bows Sunday the 29th at 10:00 PM.

Dr. Thomas J. West III is a freelance writer and co-host of the Queens of the B's podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @tjwest3.