teardrops -

what winter's bone says about masculine heroism

In Debra Grant’s Winter’s Bone, the character of Teardrop - played by one of my favorite actors, John Hawkes - is a fresh take on the macho Hollywood hero. In some ways he suits the archetype – he could be compared to the stoic rangers in old Westerns. But there’s genuine complexity to his character, and an emotional tangibility that separates him from the familiar hero. What allowed for a character like him is the society the film was about, a class of people that hasn’t been explored much in films before. The “class” I’m talking about is the backwoods people of Southern states such as Georgia or Missouri. Winter’s Bone is a film focused on the gritty realism under the garnish that is romanticized Americana. It’s only in a film like Winter’s Bone that a character like Teardrop can be written; he’s hard in all the ways you don’t want him to be, and softened in ways you can’t understand. In that sense, he’s like my own father. He’s also like many other real people that are scarcely represented in film. Anyone who’s been exposed to the darker corners of contemporary society knows a Teardrop.

On the surface, Teardrop tends to appear unaffected, carrying himself with an I-just-don’t-give-a-damn sort of composure. The crust is what makes him dangerous. It’s impossible to tell when he’s going to be driven over the point where he starts lashing out. We see it when he’s first introduced. Throughout the scene Ree tries to guilt Teardrop into helping her find her father; his brother. It is as though allows himself to get more and more affected by Ree that eventually he needs to react so that she doesn’t change his mind. So, he grabs her by the hair and forces her back in her chair and whispers, “No”. Another time we see Teardrop react violently to something is when he’s asking the men outside the bar for information regarding his brother. They begin to threaten him explicitly. So Teardrop takes the axe from the back of his truck and smashes the windshield of one of the men. They shout at him but he doesn’t give them another look as he climbs back into his truck and drives away. From these scenes we can gather that Teardrop is something of a badass, and not necessarily in the good way – he has a habit of treating women roughly, and he snorts meth like it’s a sinus relief spray.

Though Teardrop has that thorny exterior, Winter’s Bone is a deeply intimate film, and we are occasionally given fleeting looks into his sensitivity. The first clue we’re given is his name, which contrasts the reputation it carries around the community. It’s never explained in the film what significance his name has, but it’s no doubt referring to the “X” tattoo he has under his left eye, which could mean any number of things. Tattoos in the shape of a teardrop originated in the Chicano gangs of California. They can mean either that the bearer has killed as killed somebody, or that they’ve lost someone close to them. Either of these possibilities could relate to Teardrop, but I don’t think the character runs around with any Chicano boys. Symbolically, Teardrop’s tattoo represents the suffering that a man with a reputation like his must go through in order to keep everything inside.

Teardrop is lonely in the world he occupies. His toughness, and the toughness of the other men in his life keep him alienated. This could explain why he ends up helping Ree in her search. He begins showing her a warmth that contradicts the way he treats her earlier on in the film. Teardrop wishes, in his state of isolation, for the simpler times, when Meth was not the issue, and it was him and his brother. In Ree’s younger siblings, he sees himself at their age, the most innocent version of himself. At the end of the film, he brings them chicks to raise, wrapped delicately in cloth. He smiles as he plays his brother’s banjo clumsily, cigarette in his mouth, and says to the children, “I was never good like your daddy”. His tenderness is more present in this scene than at any other point in the film; these moments before he tells Ree he knows who killed his brother. When she tries to give him the banjo, he tells her to keep it at the house for him, perhaps meaning that he intends to be around there more often.

My dad is an example of how Teardrop exists in society, and how Teardrop is, in a way, one of the major universal truths stated by the film. There are people like Teardrop everywhere, who have a complexity to them that is rarely conveyed in film at the same level of success as it is Winter’s Bone. My dad is a Teardrop. He spent the larger half of his life as a heroin addict, and after being clean for almost ten years, the weathering his face gained from years of abuse has not eased. It will only deepen now. Like Teardrop, he has a profound warmth and sensitivity to humankind (he’s a writer), but he’s tortured by the reputation he still has as a man who ignores caution and who wins fights.

When I was younger, and he was still battling his addictions, I was spending a Sunday afternoon with him as we did bi-weekly. On a walk to the neighborhood movie store, he ran into someone he knew. The conversation wasn’t friendly, and the other man started to yell and spit. I watched my dad stand toe to toe with this man while minutes passed. I remember the way he kept his voice low the entire time, and he never looked away from the man. He never looked at the ground or even stopped looking him in the eyes. Eventually, my dad started taking off the ring on his finger, and the man knew what that meant. He took some steps back, and in a moment was on his way. My dad smiled reassuringly at me, and we kept walking. About halfway down the next block, I looked up at him and saw that he was crying. I pretended not to notice.

Winter’s Bone places us in a grey world of grit and realism. Because the world captured is so full of truth, the characters can be too. Teardrop is both terrifying and touching, and this is the conflict that tortures him. He isolates himself with toughness and violence, while his sensitivity makes this state particularly lonely for him. Teardrop is in essence an honest variation on the stoic heroes of old Hollywood and new. Anyone who’s seen the world in this truthful, unforgiving light can say that they know a Teardrop. Reality is never too far off.