With the latest addition to the pile of Alfred Hitchcock remakes being Rebecca, one can’t help but study with more double take curiosity the utterly insane psychosis of the film’s auxiliary antagonist, Mrs. Danvers (played by Judith Anderson and Kristin Scott Thomas, respectively). A forever memorable character for her unwavering allegiance to the dead Mistress of the House, Rebecca de Winter, a viewer can only be reminded in the present of just how much her absurd lengths of loyalty to a sociopathic madwoman, as well as her unbridled contempt for a new “ruler” of the casa, echo those still illustrating and touting unmitigated fealty to the “man” who has flagrantly lost the 2020 election, one Donald Trump.
The Joe Biden/“president-elect” figure is, in this case, naturally the second Mrs. de Winter, who finds herself icily received at the decadent property known as Manderley (the symbolic White House). Seeing as how Mrs. Danvers runs the household and has been ever since Mrs. de Winter “left” (a.k.a. drowned… the way Trump is about to be in post-president era lawsuits), her influence and opinion greatly shape the mood of the others, not to mention the overall vibe of the palatial residence. Yet since her commitment remains overtly to preserving the memory and phantasmal essence of Rebecca, the second Mrs. de Winter finds it rather difficult to perform her duties as the wife of a highly respected aristocrat, Maxim de Winter. Maxim, in this scenario, represents the public, having chosen very clearly and of his own free will a new bride to reign supreme over the lands of Manderley.
Mrs. Danvers categorically rejects this notion, seeing fit to undermine the second Mrs. de Winter at every turn. If it sounds like a familiar plot (and one that’s about to be all the more familiar when any of Trump’s remaining cronies still linger during Biden’s presidency), that’s because every Republican still displaying the “required loyalty” to Trump that will sustain their job until January is very reminiscent of employing the Danvers approach.
From Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “all-absorbing asswipe” Rudy Giuliani, the bloc of goons still faithful to Trump might exhibit all the classic Danvers signs, but they will never be as nuanced or shrewd. Nor do their motives in staying devoted to Trump have anything to do with something like sentimentality. Unless we’re counting the nostalgia for a time when old white men could reign freely without interception from an increasingly clamoring public. Such audacity was never known in the heyday of these “politicians.”
Their connection to Trump has nothing to do with nurturing him or watching him grow, so much as a faithfulness to the cause of patriarchy-based white supremacy (oh yeah, and environmentally decimating business interests). In some sense, Mrs. Danvers bore a similar allegiance to the antiquated values represented by Rebecca. She was beautiful, poised and born into a prominent position in life. The second Mrs. de Winter, in contrast, is unpolished, from the lower class and utterly plain and ordinary. Her manners are nil, her gracelessness unvarnished. Granted, no one will ever be as unvarnished in gracelessness as the Orange One. It sickens Danvers to see someone this “unfit” to take over the mansion Rebecca held (and that she holds) so dearly.
Thus, in the end, Mrs. Danvers–the most steadfast of servants to her original master–can see no alternative but to burn the motherfucker to the ground rather than watch the second Mrs. de Winter thrive in it with Maxim, her version of the American public. It would be too painful to endure such “unworthiness” permeating the structure. Indeed, this is precisely the form of delusion that could lead to the White House being burned down pretty soon.
