I was alive in the 60s and I remember the Mamas and the Papas, so I guess it’s time for me to weigh in on the Mackenzie Phillips thing
Everybody else is doing it. So here goes:
The story is, of course, nauseating. It’s so distressing that I find it difficult to even focus on the details; the mind skips ahead nervously, trying not to engage. As for whether it’s true, everything I’ve heard about John Phillips tells me that he was pretty much capable of anything. Dude was out of control. Besides, I’m overwhelmingly inclined to believe rape and incest survivors anyway.
One thing that’s really bugging me is Michelle Phillips’ reaction. I like and admire Michelle, and if you read this Vanity Fair profile, you’ll understand why. She’s a strong, compassionate, self-aware, level-headed woman. And her best friend in girlhood, Tamar Hodel, was the victim of father-daughter incest:
Tamar’s sophistication had a grotesque basis. In her father’s home—where she had often “uncomfortably” posed nude, she recalls, for “dirty-old-man” Man Ray and had once wriggled free from a predatory John Huston—George Hodel had committed incest with her. “When I was 11, my father taught me to perform oral sex on him. I was terrified, I was gagging, and I was embarrassed that I had ‘failed’ him,” Tamar says, telling her version of her long-misreported adolescence. George plied her with erotic books, grooming her for what he touted as their transcendent union. (Tamar says that she told her mother what George had done, and that, when confronted, George denied it.) He had intercourse with Tamar when she was 14. To the girl’s horror, she became pregnant; to her greater horror, she says, “my father wanted me to have his baby.” After a friend took her to get an abortion, an angry George—jealous, Tamar says, of some boys who’d come to see her—struck her on the head with his pistol. Her stepmother, Dorero (who was John Huston’s ex-wife), rushed her into hiding.
Michelle knew all this about Tamar, whom she practically idolized. She’s not someone who could fool herself into thinking incest doesn’t happen.
So her reaction to Mackenzie’s story is troubling to me. Is she in denial? Is she just finding it impossible to believe that the man she married was capable of something this heinous? Is Mackenzie’s history such that it’s natural for Michelle to be skeptical of anything her stepdaughter says?
The other aspect of this thing that keeps pinging me is the nature of our reaction to incest. The taboo is so strong that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could not be repulsed by father-daughter sex. I swore off P.D. James after her incest obsession ruined one too many murder mysteries.
Which is why it’s all the more amazing to come across societies with a different point of view. The 18th and 19th dynasties of ancient Egypt, for example. Several pharaohs married their daughters and had children by them: Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, Ramesses II. Nor were these girls just harem-children who barely knew their fathers. Akhenaten’s daughters, for example, were his children by Nefertiti and were consistently depicted in royal iconography as part of the central family group: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their little girls. Then when the little girls got big enough, Dad married them. The mind boggles.
Okay, I feel kind of sick now.
29 Responses to “I was alive in the 60s and I remember the Mamas and the Papas, so I guess it’s time for me to weigh in on the Mackenzie Phillips thing”
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Lance says:
I felt the same revulsion when woody allen pulled the same crap with his adopted daughter. Men don’t honor boundaries. I believe this is why societies where women and children live separately from men is a healthier and safer option for women and their offspring.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:51 pm EST -
Michele Braa-Heidner says:
I totally agree Lance, the nuclear family was supposed to be an improvement in our evolution from the tribal days where women and children lived separately from men (and in some societies still do) but instead it has proven to be quite a liability for women and children due to their vulnerable status living in separate households with men. It takes a village!!!
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Sameol says:
Michelle is really coming across badly here. She is not expressing any compassion for MacKenzie at all, and yet she keeps talking about how Chynna shouldn’t have to deal with this when she needs to publicize her new CD. (!) One wonders if she will apologize for being so brutal now that Denny Doherty’s daughter has come forward to say her father knew all about it.
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Unree says:
So many decent, thoughtful women have defaulted to this reaction when faced with a claim of incestuous abuse–No way! The lying little mess! She’s crazy!–that I have to admit I can only hope, but not be sure, that I’d choose Chynna’s response. (I find it very hard to believe that a woman would tell this kind of story if it weren’t true–what on earth is the profit of a lie?) Our culture supports and comforts women who stand by accused men. The minority who affirm the accusation get a cold shoulder.
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Swannie says:
Having worked in psyche for so many years … My first response is that from a distance this is a toughie …although I must say I have never ever encountered a single child of any age under 18 that made this up …
I have encountered one or two psychotics and borderline personality disorder diagnosed adult women that have embellished and / or outright fabricated some of these stories …. they told extremely inconsistent or impossible stories, but they had experienced some kind of severe trauma from abuse in childhood ,some had just lost touch with reality.I do wonder what Mackenzies psyche history is … then again , denial is so common in families .. even from people one would think might not succumb to it … like Michelle … easier to believe from a friends family than in one’s own..perhaps
..from a distance very difficult to say..
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Bella Donna says:
Sometimes I wonder if the immediate denial is due to guilt over not having recognized the behaviors in the past.
Society’s version of what a pedophile looks like is so different from what is often the reality, it can be impossible for people, even people who know them really well to know what is going on.
So the instinctive “NO that’s NOT possible!!” reaction, plus, most victims of incest probably do have a history of alcohol or drug use, or mental instability, for obvious reasons.
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Joie says:
I do not care to buy her book, but as someone who suffered through the false accusations of abuse of someone very close to me, I have become very circumspect. I learned all about “false memory syndrome” and many of the hallmarks of it. If Mackenzie said anything about having repressed her memories of the abuse or becoming involved in the memory recovery movement I would say that it is very likely that she is not telling the truth. Or, rather, she may believe it to be true but it is, in fact, not. If some people are backing up her story, though, perhaps it is. It just has a very opportunistic ring to it (who would buy her book otherwise?).
Michelle could be in denial, or she could just be fed up by her borderline stepdaughter. It is VERY difficult to judge a situation from the outside, and such accusations are very damaging even if they are ultimately proven to be false.
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tinfoil hattie says:
I’m just tired of people talking about men “having sex with” their daughters and girls “having sex with” their fathers.
It’s rape. Period.
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yttik says:
Incest and sexual abuse are so prevalent I think people have to deny it to survive. Women especially, wives, mothers, are often dependent financially but also emotionally.
Violet mentions, “Is she just finding it impossible to believe that the man she married was capable of something this heinous?” Yes, I think from psychological perspective that is a tremendous hurdle. She’d have to admit that someone she loves is capable of committing an atrocity, which then leads to confronting the fact that all her perceptions and everything she thought she knew was true, really wasn’t. She’d have to acknowledge that she’s been living an illusion. If she has any history of abuse herself, which she may have had to suppress in order to survive, then to deal with the truth would probably trigger all of those memories, too. There are so many layers of denial involved, believing this would be like peeling back the layers of an onion.
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No Blood for Hubris says:
It is very common for incest survivors to be disbelieved by their families, not to mention child victims being blamed for “causing” the incest rape. in the clip above, note the language: “he had intercourse with Tamar when she was 14″ not that “he vaginally raped her” . . .
And as to the false so-called “False Memory Syndrome,” it’s a crock. Google a bit, see who benefits — it ain’t the survivors.
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Swannie says:
Calling incest “intercourse” instead opf rape is indeed the language of the perpetrator , and does enable them to a certain degree.. We used to work with this very issue with victims , and changing the language does make a difference in perspective all around, in that it takes the responsibility and guilt away from the victim.
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Brian says:
Joie at 7. There is nothing in Mackenzie Phillip’s story about “recovered memory” so this is a bit of a red herring. I am not disputing that I think that prosecutions based on recovered memory can be worrisome, but that is a separate issue. There is a huge difference between keeping something secret because of being shamed into silence than recovering memories.
As for the borderline stepdaughter remark, keep in mind that borderline is a diagnosis primarily at women and furthermore how are you diagnosing from newspaper reports? If her story is to be believed–and there does not appear to be obvious reasons not to–the fact that Mackenzie Phillips has a history of addiction problems is really hardly surprising.
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Against Rape says:
Here’s a list of well-known women and men who were raped, some by a relative:
http://www.nndb.com/event/688/000079451/
I guess they’re all lying, huh, Michelle?
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.
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madaha says:
yes, it infuriates me that people are trying to use her addiction problems as a means to discredit her, then that’s a symptom of abuse!!!
I like what theCurvature posted about rape apologists – it’s so much easier in our culture to sympathize with the abuser than the victim. It’s tragic. Even in my own experience, my father beat and emotionally abused us, but my own sisters will say it “wasn’t that bad”. It drives me crazy!
It’s hard for me to see why the truth is so difficult for some people. But those who knew about it, will of course deny it, because they feel on some level their knowledge made them complicit in it. Which it may have done. It’s easier to deny responsibility if it didn’t happen. Which explains the nebulous, but unsupportive “Well *I* never say any evidence of it!!”
it doesn’t call the victim a liar, just erases any responsibility on their part. it’s chickenshit.
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bruce nahin says:
This patriarchal view goes all the way back to David in the bible- that alledge” affair with 16 yr old married Bersheba” Reading that story we find the girl was attending to the Mikvah following her period. She was ordered by soldiers to David’s bedroom…He husband was one of David’s mighty warrior, her dad his”back man” and her grandfather David’s general Counsel…This was and always has been rape to me- but to propr up david the” affair” was created. So there is nothing new under the sun
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gxm17 says:
The numbers are on Mackenzie Phillips’ side. If we were placing bets, the safe bet would be that she’s telling the truth. She gains nothing by lying. I hope that going public has been cathartic for her and that she is now relieved of much of the burden she’s carried all these years.
As for Michelle Phillips’ misdirected anger. Don’t be too hard on her. Her reaction is very common. The entire image of the man she knew and loved will be permanently damaged, forever altered once she accepts the facts. It may take her a long time to come to terms with that. I do wish she’d stop badmouthing her stepdaughter. She will regret it one day and it will only make the truth more painful.
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gxm17 says:
Regarding child rapists, I recently said that I wish I could wave a magic wand and make these people disappear. Immediately I realized how surprised we’d all be at how many people suddenly vanished.
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tinfoil hattie says:
Immediately I realized how surprised we’d all be at how many people suddenly vanished.
HA! No doubt.
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m Andrea says:
It amazes me the number of people who would rather believe a lie, than accept the truth. Either the girlchild is a raging slut who seduces her father, or the father is a child rapist. Regardless of which option someone chooses to believe, the result will still drive them crazy.
Since the result is the same, logically, only a freaking idiot would still choose the lie.
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Ciccina says:
By complete accident, I caught the back end of Chynna Phillip’s interview with Oprah, which had Mackenzie by satellite hookup.
Oprah read an email she said she received right after her original interview with Mackenzie aired; it was from the daughter of the other guy in the Ms & Ps, who was approx the same age as Mackenzie. She said she knew Mackenzie was telling the truth, that she knew at the time what was going on, and other people did too.
Oprah asked Mackenzie for her response. It was (basically) ‘sure, not only did she know – i can count on both hands the number of people who were aware of what was happening at the time.’ She made a counting-with-your-fingers gesture as she said it, which gave me the impression she meant ~ 10 people. She didn’t name them, she said, because she feels it up to them to decide whether they want to come forward.
That’s what’s going on with Michelle. She was there; she knew; other people knew. But Poppa John was the engineer on board the gravy train; nobody wanted to derail it. Of course Michelle wants to muddy the picture, and the others are cowering. If they came clean they’d be exposed as people who saw abuse and looked the other way. They probably can’t even admit that to themselves, much less the world.
As for writing the book first and telling her immediate family after, it was clear from Chynna’s comments and Michelle’s statement that if they knew what she was doing, they would have tried to stop her and barring that, they’d have smeared her. Do they blame their dad for the actions they tried to keep secret? Sort of. But they sure do blame Mackenzie for telling ‘their’ secret to the world, for causing ‘them’ so much embarrassment.
Nice family.
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Violet says:
That’s what’s going on with Michelle. She was there; she knew; other people knew. But Poppa John was the engineer on board the gravy train; nobody wanted to derail it.
I’m not sure Michelle was there. Nor was John still a functioning gravy train.
Look, Mackenzie says the first rape happened when she was 19, in 1979. Michelle and John Phillips divorced in 1968 or ’69 and the Mamas and the Papas broke up at that time. By 1979 — ten years later — the Mamas and the Papas were ancient history, Michelle had been married a couple of more times and was the femme fatale of Hollywood, and John had sunk into heroin addiction. He was a strung-out washed-up has-been. Mackenzie, meanwhile, was a teenage actress in Hollywood. I don’t know that Michelle Phillips and Mackenzie Phillips have ever even lived under the same roof.
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Sameol says:
No Blood for Hubris, yes, I thought it was very interesting that the other stepmother (not Michelle) went for both angles, she said something like “John could never do anything like this” but she also felt the need to add “I would often complain that she was overly familiar with him, and he would tell me it was just her way.” Way to cover the twin pillars of denial without stopping to consider that ‘overly familiar behavior’ can be a sign of sexual abuse.
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madaha says:
update: http://www.vanityfair.com/onli.....tions.html
“When I called Tamar Hodel in Hawaii, where she lives, she said, “I believe Mackenzie, and I agree with what she has said on TV: that there is much more incest out there than people are aware of. It’s hidden and it destroys lives. I look at Mackenzie and realize I was fortunate: I was raped only one time by my father.” Tamar recalled seeing Mackenzie in Hawaii a few years ago, when Mackenzie was performing in The Vagina Monologues. “She was onstage, talking about incest, and there was no doubt she was talking about herself.” “
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Kali says:
I am also disgusted with the language the media is using in reporting this. For example, one of the main news channels (CBS, I think) was talking about how “she came out of a blackout-like state to discover that she was having sex with her father”. It is such blatant, such disgusting whitewashing of rape. Why can’t they state the truth directly – that she came out of a blackout to discover her father was raping her?
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DancingOpossum says:
Lance, Soon Yi was never Woody’s adopted daughter. She was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn. He didn’t raise her or even live with her — heck, Farrow and Allen didn’t even live together. IOW, the whole thing was creepy-super-yukky but not in any way was it incest.
“I swore off P.D. James after her incest obsession ruined one too many murder mysteries.”
Ha! I found that incest obsession was a feature of scads of mystery books in the 90s, not just James’s (I used to review them for a mag plus I enjoyed reading them on my own time). It was the fail-safe shorthand for Monstrous Evil, I suppose. (Not sure what has replaced it, maybe Islamic jihadist?)
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petrova says:
Is it an odd connection that a mighty John Huston preyed on the little daughter of his friend, who later made her pregnant, wanted her to have the baby…didn’t Huston play in Chinatown, the character who fathered his daughter’s daughter, and who directed this…
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teresainpa says:
Petrova, his daughter Angelica was present at Nicholson’s house when Polanski raped the 13 year old child. She said the girl looked 25….. In other words her boundaries were all fucked up too and she was not sure whether she should stop what was happening. In fact she didn’t stop it and later had to make an excuse. I wonder what her history is with her father. He was obviously some sort of, at least casual, predator also.
I believe Mackenzie, she came off as very honest and very sane to me.
Besides I also had parents who were caught up in the lost boundaries and drug use of the 60s and 70s. I too was molested because people lost their ability to determine right from wrong. -
petrova says:
Teresainpa, thank you for filling in some blanks. Your personal story, unfortunately, reflects so many. I know my grandmother’s generation was affected widely, but would/could not talk about it.
“caught up in the lost boundaries”, yes. I wonder, was the sexual liberation of the 60s and 70s really men’s sexual liberation, in particular, middle class relieving themselves of mores, young girls and boys recruited, exploited, programmed, and it became culturally acceptable in new “family” communes, wasn’t R. Phoeix a victim of this, too?
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Yehudit says:
I too read that Vanity Fair profile a few years ago and loved it. The M&Ps are still one of my favorite groups – timeless – but they sure were screwed up.
