Death Becomes Her (1992): Patriarchy Is the Trap, Beauty Is the Bait

Beth and Michelle revisit Death Becomes Her, the 1992 dark comedy where two lifelong rivals drink a potion promising eternal youth, only to discover that immortality is considerably less glamorous when your neck is broken, your stomach has a shotgun-sized hole in it, and your continued existence depends on industrial quantities of paint and putty. What once seemed like a deliciously camp battle between Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn now lands very differently. Beneath the extraordinary visual effects, Isabella Rossellini’s impossible glamour, and the endlessly quotable cruelty is a story filled with ageism, fat-shaming, ableism, and a rigid belief that women lose their value when they stop being young, desirable, and useful to men. Madeline and Helen spend decades defining themselves through rivalry. Rather than being permitted careers, growth, friendship, or genuine reinvention, they are pushed into treating one another as the enemy. Ernest, meanwhile, profits from women’s insecurity as a plastic surgeon, descends into alcoholism, participates in Madeline’s death, and still receives the film’s redemptive ending. He is allowed to refuse immortality, build a meaningful life, and be remembered as a complete human being. The women remain the cautionary joke. In the episode’s proto–Stitch Count, Death Becomes Her passes the Castellini Test through Madeline, Helen, and Lisle, all of whom are essential to the plot. Its broader representation is extremely limited, however. People of color are almost entirely absent from speaking roles, mental illness and physical disability are used as comic devices, and the film offers little meaningful LGBTQ inclusion despite becoming a queer cult favorite. Beth and Michelle give it 3.5 out of 10 on the Tremors Index. The performances remain excellent and the effects still impress, but the movie’s beautiful surface cannot conceal how little space it gives its women to become anything other than rivals. The potion promises freedom from aging. What it actually offers is an eternity trapped inside the same expectations.