How to Kill Your Mother: Heavenly Creatures, Desire, and Žižek’s Return to Ideology

Abstract

Heavenly Creatures is a New Zealand film based on the actual murder of Honora Parker (also known as Honora Rieper) in 1954 Christchurch. Honora was a working class woman who, together with her husband, ran a boarding house where they raised their children. Over time, her relationship with her teenage daughter Pauline grew fractious and volatile due to a developing, intense, and encompassing friendship Pauline had made with her classmate, Juliet Hulme. Having immigrated from England to New Zealand and having formed this friendship with Pauline during the early 1950s, Juliet fell ill and the decision was made by her parents that she should go to live with her Aunt in South Africa, thus potentially separating the girls. Despite this decision being made by both Juliet’s parents, the girls’ despair and hatred focused on Honora as the key barrier to their imminent separation. So much so that Pauline and Juliet lured Honora into Victoria Park, in Christchurch’s Port Hills, where they bludgeoned her to death with a brick stuffed in a stocking.