In March 1973, Michaela Madden, the filmmaker’s grandmother, was in an impossible situation when two men held her and her five children at gunpoint in their house. After the ordeal, she shocked her small town by declaring that she felt far more threatened by the police than by her captors. 50 years later, director Mimi Wilcox connects this personal story with the tales of Patty Hearst and Kristin Enmark, the women whose hostage experiences are most closely associated with the origins and proliferation of the term “Stockholm Syndrome.” Exploring how human compassion comes into conflict with police aggression and institutional prejudice, Bad Hostage asks: are the fear of the police and cooperation with those at their mercy truly reactions to be stigmatized? Or are they the only logical reactions when you suddenly find yourself at the other end of the barrels of guns pointed at you from all directions, desperately trying to survive? Interweaving these stories of kidnappings and bank heists with the director’s own thrilling family tale, Bad Hostage reframes decades of falsehoods and pop culture lore by electrifyingly interrogating “Stockholm Syndrome” and revealing the pernicious origins of this misogynistic myth.
In March 1973, Michaela Madden, the filmmaker’s grandmother, was in an impossible situation when two men held her and her five children at gunpoint in their house. After the ordeal, she shocked her small town by declaring that she felt far more threatened by the police than by her captors. 50 years later, director Mimi Wilcox connects this personal story with the tales of Patty Hearst and Kristin Enmark, the women whose hostage experiences are most closely associated with the origins and proliferation of the term “Stockholm Syndrome.” Exploring how human compassion comes into conflict with police aggression and institutional prejudice, Bad Hostage asks: are the fear of the police and cooperation with those at their mercy truly reactions to be stigmatized? Or are they the only logical reactions when you suddenly find yourself at the other end of the barrels of guns pointed at you from all directions, desperately trying to survive? Interweaving these stories of kidnappings and bank heists with the director’s own thrilling family tale, Bad Hostage reframes decades of falsehoods and pop culture lore by electrifyingly interrogating “Stockholm Syndrome” and revealing the pernicious origins of this misogynistic myth.