Katie Holmes as a Scapegoat

I watched "Pieces of April" last night, starring Katie Holmes as April.  The film does an excellent job of demonstrating how a family scapegoats one of its members, and how that person plays into the role.

April is the family scapegoat.  She dates drug dealers, lives in a ghetto apartment in New York and comes home to visit with new piercings and tattoos - all of which make her a target of her mother's constant criticism.  Her mother demonstrates why the family needs a scapegoat.  She is very hypercritical and intolerant and in real life I would suspect that her family of origin was just as hypercritical and intolerant.  In a family that looks for every flaw, it's best to have their attentions focused on someone else.  Hence the scapegoat is created, subconsciously, to absord all that negative energy.  April's sister plays the perfect Hero to April's Scapegoat and her brother is the Missing or Lost Child.  If you're interested in seeing a film about family roles, give this one a viewing and let me know what you think. 

Comments

[madcityquilter]

Like a movie of a breaking glass tumbler in reverse, I am just thwooping backwards in time to try and understand why my family has shunned me. I know I was parentified, but I don't think the scapegoating really began until I was about 25-30. Is this possible?

[Kellen]

Hi Quilter,

Almost anything is possible in human relationships. Could it be that someone else was filling the scapegoat role up until you were 25? If they left the family or changed their interactions with the family, the family could have transferred the role to you at that time. It may also have been that the family didn't need a scapegoat until then. It's hard to say without knowing the situation.