On Screen: The Search for Liberated Feminine Pleasure: Kathryn Hahn and Her Characters
By: Robyn Bacon
When I see Kathryn Hahn perform on screen it feels like hanging out with an old friend. Coincidentally, in interviews Kathryn Hahn calls a large portion of her career the “best friend chapter.” During this period of time Hahn explains that she was consistently cast in small supporting roles — usually as the best friend in comedies. However, Hahn’s most iconic performance to date in Marvel’s WandaVision (2021) marks the beginning of her next career chapter dubbed the Hahnaissance. The Hahnaissance — a term coined by the Internet — is the social revival and renewed interest for the versatile acting talents of Kathryn Hahn.
The Hahnaissance chapter continues to blossom as she repeatedly lands leading roles. Some of Hahn’s most notable upcoming projects include Rian Johnson’s anticipated sequel Knives Out 2, Apple TV’s The Shrink Next Door, and more recently The Comeback Girl, a biopic series for Showtime about legendary comedian Joan Rivers. Although the Hahnaissance only began earlier this year, there have been a few standout performances throughout Kathryn Hahn’s career that brilliantly showcase her comedic and dramatic range as a leading lady. These standout roles include her work as Rachel from Afternoon Delight (2013), Chris from I Love Dick (2016 – 2017), and Eve Fletcher from Mrs. Fletcher (2019). These three roles in which Hahn plays the protagonist in the story and not a supporting role could easily be categorized as part of the Hahnaissance. Perhaps if these indie performances had not been overshadowed by her roles in mainstream Hollywood films during her “best friend chapter” audiences would have realized sooner that Kathryn Hahn has been great all along. Luckily, the Hahnaissance has led audiences to re-discover her older performances and cultivate a newfound appreciation for Kathryn Hahn’s brilliance as an actor.
My avid consumption of Kathryn Hahn performances led me to discover that Rachel from Afternoon Delight (2013), Chris from I Love Dick (2016 – 2017), and Eve Fletcher from Mrs. Fletcher (2019) share a primary commonality. All three women aim to escape the repressive confines of middle-aged womanhood in search for liberated feminine pleasure outside of heteronormativity. As each protagonist is either a mother, wife, or both — gender roles place rigid heteronormative expectations on their social lives and sexual identities as middle-aged women. These expectations assume women to be completely selfless mothers, satisfy their husbands or partners before themselves, and repress unconventional desires for fear of judgment from heteronormative society.
Rachel, Chris, and Eve find themselves rebelling against these suffocating and overwhelming expectations after they experience life-altering sensual and spiritual re-awakenings. Each protagonist begins their story feeling unsatisfied and uninspired. Rachel of Afternoon Delight (2013) hasn’t had sex with her husband Jeff (played by Josh Radner) in six months and struggles to emotionally connect with her preschool-aged son Logan. Chris of I Love Dick (2016 - 2017) tries to rekindle the passion in her sex life with her husband, Sylvere (played by Griffin Dunne) while she struggles to make meaningful art. Eve of Mrs. Fletcher (2019) tries to re-engage with her erotic desires that have been neglected since her divorce and is forced to confront these desires after her son, Brendan (played by Jackson White) moves out to attend college.
Kathryn Hahn and Juno Temple in Afternoon Delight
Chris of I Love Dick and Rachel of Afternoon Delight also face heteronormative pressures as wives that bond their stories in theme. After years of pushing their needs aside to make their husbands feel at ease, both Rachel and Chris find themselves attracted to different people in their lives. Rachel develops an obsession with a stripper and sex worker named McKenna (played by Juno Temple) after she receives a lap dance from her while visiting a strip club with her husband on their date night. Rachel’s relationship with McKenna develops throughout the film and complicates traditional heteronormative relationship binaries by exploring Rachel’s mixed feelings of mutual friendship, infatuation, and implied erotic attraction to McKenna.
Breaking outside of the limits placed by her so far heteronormative life, Chris of I Love Dick, experiments with the idea of polyamory when she becomes infatuated with her husband Sylvere’s colleague Dick Jarrett (played Kevin Bacon). At first, Chris solely romanticizes the image of Dick and uses him as a foreplay tool to enliven her sex life with Sylvere. When Chris’s infatuation with Dick begins to influence her artistic work, she pursues Dick relentlessly beyond the bedroom. While Chris’s infatuation with Dick is difficult to unpack, it is directly related to her self-worth and identity as an artist and filmmaker. Chris shows Dick one of her films and his indifferent reaction to her art deeply insults Chris and propels her on a quest to prove him wrong. This leads Chris to create a new art project — one where she writes a series of letters addressed to Dick that detail her frustrating obsession with him.
While Rachel of Afternoon Delight and Eve of Mrs. Fletcher are both excellent mothers — they also subvert the assumption that all mothers must be selfless because of the realistic difficulty they have connecting with their children. Rachel feels withdrawn from her relationship with Logan and finds it difficult to play and have fun with him. Meanwhile, Eve’s denial of Brendan growing up and his selfish toxic-masculine persona dwindles their mother-son relationship. The heteronormative environments which Rachel and Eve inhabit makes them repress their unconventional desires for fear of judgment. Rachel of Afternoon Delight feels judged by her husband Jeff and the overbearing moms from her preschool for befriending McKenna. So Rachel hires McKenna as a live-in nanny to appropriately justify her enigmatic relationship with McKenna. And in Mrs. Fletcher, Eve explores her sexual desires by masturbating to MILF Internet pornography. As a single mother whose desires have been subdued for years Eve finds part of her identity reflected in the ordinary moms she watches in her pornography. Eve finds herself sexually liberated by the MILFs she watches in her pornography but feels ashamed that she cannot confide in or admit her desires to any of her fellow mom friends.
Kathryn Hahn in Mrs. Fletcher
Ultimately, these three characters go down a fruitful path of self-discovery and bring the viewer with them. This path of self-discovery is equally awkward and endearing to watch. At the beginning of each story Rachel, Chris, and Eve find themselves in the middle of an identity crisis that is rarely expressed on screen for women in such nuanced ways. These characters undergo sexual and emotional dry spells that propels them to re-evaluate their heteronormative marital and sexual relationships as well as their careers and artistic endeavours.
I love that Hahn’s characters grant me the freedom to reflect on difficult and complex questions about identity, gender roles, sexuality, and relationships. If I choose motherhood and marriage, will I spiral from their overwhelming responsibilities and institutional conventions? How do I keep desire alive in a long-term relationship? What happens if I fall out of love with a long-time partner? Will I still be developing and discovering my identity as a middle-aged woman?
While these questions are confronting, it is liberating to see Kathryn Hahn courageously search for answers on screen. Rachel, Chris, and Eve realize at the end that abandoning their long-term relationships for short-term desires is not sustainable. The only way for these three characters to uphold sustainable long-term relationships is to dismantle the heteronormative conventions that detain their gender roles and sexual identities. This way Hahn’s characters and even women off screen will be less likely to spiral if they can feel true liberation and experience feminine pleasure that is free from the suppressive confines of heteronormativity.
Robyn Bacon (she/her) is an aspiring filmmaker and screenwriter from Toronto. Currently, Robyn works as a Social Media Coordinator for the Future of Film Showcase film festival and as a Photo Editor for the Canadian Society of Cinematographers magazine. Robyn is a freelance production assistant, photographer, and writer who has written for publications like Film Daze. Her primary interests include feminist film, comedy, horror, and acting/performance. Visit her website or socials to see what she’s been up to!
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