The Real Frankie Murdoch Biography
Hons, PGCHE, FHEA
Lecturer
Department of Art and Music
frankie.murdoch@solent.ac.uk
Room No. RM509
Biography
Frankie, a teacher, singer, music producer and media creator, grew up in London but moved south to study Media Technology at Solent University.
After graduating, she trained as a teacher and worked in colleges along the south coast before returning to Solent University to teach on the Media Production course and later on the undergraduate Pop Music Production course.
She is passionate about integrating creativity into the classroom and encouraging playfulness and is currently researching how wellbeing strategies can be used in the creative process as part of her MA in Critical Creative Practice.
Frankie is an avid concertgoer and enjoys travelling, dancing and swimming in the sea.
Industry experience
Frankie has worked as a freelancer on various commercials and TV shows, including “Nadiya’s Summer Feasts” on BBC1. She shoots for Vitality Hemp and other ethical startup brands: https://frankieknight.photography
Teaching experience
Although there has been a lot of talk lately about celebrities being transgender, no one has yet come up with the idea of writing a story where the main character suffers from multiple personality disorder and transforms from a black housekeeper to a debutante, white southern aristocrat from a different ethnic background.
No one had to be involved in this gripping plot because Canadian filmmaker Geoffrey Sax took the true story of a woman suffering from dissociative identity disorder and brought it to the screen.
Embracing Duality: How to Balance Multiple Identities Like Halle Berry
Halle Berry, a veteran actress, managed to combine all three personalities in one person, including a 7-year-old genius with an IQ of 156.
The real-life African-American Frankie grew up in Savannah, Georgia, where her mother worked as a maid for a white family. She experienced at least two traumatic experiences as a teenager that shattered her personality to pieces.
She fell in love with the son of the respected white family, ran away with him, and became pregnant by him. This happened in 1957 in the South when she was 15 years old.
Two deaths resulted from this socially risky and taboo relationship. Her boyfriend died in a car accident while she was distracting him in the front seat. She later gave birth to his child, and her mother killed the child after leaving it in a motel.
In one of the opening scenes, there are several defining statements within the Murdoch family:
When Francine (Frankie) Murdoch seems to be her mother’s favorite, she visits her on her birthday and gives her an elegant mother’s necklace with two birthstones as a gift for her two daughters.
Chandra Wilson, who plays Maxine Murdoch, Frankie’s sister, appears to be her mother’s full-time caregiver in their South Central home, while Frankie appears and disappears into her life, as a well-deserved gogo dancer and center of male desire at a seedy Hollywood strip club.
Phylicia Rashad plays the indulgent mother who seems to accept Frankie’s quirks and affections.
Frankie also regularly lies to her mother, such as by claiming that she is going to college or moving to Florida, when she is not. After the first scene with her mother, the roles are reversed and the dark side of Frankie’s life is shown.
She makes hundreds of dollars a night as a stripper, but can’t pay her rent. She looks at her checkbook and realizes she spent too much money on an expensive dress at a Beverly Hills boutique.
Her landlord knocks on her door and tells her that she has been denied rent again.
Fantasy is an important part of Frankie’s life as she tries to escape the reality of her humiliating position as a stripper. One night, she leaves the bar with a popular bartender who is really just for a one-time fling.
She steps on one of his children’s toys, falls into a hallucinogenic state, is completely desperate, and smashes his head with a vase. She walks out into the street and ends up in oncoming traffic.
The police think she is a drug addict. She is committed to a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles County.
Dr. Oz, a sharp psychologist played by Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård, uses her beauty and presence to captivate him with her Southern accent, played by her alter ego Alice.
Alice is the Southern beauty who has little understanding of black people.
Halle Berry seems to master the distance of self-hatred towards her own race, while also flaunting the dark side of her dual white heritage.
Within her personality, you only recognize the qualities of the white woman that she wants to possess.
During the film, Dr. Oz put up a sign with the three main personalities, highlighting their differences.
She is left-handed like the white woman, but has a lower IQ of 102. She is right-handed like the black woman, but has an impressive IQ of 152.
Like Frankie and Alice, she has 20/20 vision, but 7-year-old Genius needs glasses because she is nearsighted. Genius’s IQ is 156. Frankie smokes, but Alice does not.
In order to take an IQ test and get a different result, Frankie had to be one of those different minds, to exceed their expectations and still be that person.
The film moves at a reasonable pace, but it’s the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the characters that capture the audience’s attention. Dr. Oz dozes off with 70s-style headphones and jazz music playing wherever he can.
His devoted secretary can never quite break his melancholic and emotional distance. His most important companion is his cat.
As a doctor, he has a nice home, but he eschews materialism as he is obsessed with helping his most difficult patient, Frankie.
Frankie, who in the film’s early scenes appears independent as a chain-smoking, self-determined woman who resists pushy men, later slips into her Southern belle dress when she is admitted to the county psychiatric hospital for the second time after trying to stab a wedding guest at the wedding of her former lover’s (Pete) sister.
After seeing Pete’s sister at the wedding, Frankie seems to black out, putting her in a transparent state.
She is charged with assault with a deadly weapon, but is later committed to the district psychiatric hospital under certain conditions. The chief psychiatrist is not pleased with her presence and notices Dr. Oz.
He wonders if Dr. If the patient is really being treated for his own gain within the state budget or if it is his personal hobby. The psychiatrist releases Frankie after the charges are dropped, without Dr. Oz having anything to say about it.
The climax of the film comes when Dr. Oz puts Frankie into a hypnotic state.
Halle Berry shows off her full acting talent by portraying a childbirth, the traumatic death of her boyfriend Pete, and the subtle extinction of a newborn’s life at the hands of her mother.
This epic moment comes when the screen flashes back to Frankie’s birth in a motel, where the mother picks up the screaming baby, suffocates it, and throws it in the trash.
Trauma of this kind makes it clear that many people are vulnerable to mental health problems that are beyond their control and that can lead them in a disastrous direction.
