(no subject)

[proximoception]

We Need to Talk About Kevin is shattering for members of the parent subspecies. Not sure how it is for others. Or what to call the others - "children" seems patronizing.

Comments

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Not really a point to my defending it twice, given the resoluteness and personal element to your opposition. But I will in case anyone else is reading this, as it's a movie that gets something very important very right.

After admitting you're surely right that someone subjected to those particular neglects and abuses would likely not become psychotic - though of course Kevin didn't either. But no, an actual Kevin presumably wouldn't have committed a school massacre. Alcoholism, more likely. Maybe violence against women. The movie killings are a lucid fellow-travelling of the psycho crimes: by not letting me understand I'm loved you're putting me in a world where I'm robbed of a childhood and family, hence a pointless one, and I'm showing you what it looks like. An art massacre, not a real life one. Maybe the real Kevins write books like this, or film them.

The bow thing is part of the attempt to pull it into art space, and incidentally clear of the strong crosswinds of the equally important hence potentially immensely distracting gun issue.

She didn't know what she didn't know because someone fucked her up. So bad that she didn't know how to hold a baby or not lash out at a defenseless child. These are hard things to not learn fast - I think the movie plays with expectations of nons a bit, the sorts of "how would I know what to do if someone suddenly threw a baby at me" thoughts you have before the kid shows up. In the event you just know or, better, you find out. A parent's reaction is mingled recognition of the phenomenon of being in over your head and hatred for the inexcusable. A mentally healthy parent could never "oops" in these particular ways, but the fact that someone else could chills you about what your own gaps in self-knowledge might be.

Not having it be underlinedly clear just how off she is a risky ambiguity but probably a necessary one to get this message into a story form. The point of everyone attacking her is that they're right - the movie's trying to get you into her own shoes for that Oedipus reversal. Again, there's no clearing it from crimes against reality. But it had reasons for distorting what it did.