The shooting spree this week triggered memories of a film I was lucky enough to catch during the festival last September. I had completely forgotten about it, I'm sure thinking that it's commercial release would stoke the archives and let me consider it more completely away from the hustle and crush of too many 'must-see' on too few days. Oddly if there was a commercial release it sure didn't last or I was totally asleep and missed it. My guess now is that this movie will be watched during a relaunch. The film is 'Beautiful Boy' and if it were not for a comment I made in passing yesterday during news clips from Arizona I doubt I would be sitting here writing this now.
My discovery of my subconscious filing system was in that I recalled the story line in 'Beautiful Boy' as being about the parents of a fictional youth also driven to massacre before taking his own life. I described the home life as 'normal' middle class American. Researching the film to see what else it claimed to say at that time, I realized that my version of 'normal' is that the parents presented in the opening scenes of the film are dealing with an amicable separation and divorce when they get the news. Their son is depicted as 'odd' if not just socially sensitive and removed and his acts are received by the parents with shock and horror. The rest of the film explores the impact on the parents.
Needless to say it is a heart wrenching story that left me numb.
In the wide scope of lives lived I believe this is the type of incident psychologists and economists label as 'major life trauma'. That I would consider successful yet unhappy couples in the throes of a divorce proceeding as 'normal' stupefies me and finds me searching through my own emotions, recollections and motives. One of the few quotes I still remember with ease from own father was when, as a teenager, I was heading off to Europe. He phoned me from work to remind me that whatever I did 'over there', I would be still responsible for, back here at home. Not just a vacation warning it is also a judgment on a long list of ways we affect the world order outside of ourselves. Our own children being one of the most permanent footprints we leave in our wake.
The film suggests that the murderer came from a loving home and probably, by his parents standards, had a predictable and consistent exposure to all the expected elements of a socialized family and only- child in the early developing years of life. In his room, cub scout badges and other traces of the tiny accomplishments we consider 'forward' and 'hopeful' from a parent's view point and that we understand from personal experience as a few of those mementos we ourselves collect along our way as treasures or milestones. It is only through the adjusted eyes that another interpretation seems possible.
The parents have left their home to hide out and avoid the barrage of reporters camped outside their door hoping for an explanation to make sense of this or drive the story into hyperdrive with further evidence of madness and blame. A late night return by the father to gather up some clothes and belongings has him discover an intruder is his son's former room. The culprit is taking pictures with his cell phone and speaking to a friend on the other end about all of the things he is finding. It is obvious this is an old friend or acquaintance of the boy who the intruder describes as 'the freak' when discovering some long ago badge of courage still on display in the bedroom. "Can you believe he kept that?" the mocking, evidence of at least some aspect of childhood that was not 'normal' if we are still allowed to equate 'normal' with 'happy' which, if not the film's objective, is very much my point.
'Normal' and 'Happy' should not be regarded as interchangeable concepts in any context.
Somewhere along my own line, I drank that kool-aid and modeled great chunks of my life around simple and innocent precepts just like that. It's a real drag when you discover you are wrong and if you were mislead, it was only by yourself because in the final analysis, we are the only filter for ourselves. I think it is a given that we discover life's tiny lies as we age and one after the other we are able to put the true picture together in our heads as we gradually mature and are better able to deal with it. It no longer has a shock value, the crust we have built up is like our suit of armour to protect us from ourselves and the misconceptions that have driven our path in a direction we choose to regard as forward. For most of us that is our gun.
Every time something as tragic as Arizona happens we swear we will learn something from it and do something differently to avoid such a catastrophe again. Even as we say it, we know this is one of those tiny lies that we will never be held accountable to except in our own pangs of conscience when it happens again. There are many tangents of thought that could follow if this is a starting point and predictably many are already being explored in the media. The debate in the States, something we can probably recite by heart, which of course has nothing to do with 'heart'. I have avoided reading most of the Op-Ed pieces precisely because they will, at their centre, build up from the premise of the 'right to bear arms'. In this instance I am glad that 'CENTRE' is a word with a different spelling in the country I am writing from today. All the evidence I needed was a sound bite from the PBS newscast last night that reported that some State politicians in one of the Carolina's, among other States, had decided to begin carrying a concealed weapon as their response to the threats and dangers associated with holding public office. The tragedy and lament which is now the lives of those that have been touched in so many irreversible ways fills me with anguish.
I am finding myself considering the effects of social conditioning and the notion of genetic failure. The tools we have inherited from our father's father's father have very little to do with the world in which we live in today. How have we really been prepared for 'out there' beyond the realities of fire, food and shelter? Priests, coaches, doctors, teachers, leaders, corporations and governments fill the headlines with corruption, rape, murder and molestation. The window for 'parenting' is very narrow and in the fury to survive, which seems dramatically redefined, there is a greater reliance on society to shoulder the responsibility for grooming the generations of the west. Peers are not necessarily friends and technology has been given the mandate to raise our children and create the foundation of what we know and believe. Occasionally we learn that the system has let us down and left some one behind and we hope blindly that it will not be one of us or some one that we love. 'Mother's little helper' has become a machine not fully realizing that this one was actually making anything.
I don't find myself believing that Arizona has anything to do with technology, society or necessarily bad parenting but it does lead me to question just who is listening for the cries of something not quite right.
No comments:
Post a Comment