Claire Holland – Bitch Flicks

‘Splice’: The Horror of Having It All

…’Splice’ could very well be a cautionary tale for the career woman considering motherhood. From the outset, the film shows Elsa as an ambitious scientist who loves her job – and who loves her life exactly the way it is. … This presents the central conflict of Elsa’s character: her repressed desire to be a mother, and her larger desire to remain in control of her own life, body, and career.

This guest post written by Claire Holland appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

That’s the question Clive (Adrien Brody), a genetic engineer, poses to his partner in both work and life, Elsa (Sarah Polley), regarding the possibility of having a child together. The rest of Splice goes on to answer that question, and the perspective is not an optimistic one.

While sporadically debating the pros and cons of making a baby the old-fashioned way, the two scientists create a creature, eventually named “Dren,” by splicing genetic material from different animals – including human genes from Elsa, who becomes a de facto mother. Splice explores a number of fraught topics, including the politics of male-female relationships, the nature of motherhood, and the ethics of genetic engineering and abortion. One of the less explored topics, however, is what the film says about the working mother, specifically. While the waters are a bit murky on the subject, look at it in the right light and Splice could very well be a cautionary tale for the career woman considering motherhood.

From the outset, the film shows Elsa as an ambitious scientist who loves her job – and who loves her life exactly the way it is. Her boyfriend Clive is the one who wants to change things, gently but insistently prodding Elsa about altering their lives to make room for a baby. Elsa makes it clear that she’s not interested in doing so, stating, “I don’t want to bend my life to suit some third party that doesn’t even exist yet.” She also suggests they wait until they “crack male pregnancy,” suggesting that she may never be interested, for a variety of reasons. However, Clive continues to pester Elsa to change her mind. It’s apparent that Clive represents the good, “normal” man who wants expected things like a nuclear family, blissfully unaware of the lasting effects a child would have on his female partner’s body and career. Elsa represents the abnormal, and implicitly wrong, approach to living as a woman: putting herself before her womb.

Elsa takes the ultimate gamble when she inserts her own genetic material into the amalgam that is Dren. This presents the central conflict of Elsa’s character: her repressed desire to be a mother, and her larger desire to remain in control of her own life, body, and career. Splice goes on to suggest that these two desires are inherently incompatible, and further, that attempting to “have it all” is a punishable offense.

When it comes to pseudo-motherhood, Elsa can’t do anything right, at least in Clive’s opinion. At the beginning, he reprimands her for treating Dren “like a pet” rather than a specimen. Clive’s fear illustrates how stereotypically female attributes, such as the ability to nurture, are considered weaknesses in a male-dominated profession like science, and the working world in general. Elsa sees potential in Dren that reaches far beyond the original goals of the experiment, but the film only presents this new facet of her character as a negative. It makes Elsa emotional, and therefore a danger to the sterile work world she inhabits.

As Dren (Delphine Chanéac) matures and becomes more volatile, she grows closer to Clive, who she begins to see as a potential mate (and, disturbingly, vice versa), and becomes resentful of Elsa’s restrictive presence. Clive remains critical of Elsa’s reactions to parenthood as she begins to shift from doting mother to controlling mother, suddenly finding her not maternal enough for his liking. Although we discover that Elsa has deep-seated issues with her own mother that hinder her ability to parent effectively, we also see that as the only parental figure left in the equation, she is obliged to become more and more domineering in order to keep their unauthorized experiment under wraps.

It’s at this point that Elsa becomes fundamentally unable to reconcile her roles as mother and scientist. Faced with a wild, fully grown Dren who doesn’t want to be told what to do, Elsa reestablishes control the only way she knows how: by force. She knocks Dren unconscious, ties her down, and surgically removes the stinger she has on her tail. Elsa then uses the stinger to synthesize the protein her team has been attempting to make all along. It is her greatest accomplishment, and also her coldest, most calculating moment, divorcing her entirely from the mother figure she once represented to Dren. It seems that in order to find success in her job, Elsa has to renounce her maternal side completely.

In the final act of Splice, Dren transitions from female to male (the final part of her life cycle, foreshadowed earlier in the film). Dren then rapes Elsa, for reasons left unexplained. Perhaps it’s simply Dren’s animal instinct, but it comes across as punishment; punishment for being too ambitious in realms not traditionally female (Elsa’s career, science), or punishment for not finding fulfillment in the roles women are “supposed” to find fulfillment (motherhood and wifedom). No matter how you splice it, the film does not treat Elsa’s non-conformance with much kindness or sympathy, and for better or worse it reads as a blaring warning sign to women like her: attempting to “have it all” can be deadly.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Splice’: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist

Claire Holland is a freelance writer and author of Razor Apple, a blog devoted to horror movies and horror culture with a feminist bent. Claire has a BA in English and creative writing, but she insists on writing about “trashy” genre movies nonetheless. You can follow her on Twitter @ClaireCWrites.

The Manipulative Woman in Sci-Fi: Bending Time and People to Her Will

Individually, each film presents interesting, tough, somewhat complex female characters – which could be considered feminist in its own right. Taken together, however, I can’t help but see a pervasive trend that doesn’t reflect well on women. Why do filmmakers see women as master manipulators so readily? Is it simply because they believe women to be cold and calculating? Or, conversely, are they relying on audiences not seeing how tricky these women are, banking on their innocent façades to make the ending a real surprise (i.e. the ‘Basic Instinct’ effect)?

This guest post written by Claire Holland originally appeared at Razor Apple. It is cross-posted with permission. | Major spoilers ahead for the films Blood Punch, Coherence, Time Lapse, and Triangle.

I’m a huge fan of time travel thrillers, and some excellent ones have come out in the past several years. In fact, the four films I’ll be talking about today – Triangle, Time Lapse, Blood Punch, and Coherence – are four of my all-time favorites within the genre. As a disclaimer, I have to say that I deeply enjoyed all of these films, and wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone. But we’re allowed to think critically even about the things we enjoy, right? Despite loving these films, I couldn’t help but notice while watching these films that there was a conspicuous trend uniting them all – manipulative female characters. In every one of these films, a deceitful woman acts as a catalyst for the (generally unfortunate) events of the film. To be fair, some other event out of the anyone’s control causes the rift or bend in time, but it’s always a female character that underhandedly uses that time loop/lapse/rift to her advantage.

Before we get into it, though, a quick primer on the four films (although, seeing as these are time travel movies, and therefore complicated and confusing by nature, I recommend actually watching them). Time Lapse involves three friends – Callie and Finn, who are dating, and their roommate Jasper – who find a camera in their missing neighbor’s apartment that faces the window of their apartment. They soon discover that the camera’s photos show events 24 hours into the future, and try to use this to their advantage. Triangle is about Jess, a single mother who goes on a boating trip with her friends. They hit some bad weather and are forced to board what appears to be an abandoned ship, where a masked figure begins stalking and killing them. It turns out the masked figure is another version of Jess herself, trying to put an end to a time loop they’ve all been stuck in for quite some time. Coherence is the story of Em who, while at a dinner party with friends, experiences a rift in time that opens up parallel universes – some of which seem better than the one in which Em currently lives. Finally, Blood Punch revolves around Skyler, Milton, and Russell, who are stuck repeating the same day over and over again due to a Native American curse, until blood is spilled and only one person is left alive.

First of all, don’t misunderstand me – I’m not positing that any of these films set out to make an anti-feminist statement, or any statement at all, necessarily. Individually, each film presents interesting, tough, somewhat complex female characters – which could be considered feminist in its own right. Taken together, however, I can’t help but see a pervasive trend that doesn’t reflect well on women. Why do filmmakers see women as master manipulators so readily? Is it simply because they believe women to be cold and calculating? Or, conversely, are they relying on audiences not seeing how tricky these women are, banking on their innocent façades to make the ending a real surprise (i.e. the Basic Instinct effect)?

I think it’s a combination of both. The stereotype of women as emotional manipulators goes back all the way to Shakespeare (can I get a Lady Macbeth monologue?) and further. Google “women are manipulative” and you’ll find all kinds of research claiming it’s part of female biological makeup – being the “weaker” sex, women supposedly had to find other ways to survive, chief among those tactics being the manipulation of men. And society has reinforced this for, well, forever, by disempowering women and shackling their choices to the whims of men. Before 1974, a woman would have had trouble getting a credit card without her husband’s approval, so it’s no wonder if women employed a little manipulation to get what they needed. In short, the stereotype certainly still exists, even if only subconsciously, making it an easy archetype to draw on while writing a character.

Then there’s the surprise factor. Even though Basic Instinct pretty well shattered the notion that women can’t be cutthroat decades ago, these films employ the reveal of a shrewd, often merciless woman quite well. So much of each film’s runtime is spent watching men bloodily, showily batter one another in the most basic grapples for power; we’re distracted from figuring out that a woman is the one pulling all the strings, engineering the situation to her advantage, until much later. Of course, after four movies, I’d think the jig is up by now, but who knows.

While I would guess that pragmatism is most often at the root of the manipulative female character, I still find this trend troubling for one glaring reason: there is always an aspect of punishment to the character’s treatment. More often than not, the word “bitch” follows the word “manipulative,” and these stories reinforce that by indicating that the female character is bad and she deserves her situation – more so than the male characters. It’s as if attempting to shape the outcome of the situation in a way that’s favorable to her is a mortal sin, and being left to deal with the worst consequences is her penance.

Take Callie in Time Lapse, for example. Even though every character uses the photos of the future to their advantage in selfish ways that cause harm – Finn uses them to overcome his artistic block, neglecting his girlfriend in the process; Jasper uses them to gamble, putting everyone in the crosshairs of a dangerous bookie – Callie is the one who is most punished for it, when her goal is perhaps the least selfish, or at least the most sympathetic: she uses the photos to try to reignite the passion in her relationship with Finn by making him jealous. A photo shows Callie and Jasper kissing, and because the trio believes the events shown in the photos have to occur in order to avoid a paradox and keep time going along as normal, Callie and Jasper are “forced” to kiss in front of Finn. As it turns out, Callie has been secretly changing the order of the photos she shows to Finn and Jasper, presenting old photos of past transgressions (we discover she cheated on Finn with Jasper weeks ago, and the camera caught those moments) as new.

The most superficial way of looking at the situation is that Callie is a cheater who deserves everything she gets, but it is just that – superficial. The fact that Callie cheated on Finn once or twice, months ago, also points to the fact that Finn has been neglecting Callie for quite some time before the discovery of the photo machine. When Callie first finds the photo machine, she is so frantic to hide the evidence of her indiscretions and win back Finn’s love that she immediately forms a plan to do so. It’s not a malicious plan, but a desperate one, for which she is harshly punished.

Callie ends up killing Jasper in order to save Finn’s life, but when the entire scope of her manipulation is revealed, Finn rejects Callie and she kills him as well. Callie plans to warn herself of this course of events by using the photo machine so that she can change things and Finn won’t be dead or know about her manipulation, but she is interrupted by a police officer and unable to carry out the warning. Thus, Callie is doomed to her current timeline, where the love of her life is dead by her own hand, and where she will certainly be found guilty of murdering at least two (and as many as four) people. The manipulative woman is always the final witness, forced to live out the consequences of her actions – and the actions of all those around her. It is the most serious punishment, worse than death, doled out in this case for the grave sin of wanting to be loved.

The most complicated character of these three movies may be Jess in Triangle, but her motivations are only explored briefly, making the handling of her arc difficult to parse. As the single mother of an autistic child, it is revealed at the end of the film that Jess has become abusive towards her son. Jess is forced to watch herself – or rather, another version of herself in a separate time loop – abuse her son again and again. Horrified at seeing herself this way, she murders the other version of herself and takes off with her son in the car, where her frenzied driving results in his death. This sequence ends with her restarting the loop by going on the boating trip (yet again) in an effort to get to another time where her son is still alive – which spurs on the events in which she’s forced to kill her friends, and alternate versions of herself, ad nauseam.

On the one hand, Jess abuses her child – is there any adequate punishment for that? However, the Jess we see throughout most of the film seems entirely divorced from the Jess we see abusing her son at the end of the movie, and for that reason, I have a problem buying into her character as a whole. She appears to be a kind person throughout the film, and when she sees herself yelling at her son, she looks deeply dismayed and repentant. She kills the other version of herself without hesitation in an effort to protect him. For the majority of the film, she shows herself to be a loving mother who has simply been stretched too thin (it’s also hinted at that she may have been abused by her late husband), who spends every ounce of energy she has attempting to save her child’s life. There’s a disconnect between the character we get to know for 90 minutes and the one we see hitting her child for two minutes that seems mainly in place to make the viewer believe that Jess deserves to relive this agonizing loop forever.

Then there’s Em, whose fate is foreshadowed early in on Coherence. During dinner at the beginning of the film, Em explains that she lost out on an opportunity to dance the lead in a big show because she turned down the understudy part. The dancer who was supposed to do the part got sick, and the understudy who did take the job became famous. Another female guest at the dinner remarks, “So basically she stole your entire life.” Immediately, the female characters, both onscreen and off, are depicted as jealous and conniving. That depiction is reinforced when, during a comet passing that opens up alternate realities, Em finds a better reality in which she did take the understudy part, and proceeds to murder the version of herself living in that reality so she can take over. As it turns out, there are two other versions of Em wandering that reality at the same time, and though she attempts to murder them both, she only succeeds once. At the end of the film, her boyfriend receives a phone call from the other version of her that she failed to kill, and it is implied that she is about to be outed as an imposter in her own life – a feeling she already knows too well.

Once again, the punishment seems overly moralistic and self-flagellating. While other characters reveal unflattering secrets and pummel one another out in the open to little consequence, Em is, both literally and figuratively, only hurting herself throughout the film – and yet she is penalized most harshly for it. Em has obviously spent a lot of time berating herself for losing out on big opportunities. It’s unclear whether she really feels like the life she was meant to have was taken from her by someone else, or if she faults herself alone for letting it slip through her fingers, but either way, she’s not going to let opportunity pass her by yet again. She kills the alternate version of herself in an ambitious, albeit ruthless move, and she is punished dearly for that ambitiousness.

Finally – and I’ll try to keep this one short, because boy is this post getting out of hand – we have Skyler in Blood Punch, whose biggest fault appears to be that she’s smarter than the two male characters, Russell and Milton. Stuck in a time loop where the same day is played over and over again, Skyler is the first to realize that the only way out is by killing everyone else – the last person left standing will then be freed. Since she’s not strong enough to physically overcome either of her male counterparts, she uses her wits to manipulate the two men into fighting to the death. Unfortunately, her plan doesn’t go as smoothly as it could, and even after Russell and Milton are dead, she ends up trapped in the time loop again with two new people. Skyler, like Jess, is condemned to her terrible situation, possibly forever, and the audience is left feeling like she deserves it. But does she really? Because she wanted to survive – the most basic, relatable human instinct there is – and she was smart enough to figure out how to do that?

Muddying the waters further is Milton, who is a supremely likeable character, making Skyler seem all the worse. Milton thinks he loves Skyler, and is content with the idea of existing together in the time loop forever, even if it means killing Russell himself every day for eternity. Skyler recognizes what a bad idea that is – even the best couple would likely go insane being trapped in that situation forever, and Milton and Skyler barely know each other – but Milton comes off as a sweet, selfless romantic nonetheless. He serves as a foil to Skyler, highlighting her narcissism and disingenuousness, even though his motivations only take his own feelings into account and are therefore selfish as well.

Perhaps all of these films are simply metaphors for Hell, where the characters’ worst fears and traits spur on the cycle they’re doomed to live out over and over again. It’s an effective illustration, to be sure, but why is it always the women who are seen getting the worst of it? Why are they so often blamed for the very existence of Hell? In essence, the female characters are viciously punished for not being selfless every minute of every day – for sometimes being desperate, or ambitious, or for breaking down – despite the fact that the other characters surrounding them are overwhelmingly selfish as well. Even if the case can be made that these women do deserve what they get, why is it always the women who are written as the most self-centered and conniving of all characters? It’s not flattering to men, either, who populate these films as oafish idiots, lovesick dopes, and pawns.

As I’ve said, taken individually, the depictions of women in these films don’t seem nearly as damaging. Viewed together, however, I think they represent a concerning tendency to stereotype women as deceitful and untrustworthy, while men are regarded as too decent or too dumb to defend themselves. In these films’ defense, it’s the way the world has been depicted for a long, long time. In defense of women, however, I don’t think it’s all so cut-and-dried.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Coherence’ Is the Best Movie You Didn’t See Last Year

‘Felt’: When the Final Girl Comes Home

While the exact parameters of Amy’s scarring experience are never disclosed, hints are dropped, including an awkward conversation about date rape and the artist’s newfound fixation on creating nightmarish costumes featuring exaggerated genitalia and blank faces. We know, without having to ask, that Amy has endured some sort of sexual violation, visited upon her by a man.

This is guest post by Claire Holland previously appeared at Razor Apple and is cross-posted with permission.

The majority of horror movies end with a “final girl” (so christened by Carol J. Clover in her pioneering book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws) conquering her attacker and would-be murderer in a final battle: Sally Hardesty bellowing in the back of a pickup truck as it drives away from Leatherface, who waves his chainsaw in useless frustration; Ginny Field stabbing Jason with his own machete; Sydney Prescott shooting Billy Loomis between the eyes as he lunges toward her in a failed attempt at one last assault. All of these women literally and figuratively stick it to the man, and by extension, to the patriarchy, if only temporarily. But what happens to these final girls – both fictional and, all too often, real – after the credits roll, and they are expected to reintegrate into a society that remains unchanged by their personal traumas?

That is the inherent question in Felt, a micro-budget indie film from Jason Banker about an artist, Amy (Amy Everson, also the co-writer), recovering from an unnamed, but easily assumed, ordeal. While the exact parameters of Amy’s scarring experience are never disclosed, hints are dropped, including an awkward conversation about date rape and the artist’s newfound fixation on creating nightmarish costumes featuring exaggerated genitalia and blank faces. We know, without having to ask, that Amy has endured some sort of sexual violation, visited upon her by a man.

It’s a classic setup for a rape revenge movie, except that there is no rapist–not a specific one that we meet, anyway. Felt is missing the inciting incident, which is surely a deliberate move. Whether or not a rape occurred is beside the point – the point is that Amy obviously feels deeply, painfully intruded upon in one way or another. She continues to feel further invaded and degraded throughout the film, while socializing with her roommate’s aggressive boyfriend or while on a first date with a man who becomes exasperated when she doesn’t acquiesce to his desires. In this way, the audience feels the buildup of these small and not-so-small intrusions along with Amy, from strangers and friends alike. Unlike your typical rape revenge movie, there is not one rapist, not one villain at which to lash out, but rather potential villains everywhere. Society is the villain, and Amy is just doing her best to cope with this new reality.

Her method of coping, and to an extent fighting back, involves frequent use of the aforementioned costumes. Most of them are grotesque caricatures of the male form – Amy roams the woods in a beige leotard with a large, dangling penis and a yarn head; another suit features freakishly bulging arm muscles that she pretends to flex, the camera panning down to her breasts, bound and flat. She dons a mask with tufted hair and stubble when her roommate tries to talk to her about her strange behavior. As things grow too somber, Amy sticks her tongue out of a hole in the mask, causing her friend to physically recoil. The suits are armor and weapon combined.

Later, Amy takes part in a seedy hotel room photo shoot, but instead of getting naked for the pimp-like photographer, she shows up wearing fake padded breasts and a pair of granny panties adorned with a lurid, intricate cloth vulva. The photographer uncomfortably tries to laugh it off and turn her away, but she and the other model, Roxanne, end up taking over the shoot, asserting their power in a situation where they previously felt powerless. The two women become fast friends, instantly linked by a shared mistrust of the opposite sex and, as Roxanne puts it, a desire to “leave [their bodies].”

The friendship is knocked off-balance when the two meet a guy named Kenny at a bar. The encounter begins as just another bonding activity of sorts for the women – Amy and Roxanne pick Kenny up, but then abandon him on the side of the road, laughing hysterically. Later, though, Amy runs into Kenny on the street and they seem to connect, resulting in a tentative, tender relationship that Roxanne has trouble accepting. Because this is a horror movie, we know that nothing good can come of it.

From there, Felt follows the familiar trajectory of the rape revenge flick, and the ending feels as inevitable as it does predictable. That, too, seems deliberate. When a person is stripped of her agency and her humanity, sometimes the only option she can see is to strike back. The movie meanders, often sacrificing tension or a cohesive narrative for the dull ache of authenticity, merely putting off what we know is to come. The sheer predetermination of the story may well be its message. We watch as the plot marches toward its inexorable conclusion, the cycle of violence playing out yet again.

The Angry Young Man in Horror

These films work to varying degrees, and the circumstances are diverse, but the core of each story is the same – one violent little boy. In a society where privileged young men (i.e. heterosexual, white, young adult males) are committing heinous crimes like date rape and mass shootings on an alarmingly regular basis, a fear of angry young men seems valid, and reason enough for a trend in horror.

This guest post by Claire Holland previously appeared at Razor Apple and is cross-posted with permission.

Be warned: This post is full of spoilers for Goodnight Mommy, Cub, and The Boy.

More often than not, horror movies reveal the fears of our time. In Axelle Carolyn’s excellent book, It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium, the author illustrates how our collective fears end up reflected in different ways on screen. Carolyn makes the argument (and backs it up) that the popularity of every big horror trend originated somewhere in our collective consciousness, connecting trends to a country’s political climate, terrorist attacks, and other big events that resonant deeply throughout cultures.

As the late and great Wes Craven said, “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.”

Carolyn’s book came to mind recently as I watched a crop of new films, each about the potential for violence in young boys: Goodnight Mommy, Cub, and The Boy. These films work to varying degrees, and the circumstances are diverse, but the core of each story is the same – one violent little boy. In a society where privileged young men (i.e. heterosexual, white, young adult males) are committing heinous crimes like date rape and mass shootings on an alarmingly regular basis, a fear of angry young men seems valid, and reason enough for a trend in horror.

Of course, these are horror movies, not case studies. As much as horror reflects society’s fears, it distorts them, making them ever more monstrous. In Goodnight Mommy, a young boy, Elias, suffers from a break with reality, imagining his dead twin brother is still alive and the woman living in his house is merely masquerading as his mother. In Cub, Boy Scout Sam stumbles onto the lair of Kai, a feral child living, and killing, out in the woods. The Boy takes the most realistic tack by far, examining the lonely childhood of a budding murderer, Ted, growing up in the middle of nowhere. These are the origin stories of the Angry Young Man, told through the lens of the horror genre.

There are numerous parallels between the three boys, who all engage in gradually escalating forms of violence: they kick chickens, kill dogs, and eventually wind up super gluing their mothers’ lips together or setting buildings full of people aflame. They’re all isolated: Elias’s brother and father are dead, his mother distant; Sam is a foster child without friends, a kid whom even the Boy Scout troop leader disdains; and Ted lives in a desolate motel with only his alcoholic father and a few passing guests for company. Most importantly, though, their attempts at connecting with others are constantly thwarted, or even actively discouraged.

When Elias, out of grief and guilt, insists that his mother speak to Lukas or make him breakfast, his mother reacts furiously, verbally and physically berating Elias. She slaps him and makes him to repeat aloud, “I will not speak to Lukas,” over and over again, when what Elias clearly needs is his mother’s love and understanding – and therapy. Bafflingly, Elias and his mother live in a lavish house that seems completely sequestered from the rest of the world, making the boy’s isolation all the more palpable. Given no one to talk to or work through his feelings with, Elias lashes out at the only person he can, creating an elaborate fantasy wherein his mother is an evil imposter who must be tortured until she can bring back his real mother and, presumably, the rest of his family.

In The Boy, Ted seems like a fairly normal kid, albeit one who is very comfortable with death. His father pays him pennies for picking up road kill, a pastime that eventually morphs into Ted luring animals onto the road. This is troubling, but the sort of behavior that might be curbed by an involved parent (preferably one who doesn’t demand road kill in exchange for attention). Under the nonexistent supervision of his father, however, Ted’s interest in death blooms, as does his inferiority complex – a dangerous combination. As with Elias, when Ted reaches out for companionship and acceptance – first to his father, and then to a kind but troubled drifter – he is beaten down, emotionally and physically. His pain and anger eventually culminate in murderous arson. This doesn’t seem like the story of a cold, calculating sociopath, no matter how much the filmmaker bills it that way. Ted is full of feelings, but because those feelings are never validated, he can only find destructive ways to express them.

Cub carries out this same model, but to cartoonish heights. Sam is the odd kid out in his Boy Scout troop, so when he encounters feral Kai on a camping trip in the woods, he feels an immediate kinship with the outcast and the two form a cautious rapport. At one point, the troop leader sics his dog on Sam as a mean joke, so Kai kidnaps the dog and hangs it from a tree so that Sam can kill it. Kai, a boy who has been used and abused by those bigger and stronger than him, considers this a gift. Sam is initially shocked and repulsed, but when he tries to help the dog and is bitten for his trouble, he retaliates, sick of being hurt by those he reaches out to again and again. Unable to truly forge a bond with anyone, Sam finally kills Kai so that he can take over the feral boy’s malevolent, vengeful persona.

The shared element in these three stories of angry young men is an unwillingness of the guardians and role models to nurture, or even condone, sensitivity in these boys. They constantly demand that the boys be tougher, thicker-skinned, less vulnerable, regardless of their actual feelings or needs. When Ted’s father allows a prom afterparty to take place at the motel, sans parents, he tells Ted, “The boys’ll be boys and the girls’ll be girls; good, harmless fun. You get what I’m sayin’?” One can easily imagine the kind of behavior Ted’s father is allowing, and tacitly condoning. “Boys will be boys” encompasses all manner of sins. When those same boys hurt Ted and his father blames him, Ted sees no other option than to become a stronger (read: hyper-masculine) version of those cruel boys in order to survive.

We can’t excuse violent criminals for their actions just because they may have had bad childhoods, but our society’s emphasis on the masculine above everything else is a real problem. Forcing young boys to “toughen up” before they’re ready only forces them to give up their empathy, and that benefits no one. These three stories are horrific, but they are, after all, just stories. Unfortunately, the real crimes committed by angry young men – Sandy Hook, Steubenville, Aurora – are as gruesome as fiction.