What did you think of the parents and the parental themes in this movie?
Scott, like Shakespeare's Prince Hal with Falstaff, touts Bob as his true spiritual father; he denounces his real father but nevertheless accepts his financial inheritance. Mike's father has nothing to offer him, either spiritually or financially.
I love that Van Sant turns the typical Odyssean father quest into a mother quest for Mike. He seems to idealize her, even though it's not really clear why — he appears to have faith in the solidity and permanence of the parent-child bond, as we all probably do, even when it's clear that the bond has been shattered or never really existed in the first place.
Mike talks about how he might have been "normal" if his family had been normal. And Scott asks, "What's normal?"
And then there are the street kids who seem parentless, familyless, except for Bob and one another.
There seems to be a theme that, despite your actual blood relations and the things they give you or fail to give you, "what thou lovest well is thy true heritage." In other words, for a lot of people, especially outsider-types or people who weren't raised by June and Ward Cleaver, whatever love and comfort they eke out of life will be what they have managed to forge on their own.
6 comments:
Mike's thing with his mother was interesting. He seems to idealize her, as you say, or at least the idea of her. He seems to really crave that kind of maternal attention. At the same time, he knows that his mother had sex with her older son -- that his brother is also his father. It's hard to know, really, how that situation might affect your relationship with your mother, but I would think it might make you less likely to idealize her. But who knows. The guy is clearly monumentally screwed up.
I kind of thought that someone with Mike's sexual knowledge of the world — and all the crazy things people do for physical fulfillment — might be less likely to judge someone, especially his mother, for crossing a sexual line.
I could understand that, I guess. But he wouldn't worry that she would see him in an inappropriate way? And how would he react if she did?
I sort of gathered that the mother-son pairing was more a function of her loneliness and despair and neediness than out-and-out depravity. Her childhood was probably rough-and-tumble like Mike's; sexuality is probably the only thing men ever valued in her, so maybe that's the only way she really knows how to relate to them, even when it's not appropriate.
And Mike was imagining, cherishing an idealized version of his mother — the one who protects him and assures him that everything is going to be all right, not the actual mother, the one who abandoned him and left him so terribly vulnerable to the world's ugliness.
It's probably a blessing that he didn't find her because actually meeting up with her again would probably shred his illusions of her — the only person in the world on whose affections he had a claim.
And there's a little of the mother in the son. Mike conceives of his love for Scott as sexual and romantic, and it probably is. But what he really seems to be after is emotional intimacy with another human being, and the only way he knows how to go about that is sexually.
I think it's significant, too, that Mike, unlike Scott, is not well educated or culturally literate. When someone asks him about the Sinead O'Connor show, he says, sort of mystified, that he doesn't go to concerts. He has some street smarts, but he lacks emotional/intellectual resources. His experience of the world is very raw, very close to the bone, which is what makes his confession of love so moving, because it's completely guileless.
Yes, well-said.
Post a Comment