<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As a woman, would you rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It feels like everyone is talking about Curry Barker’s Obsession right now. I saw a clip of the movie last week and was pretty immediately interested. The scene I saw was the one in the restaurant when Bear confronts Nikki about her dad. Inde Navarrette’s acting was so enamouring to me. I had seen others comparing it to Jennifer’s Body but I have to say this movie was not that kind of “light-hearted” horror “good for her” movie I was expecting after that comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The movie starts with Bear practicing his confession of love to Nikki with his friend Ian and a random waitress. At first I thought the confession in this scene was very heartfelt and I didn’t understand why Ian was so hell bent on shooting it down. In retrospect it makes a lot more sense because later in the movie, we learn that Ian and Nikki had been sleeping together before the wish. Ian knows the whole time that Nikki has no interest in Bear which is why he tries so hard later in the movie to break them up. It’s clear to Ian that Bear doesn’t know much about Nikki, for an obvious example, he doesn’t even know that Nikki is estranged from her dad despite the other characters being pretty certain about this fact. In the bar scene, it’s Sarah that asks about Sandy and gives Bear a hug, not Nikki. I can see how people interpret Nikki’s behaviors as a crush, but when you think about these clear points in the plot set up, it becomes very obvious that Nikki does not have interest in Bear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s a lot of odd defense for Bear that I’ve seen on the internet. “He didn’t know what was going to happen!” “He had good intentions!” “He just wanted someone to love him!” All of these points are correct but they completely miss the bigger picture. After the wish, Bear has multiple opportunities to break the wish or put an end to Nikki’s suffering, but he doesn’t. In fact, he doubles down on his choices repeatedly. This brings us to the scene in the restaurant, when Bear finds out that Nikki’s father does not actually have cancer. When he confronts her about it and she freaks out, he chooses to comfort her and later they’re seen having sex like nothing weird even happened. He doesn’t choose to do that because he’s scared of her at this point, he does that because he’s scared to lose someone who loves him. Throughout the film, it becomes obvious that Bear does not love Nikki, he only loves being loved. This is reinforced in the last scene when “Freaky Nikki” makes a wish of her own which we’re supposed to assume was that she wanted Bear to love her. If he had already loved her, the wish wouldn’t have done anything. If he had loved her, he wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to the possible remediations when she was clearly suffering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bear is presented to us as an aloof but overall good guy, all-the-while he is the film’s villain. When the real Nikki speaks to Bear in the middle of the night, begging him to kill her, he says “What’s so bad about being with me?” turning defensive and completely missing the point that he is holding her hostage. In the scene where they have sex after the restaurant, Nikki can be heard moaning while her face shows horror and tears streaming. He can see her real personality breaking through frequently and chooses to ignore it. When he finally decides to call the number on the back of the box, he asks to ALTER the wish because he still wants her to love him, despite her suffering. He just doesn’t want to deal with her ‘tantrums’ anymore. Instead of making her free, he wants to change her even further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it’s fascinating and SO telling why I’m seeing many women have such a genuinely horrified reaction to this movie. There’s an obvious sub-theme to this movie about abusive relationships. But I see so many people believing that Nikki is the abuser in this situation. What this movie is really about to me is taking away women’s autonomy. It’s about a level of control that women are subtly faced with every single day. The horror movies with staying power often reflect current political and social fears. The Thing can be taken as a metaphor for the cold war – being isolated and not knowing who or what the enemy is or when it might strike. Get Out is a bit more of an obvious commentary on race and exploitation. Obsession is a perfect showcase for the intense about of control and scrutiny that women are currently under. In North Carolina, a bill<\/a> was proposed recently that makes assisting with ending a pregnancy punishable by death. That’s not even the worst part because the bill defined life as starting at fertilization<\/em> and fertilization was defined as when the sperm enters the egg. If you know even a little bit about fetal development – that is insane. An egg can be fertilized but if it doesn’t implant on the uterine wall, then there’s no pregnancy. Eggs can often be fertilized and not be viable. The way that many birth controls work is NOT preventing fertilization but instead preventing implantation. That means under this bill taking birth control could be punishable by death. Sorry but that’s still not the most wild part. The bill says that anyone who suspects a person might have ‘ended their pregnancy’ through the above means can be legally killed. If you’re thinking there’s no way you read that right, you can read it for yourself: “It is a matter of indisputable scientific fact that a distinct and separate human life begins at Whether or not the bill ever has a chance of passing is besides the point. This is the level of control that Obsession is about. This bill could have been created by someone with “good intentions” albeit completely ignorant. Someone who thought this would save the lives of babies! That’s a little hard for me to believe personally, but I could see how others might see it that way. Accidental or intentional, loss of choice, autonomy, and sense-of-self abhorrent and dehumanizing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Obsession might be the horror movie of the year or even the decade, but I’ll never watch it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Spoilers Ahead] “As a woman, would you rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear?” It feels like everyone is talking about Curry Barker’s Obsession right now. I saw a clip of the movie last week and was pretty immediately interested. The scene I saw was the one in the restaurant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies-and-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nicolelena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
the moment of fertilization. As such, that new human life is recognized by the State as an
individual person, entitled to the protection of the laws of this State from the moment of
fertilization until the moment of natural death. Any person who willfully seeks to destroy the life
of another person, by any means, at any stage of life, or succeeds in doing so, shall be held
accountable for attempted murder or for first degree murder, respectively. Any person has the
right to defend his or her own life or the life of another person, even by the use of deadly force
if necessary, from willful destruction by another person. The State has an interest and a duty to
defend innocent persons from willful destruction of their lives and to punish those who take the
lives of persons, born or unborn, who have not committed any crime punishable by death.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n