In the journal article 'Perverse Relatedness' (see reference below) the film 'Gods and Monsters' is deconstructed by Dujovne to reveal the destructive narcissistic organisation of the key character in the movie, who is loosely based in character upon British film director, James Whale.
At the surface level, the plot shows an older man trying to entangle a young gardener in a confusing sexualised relationship. By the end of the drama it becomes clear that Whale intends for Boone (the young gardener) to kill him.
According to Dujovne, perverse relatedness in the clinic involves ego syntonic intent - perhaps most clearly emphasised in a client's pleasure in destroying help, and the helper. It is the province of the narcissistic personality type, that feels entitled to manipulate, exploit and destroy others to meet own ends. The Whale character that is portrayed in the movie is arrogant, contemptuous and defiant, justifying his revenge against his childhood sufferings with disdainful contempt for moral order. He's idealised a bad self, and so caring relationships are devalued, attacked and destroyed, with pleasure.
Whale is introduced in the film as a man convalescing from stroke, suffering flashbacks of enforced factory work that began under the enforcement of his father at 14 years of age. His childhood hatred seems to provide a cohesiveness, and he has been a recluse for 14 years. The stroke has penetrated his self-sufficiency, and has left him vulnerable, and dependent. His ex-lover is permitted to enter the scene early in the movie, but we are given to understand that Whale denigrates even this caring relationship. We see his contemptuous treatment of his housekeeper and his students - he appears vitalised by humiliating others, making one male student strip one piece of clothing per one question asked. He admits only love for a soldier he knew for a very short time - but, already dead, this love perhaps captures the character's perverse excitement about death and eroticism, fused together.
Boone is a handsome, unsophisticated, tattooed yard worker, who demeans the world as 'bullshit' and who believes he could, would, never be successful. He lies about having been a soldier - wanting a grand narrative to justify his existence. Whale, who at one time played with death narratives in the creation of horror movies, now, in narcissistic defensive response to major illness, half realised, hones in on Boone's needs for a father and treats him in the dehumanised way of his own father. He is aware that he deceives Boone, and enjoys attacking him.
Whale invites Boone to use his pool, without bathers, conveying his freedom from sexual taboo and social restriction. Verbally shocking statements are delivered in formal diction, and Whale works the relationship, using equalising statements, delivering adulation, engaging in a battle of will.
Whale through flattery manipulates Boone into false moments of intimacy, simultaneously denying Boone's communication, and strategically attacking Boone's self-image. He uses confusing-creating maneuvers to deliberately blur Boone's sense of what is real, denying Boone the truth of the words that express what he sees. A matador dance takes place - Boone needing relationship, Whale now expressing outright contempt and disdain, alternatively acting out with histrionics and pressuring Boone with passivity and silence.
In an effective maneuver to elicit compassion where Whale shows Boone how incompentent his artwork is - Boone, to distract Whale from his seeming humiliation, offers to pose, nude. Whale invades him sexually, intending to incite murder in Boone, with masochistic exhibitionism. Boone saves himself, disentangling himself from the perverse system almost at murder point. All that is left for Whale is suicide, drowning himself in his own swimming pool, seemingly triumphant in his all-powerful, idealised, destructive self.
Whale follows the law of his own desires, using ideology to seduce and exploit, gaining pleasure in destroying any goodness Boone offers. He frustrates Boone, lying in word and action, blurring Boone's sense of reality, violating his self-set limits. 'The perverse individual is skillful at pressuring the other into acting out and is expert at finding the perverse place in the other (Dujovne, 2002).
Boone himself oscillates between co-construction, deconstruction, passivity and counter-attack. Dujonve offers that 'the significant fuel for participation in a perverse dyad is fascination with the tantalising perverse ideology that thrives in the altered reality of the system' Ideology is communicated through actions and words, and Whale seduces Boone with infinite possibilities that exist without dependence: 'I love no one, I need no one, I envy no one'. Whale offers Boone the illusory hope that he may be able to get out of the sterile realities of his existence without actually having to deal with them.
The film asks that we consider our own perverse relatedness (or that might just be my way of responding to the world, there, with my grand 'We'. Let me rephrase that).
This film asked me to look at the ways that I seek to draw others into my own perverse agenda, in particular for me via the strategy of my own self-flagellating humilities. While I don't (think I) sell illusions to others, nor do I attempt to deflect attention to nonimportant matters (key strategies of the perversely related), I've been a party to a therapy 'game' in my own anorexic trauma-ridden past, subconsciously destroying chances of receiving help so provided.
I worry too that amongst my NLP-educated student peers, there's a blanket of 'needs' language that fluffs over a hegemony of self-satisficing perversity, with control and domination as it's shiny edging. I watch like a hawk for these tendencies within myself, and then take myself to task over paranoia and pettifoggering.
Ultimately, there's some usefulness in coming to terms with our own perverse reality orientation and ideology, and knowing what activates/animates us, for my thinking. The prompt to the consistent turn inwards and question, framed precisely here in the face of being denyed the truth of own perception, is perhaps the ultimate victory of Boone, in this movie.
Ref:
Dujovne, B. E. (2002). Perverse Relatedness, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 19(3), 525-539
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