This story, and childhood and growing up

[lombano]

Sometimes members touch upon a certain nostalgia for childhood - nothing wrong or unusual about that, but it seems rather peculiar in the context of this story (I'm putting this in the LMI section but my intention is that this is about all three incarnations of this story). After all, even film Oskar's childhood isn't exactly idyllic, and book Oskar's and Owen's childhoods are even worse; Eli's childhood has been utterly horrific, and it's reasonable to assume Abby's childhood hasn't been all fun and games.
Reeves has said (and this is largely why I'm posting in this section) that this story is about 'the pain of growing up.' I don't really agree with his assessment, but it does seem to me far more true to the novel and the original film than any idealisation of childhood or adolescence. LMI has a theme of puberty gone wrong, most clearly in Abby's vampirical appearance.
In the novel, after Oskar strikes back and the bullying temporarily ceases, Oskar feels he no longer belongs with his peers, and I was left strongly with the feeling that he has matured considerably, though not joined the adult world. The scene in the original film where Oskar closes the doors of his toy cars can be seen as a symbolic end of childhood (if memory serves, TA said somewhere this was his intention).
I view this as almost an anti-coming-of-age story; Oskar/Owen decisively severs his ties to the adult world, and casts his lot with a perpetual kid. In LTODD, this is taken even further, with Oskar perpetually freezing himself in childhood. There is a certain paradox in that, while all childhoods shown are horrible, Oskar/Owen casts his lot with someone who can't grow up. This is less paradoxical, however, if we distinguish between maturity and joining the adult world that immediately surrounds Oskar/Owen, which isn't particularly mature and is characterised by abdicating responsibility (his parents, esp. Owen's, Lacke et al, etc, basically all adults to some degree save the LMI cop, Virginia and book Avila - Tommy seems to want to join the adult world, but on his own terms and definitely not Blackeberg's). So Oskar at least matures to some degree (I'm far more doubtful in Owen's case) and leaves his childhood, but rejects the adult world, whereas in coming-of-age stories the two are equated.

[sauvin]

Somebody in a recent PM to me commented that he thought we were "getting close" to the truth of why LTROI touched us so much. Maybe we are, and maybe we aren't; there seem to be an awful lot of pressure points involved, with no single point having clearly defined effect. They all seem to be interacting in myriad tangled ways.

It's fascinating you've brought this up because something similar had been going through my own mind in the past couple of weeks. This is a story about children developing a relationship of a gravity and depth that few children that age can achieve, and it seems to resonate with how we remember our own childhoods.

Sound bite version: both Oskars had to try to grow up way too fast.

One quibble, while I continue to try to collect my own hazy thoughts: of the three boys, only Owen seems to me to have been put into a position of arrested development. A case could be made that Thomas himself never grew towards adulthood - that, like Leon in "The Professional", he didn't grow up, he just grew older. The very taglines associated with the movie aren't very encouraging: "Innocence dies. Abby doesn't." and "She'll keep you safe. She'll keep you forever". Owen didn't grow one d%#n bit from beginning to end - he was a quivering mass of nerves before she came around, he was an even bigger quivering mass of nerves when he looked up at her from the pool. He also didn't renounce a d%#n thing - he simply ran away from it.

Oskar, on the other hand, may have definitively turned his back on humanity at large (without necessarily renouncing his own humanity, mind you), but that doesn't mean he necessarily turned away from adulthood. Unlike Owen, who chose $deity knows what, Oskar chose love, and he chose hope.

As for "maturity", I have a feeling this is going to be another one of those words that we all have different "definitions" for. Grab your Nomex underwear, folks, we're gonna have another flamefest!

[intrige]

What I have figured out, of those who I knows of, quite many have been bullied. In their younger years or later.. "Sympathy" might do it, along with being a sucker for romance?

The fact that we all are so drawn to such a dark story tells us a lot about us selves. Does anyone have anything to add on this one? A very "Intruiging" thought.

[lombano]

Owen didn't grow one **** bit from beginning to end - he was a quivering mass of nerves before she came around, he was an even bigger quivering mass of nerves when he looked up at her from the pool. He also didn't renounce a **** thing - he simply ran away from it.

Which is related to the crucial distinction between joining the world of the adults immediately around the boy and gaining maturity - there is a crucial difference between running away and renouncing something. Oskar is maturing and is taking charge of his own life, and part of it is his decision to disown Blackeberg. Owen hates Los Alamos, but never is in charge of his own life and he neither renounces nor embraces Los Alamos, he flees with Abby. This may indeed have been what happened to Thomas also.
The adult world of Blackeberg reminds of when in King Lear the fool tells Lear that his problem is he grew old without ever having matured, the drunks being the epitome of it.

The fact that we all are so drawn to such a dark story tells us a lot about us selves. Does anyone have anything to add on this one? A very "Intruiging" thought.

I tend to be very drawn to dark stories, particularly when depressed (though I find LTROI uplifting), esp. when like LTROI they are also on some level optimistic or at least not nihilistic.
I think to become infected one needs to have experienced alienation/isolation/loneliness.

[lombano]

So Oskar at least matures to some degree (I'm far more doubtful in Owen's case) and leaves his childhood, but rejects the adult world, whereas in coming-of-age stories the two are equated.

In fact I can think of no other such story in which the protagonist both rejects the adult world and gains maturity, generally they're either equated or the protagonist just rejects the adult world, as in Tin Drum, though perhaps there is a touch in Melody.

[sauvin]

I think to become infected one needs to have experienced alienation/isolation/loneliness.

Yes, I think here is where the nubs meet the nasties.

[PeteMork]

I think to become infected one needs to have experienced alienation/isolation/loneliness.

Yes, I think here is where the nubs meet the nasties.

At last. Something we may all agree on. A small but significant element of the Truth, perhaps?

[PeteMork]

Sometimes members touch upon a certain nostalgia for childhood - nothing wrong or unusual about that, but it seems rather peculiar in the context of this story (I'm putting this in the LMI section but my intention is that this is about all three incarnations of this story). After all, even film Oskar's childhood isn't exactly idyllic, and book Oskar's and Owen's childhoods are even worse; Eli's childhood has been utterly horrific, and it's reasonable to assume Abby's childhood hasn't been all fun and games.
Reeves has said (and this is largely why I'm posting in this section) that this story is about 'the pain of growing up.' I don't really agree with his assessment, but it does seem to me far more true to the novel and the original film than any idealisation of childhood or adolescence.

Sounds reasonable…but then would this film have infected any of us if the protagonists were grown men, one of whom had been castrated at a young age and the other had no sex drive, thus making their growing love for each other equally unselfish? And to make them pariahs and thus, more sympathetic, perhaps they both had leprosy (The first one having being infected during the castration) and were shunned by all and bullied by others?

If not, why did they have to be children for the film to affect us so? Or did they?

Just wondering….

[sauvin]

... would this film have infected any of us if the protagonists were grown men, one of whom had been castrated at a young age and the other had no sex drive, thus making their growing love for each other equally unselfish? And to make them pariahs and thus, more sympathetic, perhaps they both had leprosy (The first one having being infected during the castration) and were shunned by all and bullied by others?

If not, why did they have to be children for the film to affect us so? Or did they?

Just wondering….

They had to be children. They had to be completely emotionally naked.

Eli i's already lost, has been for some considerable time, but she had to be apparently young enough to appeal to Oskar as an equal. An apparently twentysomething Eli striking up a romance with a really twelvesomething Oskar would present manifold difficulties. It'd be a very hard sell, and I seriously doubt even the peerless JAL/TA team could have pulled it off.

Come on, now, people, let's see a show of hands: how many of you watched Harold and Maude? He was a young man, in his teens if I'm not mistaken, and she was d%#n near EIGHTY. People who've seen it may remember having seen it if you mention it, but they would probably never dredge up the movie unprompted.

If you'll notice, LTROI and LMI are more or less Oskar- or Owen-centric. This young man isn't a man yet, but is no longer truly a little boy, still at the height of his open sensitivity, still unarmoured, still unembittered. Still incompletely formed.

The movies' darknesses strike us in part because we can't help wondering just what our own children might be up to when they're talking to "themselves" in their beds moments before falling asleep, or what kind of trouble they might be getting into - and with whom - when they're out in the playground or courtyards. We can't be with them sixty seconds out of every minute in every hour of every day of their young lives, and we have to have a bit of faith that if we exercise due vigilance over them without smothering them, everything's going to be OK. We have to have that faith because we can't know it.

If the two protagonists had been men in their sixties, one of them castrated and afflicted with some homicidal disorder, and the other a weak and bullied geek, we'd have a much harder time empathising with them because in the backs of our minds are two thoughts: "They should be old and strong enough to take care of themselves" and "What the [deleted], they'll be dead soon enough anyway, who cares about them?"

And, in fact, in the novel, we're given precisely that: an old man, bullied and outcast because people don't agree with some of his tastes. Do we feel any sympathy for him?

I wonder where I hid my shotgun....?

As "politically incorrect" as this kind of attitude might seem on the surface, it's still just as hard-wired into all of us as is a grown man's inability to ignore Virginia's luscious forbidden fruit as Owen spies on her with a telescope. Women and children first, and there are Darwinian arguments for it.

The second reason the children had to (appear to) be young, vulnerable and unformed because, well... they are we, and we are they. They are the avatars of the selves we were before the world splattered a hardening crust of disillusionment on us. Oskar and Eli are mirrors of those selves that still survive hidden deep within ourselves, the voices of joy and of terror we hear when we dream.

But I don't think this brings us substantially closer to PeteMork's "Truth". We've known this for a couple of years.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

[DMt.]

Something about sign and symbol?

A sign is definable and delimited, a symbol admits of endless interpretation and is ultimately undefinable...?

The verbal sign 'Mars', for example, refers specifically and only to the next planet out from the Sun; the symbol 'Mars' is a referent for a spectrum of qualities ranging from selfless courage to murderous brutality, from foolhardy impulsiveness to a warrior's finely-honed discipline, from leadership to loutishness, and on and on.