Eli at the Hospital Window

[a_contemplative_life]

I would disagree and would point to the post-shower, nude 360-degree twirl for Hakan as some evidence that Eli knew exactly what Hakan wanted. Also, Eli agrees to let Hakan lie with her and touch her for a night, but cuts him off when he asks for something further. The act of cutting him off suggests that they had had similar conversations in the past, and Eli knew what Hakan was about to ask. I'm sure whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant.

Perhaps the disagreement stems from the definition of the word sexuality. I include the adult understanding of it in the term. Hence I think Elis advances towards Håkan is the result of some kind of empirical knowledge Eli has achieved over the years, about how certain adults can be made help him, and this has nothing to do with sexuality as I define it.
I wonder if this a personally difference in pov, or if it also is a cultural thing?

I think we are left with a great deal of ambiguity about just how much Eli knew about sex. Here we are pretty much limited to the novel because there are essentially no sexual references in the film. A couple of points come to mind that point to a certain amount of knowledge--Eli's joke about how the girls the kiosk owner has sex with must be skinny; his laughter when zombie-Hakan finally appears in the doorway and begins to masturbate (he came all this way to jerk off?). But you are right, we don't really know how Eli has acquired this knowledge.

[metoo]

In the film, TA/JAL shied away from overt pedophilia for very good reasons. If, however, Håkan maintained a genuine, heartfelt, altruistic "love" of Eli, he would not become jealous of her playing in the snow with another child, nor ask her to stay away from said child in the form of a request to "do one thing for me." Also, you have ignored the obvious gratification he expressed at Eli's caress.

Wouldn't any utterly lonesome person be gratified in that situation? By the way, Per Ragnar (the actor) didn't know about the paedophilia, so at least he didn't consciously put any of that into the Håkan character.

Also children may be jealous when their favourite playmate plays with someone else. There doesn't have to be any sex involved in that reaction.

We know that novel Håkan is a paedophile, and that this is a strong motivator for him. But he is also a very lonely man, in desperate need to be loved (in the non-sexual sense). He was loosing Eli to Oskar, his jealousy could be explained by this fact only.

However, although Håkan didn't molest children and never made any sexual approaches to his students while still being a teacher, he did seek out other paedophiles. He was a member of a circle with similar interests, he even went to a gathering (once, apparently) where a young boy had been recruited to serve him and the other men. But then again, in that situation he shied away from the boy. To me, it seems that what Håkan needed wasn't sex per se, but love. He found that he didn't want the unloving, mechanical sex he was offered by the boy.

But isn't it a common misconception to mistake sex for love? Isn't that what we are taught? In what movie do the main characters not immediately proceed with sex, as a sign that they are mutually in love?

With Eli, though, Håkan thought he could have it all. And Eli helped him on the way, didn't take him out of his belief that Eli was an adult in a child's body, probably even presented himself that way. Eli told Håkan he loved him, and Håkan believed it, for a while.

[drakkar]

And just for the record: wouldnt it be just perfect for a paedophile that his beloved one stayed young and beautiful, and didnt turn old and unattractive in a couple of years?
Perhaps another reason for Håkans devotion.

[metoo]

And just for the record: wouldnt it be just perfect for a paedophile that his beloved one stayed young and beautiful, and didnt turn old and unattractive in a couple of years?
Perhaps another reason for Håkans devotion.

Well ... that's a wish others might make, too.

[a_contemplative_life]

I don't disagree that Hakan wanted to be loved, and wanted to experience true love. But when the opportunity came for him to express his inmost desire, he chose sensuality instead:

"Maybe I'll say something .. . if you do this for me."
Eli looked quizzically at Håkan. Then turned 180 degrees.
Saliva spurted into his mouth, he swallowed. Looked. A physical sensation of how his eyes devoured what was in front of them. The most beautiful thing there was in the world. An arm's length away. An endless distance.
"Are you ... hungry?"
Eli turned around again.
"Yes."
"I'll do it for you. But I want something in return."
"What is it?"
"One night. All I want is one night."
"OK."
"I can have that?"
"Yes."
"Lie next to you? Touch you?"
"Yes."
"Can I. .."
"No. Nothing more. But that. Yes."
"Then I'll do it. Tonight."
Eli crouched down next to him. Håkan's palms burned. Wanted to caress. Couldn't. But tonight. . . .

Later, while on the hunt, he is troubled by thoughts of failure, of the ramifications:

What if he didn't manage to find anyone? If he came home without anything? His beloved wouldn't die, he was sure of that. A difference from the first time. But now there was another aspect, a wonderful one. A whole night. A whole night with the beloved body next to his. The tender, soft limbs, the smooth stomach to caress with his hand. A lighted candle in the bedroom whose light would flicker over silken skin, his for a night. He rubbed his hand over his member that throbbed and cried out with longing.

Hakan is neither the first nor the last person to choose sexual gratification over genuine love; in that he is similar to a great many of us.

An interesting thought experiment: what would a Hakan not mired in pedophilia have asked Eli in the above-quoted passage?

[metoo]

Yes. I had forgot that episode. Håkan was rather obsessed with sex. Sufficiently so to commit cold-blooded murder.

Was he like that all the time, also before the fire in Karlstad? Or did his company with Eli make him that way?

I have some problem imagining him that obsessed while still being a teacher.

[sauvin]

You wouldn't necessarily have to be attracted to children to want or ask for what Hakan certainly seems to be wanting and asking for here. Sexuality can be an awfully funny thing, and people who are otherwise on the "straight and narrow" can stray in moments of odd weakness or when bound by unusual circumstance. Hakan and Eli are cohabiting a kind of prison cell, an intimate arrangement that might push even a "normal" man's sensibilities into directions he would never have otherwise entertained.

I'm certainly not arguing that Hakan isn't a paedophile, but the character in the book is complex and conflicted, and has a clearer idea of what love is than many I've met personally. He's a monster, but so is Eli; monsters cannot reasonably expect to form and sustain "normal" relationships. The passage ACL quotes could be seen as a dark reflexion of what happens such developing "normal" relationships where people (knowingly or not) negotiate for balance and for boundaries, and if they're operating largely in the dark around this alien concept of "love", each could be forgiven (at least to an extent) for having to contend with severe social development issues.

So I've argued in the past that Eli's vampirism is something of a red herring, albeit a nearly perfect one, so I'll argue here that Hakan's paedophilia is, too. This thought was brought home rather forcefully a couple days ago when ACL simply (and forcefully) said precisely this in a judgemental tone that seemed to preclude any possibility of compassion or understanding. Here, then, where Eli stands in stark contrast not only to our swaggering and boastful Dracula with his old, crumbling castles and his crumbled dreams of past glory, Hakan stands as an even more diminutive reflexion of Eli: he's old where she's young, mortal where she's not, physically at great disadvantage where she's apparently powerful. What they have in common are diseases (real or not, common or not) that cut them off from society.

Am I full of it? I really don't know anything about paedophiles, but none of the stories I've heard have a paedo being so focused and so fixated on a single child, and none have a paedo so willing to lay his life aside - or lay it down - for the object of his desire. If we were to look a bit more closely, might we not find this fixation also deceptive, that it masks something else?

[Jameron]

I don't dispute that Eli came to realize what sort of a person Håkan was, and chose to remain with him so that he would serve her needs. In a sense, she "chose" to use him, and I only put quotes around that word because I think Eli is a person for whom the idea of having free choices does not fit very well, at least not in the sense that you or I might understand that expression. In fact, due to her unique and tragic circumstances, Eli's choices in terms of finding companionship were very curtailed, to put it mildly. In the final quoted line we see Eli putting Håkan off and stringing him along, just as she did by agreeing to spend the night with him but not to allow anything further. The bottom line is that Eli is desperately in need of blood, is for whatever reason strongly repulsed by the idea of getting it herself, and will agree to or do what it takes to motivate Håkan to go out and kill.

I would dispute that Eli 'came to realise' about Håkan's paedophilia, I would say that she already knew, and that it was in part contributory to her choosing him. It was a method of controlling him that she knew she could use.

I agree that Eli doesn't have free choice as we would see it, she is forced by her circumstances to choose someone. The only real choice she has is who will she pick to help her, and I would also say that that choice is a short lived one as her hunger would take over if she couldn't find help soon enough.

I would strongly disagree with your claim that Eli did not really understand love, because Eli clearly had a loving relationship with her own mother. IMO, what you are seeing in the quoted exchange is something that Eli knows, at a level she is not willing to admit to Hakan, is not really love.

Eli may have understood love when she was alive, as a child. But I would say that that was a very long time ago, and the intervening time has been made up of horrors and depression that we could only guess at. The story of Eli as I understand it is one of someone losing their humanity, only to have it restored by an unlikely hero. For Eli to have lost a full grip on what love is, is understandable. I would also suggest that the love a child feels for their parent, a boy for his Mother especially, is not at all the same love the one can feel for one's peers, and different again for the object of one's dreams. Love is a very confusing thing, just ask Percy Sledge.

I don't agree that Eli is playing a game with Håkan in that passage, not from a knowing stance at least. I see that she is genuinely baffled by Håkan's definition of love being all or nothing. But I can see how it can be taken that way.

All of which underscores my point that Eli's scope of choices when finding someone are very restricted. Håkan was probably among the least offensive of her helpers.

Yes it does underscore your point, but it also illustrates that Eli knows upfront what she is getting ... the dregs. She is fully aware of what is in store for her so she goes in with her eyes wide open and in control. She has to be in control by sheer virtue of the fact the killing her during the day is just so easy. She 'has' to be in control.

Well, Håkan certainly found it convenient to believe that Eli was in charge. His view of Eli as an old person in a child's body was (along with his self-professed desire to lay down his life for her) the second pillar supporting his ability to sleep at night and maintain some notion that he wasn't evil. After all, if she is really 200 years old, then he is not a pedophile, plain and simple. But we know from what Eli told Oskar that she does not actually fit this mold. She is actually more akin to a perpetual child. I believe that the longer Håkan spent with Eli, the more he would come to realize this, because the judgments that children make are immature and readily distinguishable from those of a mature adult. This is true even for children who are very bright, because intelligence does not equal wisdom. Håkan is a perceptive person, and one would expect him, sooner or later, to come to the realization that Eli is more akin to a perpetual child than a 200+ year-old person masquerading in a child's body. The latter would be unlikely to relish a game of tickling and playing "hide the key." So I think there was plenty of "using" all the way around.

Yes, Håkan is well versed in self justification. He uses the 'It's not me in charge, it's not my fault' defence overtly at least twice, maybe three times in the book. But in this case I think he knows that Eli doesn't age (am I wrong?) and that he will have a 'child' beloved for the rest of his life. When we see him upset and bemused by the 'hunt the key' game I think this is also jealousy, as he links the change in Eli with her befriending Oskar, and the white snake of jealousy sits in his chest. If there were no Oskar I think he would be more than happy to play childish games with Eli, because she would be playing them with, and because of, him [Håkan]. So I don't see him being put off by Eli's childishness. Also, isn't there a reference in the book to them having played 'hunt the key' at some other point in the past before they came to Blackeberg? Maybe I dreamed that bit though ... I'll have to check.

In the film, TA/JAL shied away from overt pedophilia for very good reasons. If, however, Håkan maintained a genuine, heartfelt, altruistic "love" of Eli, he would not become jealous of her playing in the snow with another child, nor ask her to stay away from said child in the form of a request to "do one thing for me." Also, you have ignored the obvious gratification he expressed at Eli's caress.

Again, I just saw Håkan relishing a rare showing of sympathy from Eli, I didn't see anything sexual in it.

.

[drakkar]

I read the book as Oskar helps Eli rediscover the ability to truly love. During the first pages we see an Eli who thinks he loves Håkan (help each other survive), but that is an entirely different thing than what later develops between E&O.

[a_contemplative_life]

Yes. I had forgot that episode. Håkan was rather obsessed with sex. Sufficiently so to commit cold-blooded murder.

Was he like that all the time, also before the fire in Karlstad? Or did his company with Eli make him that way?

I have some problem imagining him that obsessed while still being a teacher.

Probably fair to say that Eli "grew on him."