...never give in.
This is mostly a random blog.
I reblog what I like and what I think it's important.
I reblog cute things, happy things, round things and sometimes also sad things. Just sometimes, because I think there's nothing wrong in being sad, but...
It’s not “everyone” acting like it’s normal. The majority of people know something’s wrong they just don’t have the tools to fix it. Maybe a plurality don’t know that the problem is capitalism, they blame it on something else, but they’re still aware there’s a problem. “Everyone” is just too exhausted from working 4 jobs, 50 hours a week to scream into the void in their spare time.
Punch Drunk Love shares thematic threads with Drive, tackling isolated, repressed loners and their attempts at finding connection in spite of their nature.
Barry [Sandler’s character] has had his whole character defined by violent outbursts after being pushed too far. He’s repressed. The abuse he’s suffered has put him in direct conflict with his own emotions, where he has to invalidate them when questioned (his decision to bring in the harmonium from the street, the pudding purchases) and avoids opening himself to nice emotions in an effort to suppress the negative, harmful ones.
Finally, at the end of the film, his violence is justified. It’s satisfying to see him take the tire-iron in hand and decimate his foes. You want to cheer him on, to shed his meek, cowed demeanor and become an awkward John Wick, raining down retribution.
It’s just like the end of Drive. The emotionally repressed, lonely, quiet guy in a fun jacket finally has moral permission to curb stomp all who would raise their hands against him or his love bobbed blonde haired love interest.
Except Punch Drunk Love has no elevator scene with the main character stomping in anyones head. Barry doesn’t have a scorpion on the back of his jacket. When he’s faced with the slimy boss of the whole operation, when he’s pushed past his limit, no one gets stabbed. Barry literally has the phone receiver (that we all want him to utilize as a blunt instrument) clenched in his hand. The predominant villain of his life is right there, within clobbering distance.
Barry doesn’t kill him, nor does he send the phone through the bank of large glass storefront windows. He effectively ends the cycle of violence. He doesn’t “win,” and no vigilante loner guy justice is served. He hands a confused store employee the phone receiver (cord still attached) and walks out of there to a happy ending, one where he allows himself to feel happiness.
whenever i see another tiktok girlie talking about how she wishes to have been a fangirl in 2010s i feel like a seasoned veteran overhearing a foolish youngin boasting about wanting to go to war for glory and adventure. you naive little idiot. you know nothing. you understand nothing. you weren’t there in the trenches. i have seen things, terrible things. i cannot plug in my phone charger at night without being plagued by the visions of Him
You know that Ada Limón poem where she’s like “i can’t help it i love the way men love”? my dad recently confessed to me that he became a shoemaker because they buried my grandma shoeless
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