Erik becomes a Machine of Rage. We are shown him beating a schoolmate to a bloody pulp. Rage consumes him. He is expelled and his mother sends him to a private school in a former country estate, so that he might finish high school.
Here he is thrown into the gnashing maw of Violence. Class and age set up a ruthless tyranny with the purpose of silencing all into participating in the system of Mindless and Heartless Cruelty. Erik has made a decision to never ever let his own Violence be manifested again. He struggles profoundly to stand up to the school’s patterns of Violence without using Violence in return. The system cannot tolerate his pacific and vocal stance, and keeps escalating the Brutality it directs against him, in order to get him to participate in the Dark Patterns.
Everywhere in the school, there are silent witnesses to his being brutalized: adult men, adult women, fellow students. Erik is not silent, he is never cowed. The greatest hurt to Erik is caused when the Bullies start brutalizing Eriks‘ only friend, gentle Pierre, and then when they arrange to have Erik’s first paramour, the kitchen girl, fired.
Finally, he does use Violence, in the Bully Ring, where newbies are beaten up and humiliated, put in their place, by two upper classmen. Erik thrashes the two who were to dole out his Humiliation. However, this time, in contrast to high school he is acutely mindful of his own violence, it does not control him.
Things are manipulated so that he is expelled. He then finally turns to an Ally for help – an attorney. The attorney employs language and law to confront Violence and Injustice, and, as a result, Erik wins, he is re-instated. He graduates.
Most importantly, he then stands up to his step-father. He is perfectly willing to use the threat of violence mindfully to stop this man from brutalizing him any more. We are not shown if he needs to employ these means, but step-father and Violence are clearly stopped.
MOVIE ASSOCIATIONS. Ondskan (Evil). I very much relate to Erik. I, too felt trapped in worlds of Violence in my teens: in my family and the Latvian world, as well as in the outside, American realm. What men think can and must be done to young males, to beautiful and strong youths, to outsiders, was and is appalling to me. Erik is mostly seen as a threat to the Herd. He is totally misunderstood. Labeled as a Rat, a Coward, a Bully, an Upstart: so many of the Herd’s shadows are projected violently onto him.
Erik has to fend for himself. And he does. No adults step up to help him directly. So young, he sees and feel upon his own skin and soul the Darkness the lurks in the hearts of men. I, too, had to fend for myself in the face of such Darkness.
Erik’s heart has somehow been annealed achieving a White Strength. It has been tempered to a state of Shining Steel. I knew this process when I was Erik’s age. How unfathomably cruel people can be, how soul-shatteringly cowardly. I didn’t understand, as doesn’t Erik, why people behave so abominably. And why they behave in such pashion toward him in particular. All I wanted was to be Seen and Loved. Instead, I became a projection screen for people’s unconscious stuff. Males perceived me as a Threat, to be fought and subdued. Women perceived me as a Rescuer, to be seduced and subdued.
I was a bit slicker than Erik, my Rage did not manifest itself in physical violence. I did use Voice to name and confront Injustice where I saw it, as does Erik. As happens to Erik, whenever I confronted Brutality against myself, the Male Pugilists and Female Seducers turned their mojo machines on High, in order to keep me bound within their small worlds.
My Rage came to be internalized. I turned it against myself, teetering on the brink of Insanity, of a Mental and emotional Breakdown for years.
F met Bret for coffee yesterday. B told F, as F reports it to me, that he (B) feels he has made a hash of his life and is considering divorcing Rachel. F to me; „We now need to consider and plan for some tong-term eventualities, you and I.“ Me: „Like providing for grandchildren?“ „Yes.“ F: „I feel so sad, so profoundly sad for Bret.“
Will B face up to some of his Demons and initiate changes in his life? It would be an extremely difficult process, arduous. B‘s pattern is to dissociate, traveling to Fantasy Land. We’ll see.
