gsyh
in
ssa_gideon
Watching Princess Bride with Adult Eyes / Little Gideon (and Reid) and Creepiness
The Theme of This Post: Ruined Childhoods
Mandy Patinkin plays Inigo Montoya, who have dedicated his life to revenge after an evil duke
a) murdered his father the sword smith, whom he loved very much
b) scarred Inigo on both his cheeks to taunt him about his powerlessness
c) this was when Inigo was eleven years old
The Sadistic Killing Couple - Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen...and sooo many unfortunate implications:
- Humperdinck on his plans for Buttercup: "But it's going to be so much more moving when I strangle her on our wedding night."
Humperdinck does not draw his passions from a common spring - he's utterly utterly unmoved by Buttercup's beauty, of face of character. He plans to strangle her now, but earlier, he hired someone to kill her when she was elsewhere, he has no interest in Buttercup at all.
Excerpts:
[Scene: Forested area. Large trees. Rugen is searching a tree
trunk]
Count Rugen:Hmmm. Now where is that secret knot? It's impossible
to find. Hah! Are you coming down into the Pit?
Westley's got his strength back. I'm starting him on
the Machine tonight.
Humperdinck:Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work,
but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan,
my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilder
to frame for it. I'm swamped!
Count Rugen:Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you
haven't got anything.
[Scene: Pit of Despair]
Count Rugen:Beautiful, isn't it? Took me half a lifetime to
invent it. I'm sure you've discovered my deep and
abiding interest in pain. At present, I'm writing
the definitive work on the subject, so I want you to
be totally honest with me on how The Machine makes
you feel. This being our first try, I'll use the
lowest setting.
[Rugen moves a lever from zero to one. Water starts
flowing, powering the machine. Wesley writhes in
pain.]
As you know, the concept of the suction pump is
centuries old. Well, really that's all this is
except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking
life. I've just sucked one year of your life away. I
might one day go as high as five, but I really don't
know what that would do to you, so let's just start
with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me.
And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.
How do you feel?
Westley: < whimpers >
Script here
Later, Rugen was alarmed when Humperdinck upped the dial to 50, since that 'killed' Westley and Rugen wasn't done yet...
...and Count Rugen is a huge creeper:
Count Rugen:You must be that little Spanish brat I taught a
lesson to all those years ago. Simply incredible.
Have you been chasing me your whole life, only to
fail now? I think that's the worst thing I've ever
heard. How marvelous.
1. The Prince wants to start a war, and we never learnt why, was it greed? That never came up, so we are left with: The Prince wants to start a war because he just wants to hurt people. He had the forest cleared of thieves before the wedding. When Buttercup called him a coward to his face, he was angry, but not because she rejected him, he has no interest in her and was amazed at how much his people adores her. He's a deeply insecure coward who derives a sense of power from being destruction.
2. The Duke creeps me out the most, because christ, he seem to enjoy suffering for suffering's sake and he's much more preferential. The Prince 'killed' Westley in a rage, but the Duke spends a lot of time on his victims...
Albino: [sighs] The prince and the count always insist on
everyone being healthy before they're broken.
Albino said that it was The prince and the Count, but frankly, I think it was more the Count, the torture chamber was his thing, while the Prince takes pride in being a great hunter, in bringing down elusive prey after prey after prey.
Here's the strange thing about the story, strange until you realise it's actually creepy Fridge Horror-ish:
-- At the beginning of the movie:
Inigo: My father was slaughtered by a six-fingered man. Was
a great sword-maker, my father. When the six-
fingered man appear and request a special sword, my
father took the job. He slave a year before it was
done.
Dread Pirate Roberts: < admiring the sword >
I've never seen its equal.
Inigo: Six-fingered man returned and demanded it, but at one-
tenth his promised price. My father refuse. Without
a word, the six-fingered man slash him through the
heart.
1. The Sword: Count Rugen commissioned the beautiful sword, and when he returned for it one year later, he first offer to pay much less then the initially promised price, and then killed the swordsmith, and then Rugen left the sword behind. Surely the Dread Pirate Robert's opinion on swords must be worth something, and he said, he had seen no equal, but Rugen had left the sword he went to so much trouble for behind, coming back after one year, killing the swordsmith, torturing his kid, etc.
2. The Murder: I don't think Count Rugen was interested in the sword at all, someone like The Prince would kill the Swordsmith for a sense of power, but Rugen planned to kill the swordsmith all along, and the price was just an excuse:
In the beginning, the Dread Pirate Roberts or Westly defeated Inigo in duel, and when Ingio asked for a quick death, Westly spared his life, saying:
Westly: I would as soon destroy a stained-glass window as an artist like yourself.
...Westly spared Inigo, because he lives by the belief that the world would be a poorer place without art and beauty and true love, and Westly was not the sort of soul who would find any pleasure in making the world a poorer place.
The Prince and the Count does, Humperdinck is disgusted by the True Love that Buttercup and Westly has, and Rugen takes pleasure in destroying people.
...and here lies the problem with The Murder of the Swordsmith being Rugen's One True Goal for his little sidetrip to their village, where he had apparently left no name (so that Inigo only knew him as the man with six fingers on his right hand), in Inigo's words, because he was there to witness it: Without a word, the six-fingered man slash him through the heart. That was a quick death, for the sword smith.
3. The Intended Victim: was therefore little Inigo Montoya, Rugen wanted to leave him in ruin and for him to live on and suffer with the memory, and Inigo did:
Count Rugen:You must be that little Spanish brat I taught a
lesson to all those years ago. Simply incredible.
Have you been chasing me your whole life, only to
fail now? I think that's the worst thing I've ever
heard. How marvelous.
...and now, a brief on Gideon (and Reid)'s childhood, very brief because I think I want a long thing on the creepiness of Gideon. A lot of people have expressed being creeped out by Gideon when he was screaming in The Fox or when he laid on the bed in Plain Sight, imagining himself in the place of women who were raped and murdered. I get that instinctive creepiness, I feel it too, but much like that little girl from the well in The Ring, we must ask ourselves, WHY? Frankly, if I saw the little girl from the well, who was drowned and is now rotting - I would of course be horrified, but past initial instincts the horror should not be directed at the rotting little girl who was drowned, but the sons of bitches who did her in! Likewise for Gideon's creepy behaviour, tis but the symptoms of what was done to him.
Both Reid and Gideon were highly functioning mess. The more we got on Reid, on Reid's childhood, especially when we saw him exposed to additional traumas that left him exhibiting behaviour similar to Gideon...the more I'm convinced that Boston was only the final straw, Gideon already have nightmares from the jobs, everybody does, but something must have also happened in Gideon's childhood too, to make him feel unsafe, something that made him find a career in looking for monsters in every picture because that's what he was already doing...
In "Extreme Aggressor", I think it was Hotch or Morgan that notes that Gideon never stands with his back to a window, that sounds like the defensive response to an attack on his person, which Boston refreshed for him because it took away six persons that he might have leaned on. The way that while being kidnapped and tortured by Tobias was a torture in itself, for Reid, it was refreshing the earlier trauma of growing up with a loving but mentally unstabled parent, who couldn't protect him, from things including but not limited to being tied to the goalpost by his bullies after they have stripped him naked AND his mother didn't know he was gone when he finally got home! (and then there was the Gary Michaels thing, the creep who raped and murdered Reid's BFF, and was so close to getting to Reid that he actually played a game of chess with him in the park once, Reid could clearly remember his smiling face...).
First episode, Gideon was introduced as being a PTSD case due to Boston, but I think it's much more likely that it was Compound PTSD, and really could have used weekly therapy, something other than him reliving traumatic feelings sans coach by frequently imagining himself in the place of the victims. In "Fear and Loathing", Reid said that it was difficult for him this time, because this time, he knew what the victims were feeling before they died, so as they were going over the new case, Reid was repeatedly bringing up his own traumatic memory, and probably making it more traumatic by imagining himself in the place of the dead girls. This is something they show Reid doing on screen, and I think by implication, this is what Gideon was doing from episode one!
...ah, this post wasn't so brief, was it? I'll just leave this last link here, I don't know if I'll get around to writing "Thinking about the creepiness of Gideon" anytime soon. I was going to use "The Ring" a lot, the implied narrative of the movie really really bothered me, let's not help the murdered girl because of her extremely understandable anger of "why me and where was social services?", um, that guy she scared to death? He was scared by /her face/, but dude, the reason that little girl was standing before him, dripping wet with a rotting face, was because some assholes abused her and then left her to died in a well, for DAYS*, direct your horror that way, um, okay, link :
A Helpful Way to Conceptualize and Understand Reenactments
Michael S. Levy, Ph.D.
Received November 13, 1996; revised December 2, 1997; accepted December 4, 1997. From CAB Health and Recovery Services, Salem, and the Zinberg Center for Addiction Studies, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Address correspondence to Dr. Levy, 7 Island Way, Andover, MA 01810.
http://jppr.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/7/3/227
"At times, individuals actively reenact past traumas as a way to master them. However, in other cases, reenactments occur inadvertently and result from the psychological vulnerabilities and defensive strategies characteristic of trauma survivors. "
I didn't read the article yet, but that quote sounds about right.
* nobody else knew and nobody cared and so she died alone, that's why she wanted the tapes to be passed on - and nobody who watched it would actually died unless they they didn't pass it on, unless they kept mum about the murder of a child - I don't think death is a fair penalty, but I get where she's coming from, and I abhor the message The Ring seem to be aiming for, it's the victim's fault for not staying silent, for ruining our football games...
Mandy Patinkin plays Inigo Montoya, who have dedicated his life to revenge after an evil duke
a) murdered his father the sword smith, whom he loved very much
b) scarred Inigo on both his cheeks to taunt him about his powerlessness
c) this was when Inigo was eleven years old
The Sadistic Killing Couple - Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen...and sooo many unfortunate implications:
- Humperdinck on his plans for Buttercup: "But it's going to be so much more moving when I strangle her on our wedding night."
Humperdinck does not draw his passions from a common spring - he's utterly utterly unmoved by Buttercup's beauty, of face of character. He plans to strangle her now, but earlier, he hired someone to kill her when she was elsewhere, he has no interest in Buttercup at all.
Excerpts:
[Scene: Forested area. Large trees. Rugen is searching a tree
trunk]
Count Rugen:Hmmm. Now where is that secret knot? It's impossible
to find. Hah! Are you coming down into the Pit?
Westley's got his strength back. I'm starting him on
the Machine tonight.
Humperdinck:Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work,
but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan,
my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilder
to frame for it. I'm swamped!
Count Rugen:Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you
haven't got anything.
[Scene: Pit of Despair]
Count Rugen:Beautiful, isn't it? Took me half a lifetime to
invent it. I'm sure you've discovered my deep and
abiding interest in pain. At present, I'm writing
the definitive work on the subject, so I want you to
be totally honest with me on how The Machine makes
you feel. This being our first try, I'll use the
lowest setting.
[Rugen moves a lever from zero to one. Water starts
flowing, powering the machine. Wesley writhes in
pain.]
As you know, the concept of the suction pump is
centuries old. Well, really that's all this is
except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking
life. I've just sucked one year of your life away. I
might one day go as high as five, but I really don't
know what that would do to you, so let's just start
with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me.
And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.
How do you feel?
Westley: < whimpers >
Script here
Later, Rugen was alarmed when Humperdinck upped the dial to 50, since that 'killed' Westley and Rugen wasn't done yet...
...and Count Rugen is a huge creeper:
Count Rugen:You must be that little Spanish brat I taught a
lesson to all those years ago. Simply incredible.
Have you been chasing me your whole life, only to
fail now? I think that's the worst thing I've ever
heard. How marvelous.
1. The Prince wants to start a war, and we never learnt why, was it greed? That never came up, so we are left with: The Prince wants to start a war because he just wants to hurt people. He had the forest cleared of thieves before the wedding. When Buttercup called him a coward to his face, he was angry, but not because she rejected him, he has no interest in her and was amazed at how much his people adores her. He's a deeply insecure coward who derives a sense of power from being destruction.
2. The Duke creeps me out the most, because christ, he seem to enjoy suffering for suffering's sake and he's much more preferential. The Prince 'killed' Westley in a rage, but the Duke spends a lot of time on his victims...
Albino: [sighs] The prince and the count always insist on
everyone being healthy before they're broken.
Albino said that it was The prince and the Count, but frankly, I think it was more the Count, the torture chamber was his thing, while the Prince takes pride in being a great hunter, in bringing down elusive prey after prey after prey.
Here's the strange thing about the story, strange until you realise it's actually creepy Fridge Horror-ish:
-- At the beginning of the movie:
Inigo: My father was slaughtered by a six-fingered man. Was
a great sword-maker, my father. When the six-
fingered man appear and request a special sword, my
father took the job. He slave a year before it was
done.
Dread Pirate Roberts: < admiring the sword >
I've never seen its equal.
Inigo: Six-fingered man returned and demanded it, but at one-
tenth his promised price. My father refuse. Without
a word, the six-fingered man slash him through the
heart.
1. The Sword: Count Rugen commissioned the beautiful sword, and when he returned for it one year later, he first offer to pay much less then the initially promised price, and then killed the swordsmith, and then Rugen left the sword behind. Surely the Dread Pirate Robert's opinion on swords must be worth something, and he said, he had seen no equal, but Rugen had left the sword he went to so much trouble for behind, coming back after one year, killing the swordsmith, torturing his kid, etc.
2. The Murder: I don't think Count Rugen was interested in the sword at all, someone like The Prince would kill the Swordsmith for a sense of power, but Rugen planned to kill the swordsmith all along, and the price was just an excuse:
In the beginning, the Dread Pirate Roberts or Westly defeated Inigo in duel, and when Ingio asked for a quick death, Westly spared his life, saying:
Westly: I would as soon destroy a stained-glass window as an artist like yourself.
...Westly spared Inigo, because he lives by the belief that the world would be a poorer place without art and beauty and true love, and Westly was not the sort of soul who would find any pleasure in making the world a poorer place.
The Prince and the Count does, Humperdinck is disgusted by the True Love that Buttercup and Westly has, and Rugen takes pleasure in destroying people.
...and here lies the problem with The Murder of the Swordsmith being Rugen's One True Goal for his little sidetrip to their village, where he had apparently left no name (so that Inigo only knew him as the man with six fingers on his right hand), in Inigo's words, because he was there to witness it: Without a word, the six-fingered man slash him through the heart. That was a quick death, for the sword smith.
3. The Intended Victim: was therefore little Inigo Montoya, Rugen wanted to leave him in ruin and for him to live on and suffer with the memory, and Inigo did:
Count Rugen:You must be that little Spanish brat I taught a
lesson to all those years ago. Simply incredible.
Have you been chasing me your whole life, only to
fail now? I think that's the worst thing I've ever
heard. How marvelous.
...and now, a brief on Gideon (and Reid)'s childhood, very brief because I think I want a long thing on the creepiness of Gideon. A lot of people have expressed being creeped out by Gideon when he was screaming in The Fox or when he laid on the bed in Plain Sight, imagining himself in the place of women who were raped and murdered. I get that instinctive creepiness, I feel it too, but much like that little girl from the well in The Ring, we must ask ourselves, WHY? Frankly, if I saw the little girl from the well, who was drowned and is now rotting - I would of course be horrified, but past initial instincts the horror should not be directed at the rotting little girl who was drowned, but the sons of bitches who did her in! Likewise for Gideon's creepy behaviour, tis but the symptoms of what was done to him.
Both Reid and Gideon were highly functioning mess. The more we got on Reid, on Reid's childhood, especially when we saw him exposed to additional traumas that left him exhibiting behaviour similar to Gideon...the more I'm convinced that Boston was only the final straw, Gideon already have nightmares from the jobs, everybody does, but something must have also happened in Gideon's childhood too, to make him feel unsafe, something that made him find a career in looking for monsters in every picture because that's what he was already doing...
In "Extreme Aggressor", I think it was Hotch or Morgan that notes that Gideon never stands with his back to a window, that sounds like the defensive response to an attack on his person, which Boston refreshed for him because it took away six persons that he might have leaned on. The way that while being kidnapped and tortured by Tobias was a torture in itself, for Reid, it was refreshing the earlier trauma of growing up with a loving but mentally unstabled parent, who couldn't protect him, from things including but not limited to being tied to the goalpost by his bullies after they have stripped him naked AND his mother didn't know he was gone when he finally got home! (and then there was the Gary Michaels thing, the creep who raped and murdered Reid's BFF, and was so close to getting to Reid that he actually played a game of chess with him in the park once, Reid could clearly remember his smiling face...).
First episode, Gideon was introduced as being a PTSD case due to Boston, but I think it's much more likely that it was Compound PTSD, and really could have used weekly therapy, something other than him reliving traumatic feelings sans coach by frequently imagining himself in the place of the victims. In "Fear and Loathing", Reid said that it was difficult for him this time, because this time, he knew what the victims were feeling before they died, so as they were going over the new case, Reid was repeatedly bringing up his own traumatic memory, and probably making it more traumatic by imagining himself in the place of the dead girls. This is something they show Reid doing on screen, and I think by implication, this is what Gideon was doing from episode one!
...ah, this post wasn't so brief, was it? I'll just leave this last link here, I don't know if I'll get around to writing "Thinking about the creepiness of Gideon" anytime soon. I was going to use "The Ring" a lot, the implied narrative of the movie really really bothered me, let's not help the murdered girl because of her extremely understandable anger of "why me and where was social services?", um, that guy she scared to death? He was scared by /her face/, but dude, the reason that little girl was standing before him, dripping wet with a rotting face, was because some assholes abused her and then left her to died in a well, for DAYS*, direct your horror that way, um, okay, link :
A Helpful Way to Conceptualize and Understand Reenactments
Michael S. Levy, Ph.D.
Received November 13, 1996; revised December 2, 1997; accepted December 4, 1997. From CAB Health and Recovery Services, Salem, and the Zinberg Center for Addiction Studies, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Address correspondence to Dr. Levy, 7 Island Way, Andover, MA 01810.
http://jppr.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/7/3/227
"At times, individuals actively reenact past traumas as a way to master them. However, in other cases, reenactments occur inadvertently and result from the psychological vulnerabilities and defensive strategies characteristic of trauma survivors. "
I didn't read the article yet, but that quote sounds about right.
* nobody else knew and nobody cared and so she died alone, that's why she wanted the tapes to be passed on - and nobody who watched it would actually died unless they they didn't pass it on, unless they kept mum about the murder of a child - I don't think death is a fair penalty, but I get where she's coming from, and I abhor the message The Ring seem to be aiming for, it's the victim's fault for not staying silent, for ruining our football games...