From all of the choices we could make,
We seem to go for the ones that give us pleasure
From addictive temporary fixes
Through the ignorance of not understanding
The abuse we endure or project.
Only we can choose.
Our monstrous selves
Can teach us a lesson
And show us who we really are.
From the literal and metaphorical use of monsters, to the realisation and choices that battle through a fog of ignorance, main protagonist Gloria comes to terms with the choices she makes that essentially help her cope with the life she wants to lead.
A film intertwining the short sighted comedic monster effect, with the inclusion of addiction that doesn’t seem to harm anyone until it’s affecting everyone. The harm extends towards the dark domestic abuse that seems to stick to Gloria.
The addiction of alcohol can be a tricky thing, and here, in this film, it is presented as another night out, or rather, lock-in at a pub. Harmless, right?
The repetitiveness of this rhythm, especially when Gloria is given the job at Oscar’s bar, shows how a harmless act can snowball into a horrific method of ignorance.
How did she get into this scenario? Because Tim, her boyfriend, kicked her out of his apartment with the message to sort yourself out.
And so, her journey begins at her parents’ unrented house with strangely no furniture. A metaphor for a clean start? Perhaps.
So, alcohol addiction. The first on the list. Gloria is described as a highly functional alcoholic, which means, she can still manage to appear normal, even gain some success in a career, however it was through the apparent repeated missed meetings with Tim. Her excuses mounting up to make Gloria appear flaky and unreliable that Tim says it was the final straw. Even through their short conversation, in which Tim doesn’t even bother to repeat so the audience can catch up, indicates the rhythm of this couple being disorientated and going round and round in circles.
Gloria’s tolerance of her alcohol consumption is especially emphasised when time passes and the film shows how many bottles are on the table when she does decide to drink. Gloria, even in the first meeting with Oscar, would rather hang out with someone she hasn’t seen in a long long time, than go back to the house and sort out the lack of furniture and food. Time escapes her at first, with a comedic value being pushed into the film, examples being how Gloria falls asleep before the air pump finishes the mattress. Though there is over consumption of alcohol, there is a certain dependancy upon it, with the need for sleep sometimes taking over. Exhaustion through partying way too hard. Just because others can party for a long time, does that mean you should follow their example?
Going further, a connected monster entity (I will get to this point later) on literally the other side of the world wakes her up to what she is doing, with the acts that follow it; it is a push in the right direction. We see Gloria drinking what could only be water, as she is not slurring her words. The patterns of sleep are normal, and not seen in the movie until she wakes up. She is rising up ever so slightly, and even demanding that her boss simply goes home after each shift instead of drowning his sorrows after hours, emphasises the direction and the control she is gaining back for herself. The monster entity that she’s connected to is, in a grander scale, her realising her behaviour can have a butterfly effect; the aspect of distance is not the important factor, but rather the understanding of the impact of one’s actions towards those around them.
Now, let’s look at the domestic abuse that is at play here. The second on the list. This has two components: Tim and Oscar.
Tim, the first male to be seen within Gloria’s life, we see, upset and angry at his other half for essentially staying out all night and not responding back to him. What we can tell is that Gloria does this continuously and always promises to change, with nothing actually changing. We can understand his anger. However, afterward, listening and understanding the dynamic of their relationship, or lack thereof, the next couple of times Tim is presented in the film, we see him in a completely different light. He is condescending, always putting Gloria down in her attempts of changing her life, especially when she does finally get a job as a waitress; first demeaning the waitress job as a bad one, and then finding it suspicious that she finally got a job after a year of unemployment, and only after Tim was out of the picture. All I can say to this, is that when the situation changes, when the toxicity is out of one’s life, things begin to blossom and opportunities present themselves. Gloria defends herself and retorts that she has been trying to get a job, but only in the area of journalism. Waitressing is a good beginning, even if it wasn’t the job Gloria wanted. Tim just doesn’t see that. Obviously wanting the best for her, and placing her in his own little box for judgement.
What is weird, and even Gloria herself brings this up, is the fact that Tim wanted Gloria gone out of the picture, but calls and eventually comes to see her, pretending it wasn’t about her. He doesn’t want to appear needy and wants to be needed. He does have a small window of being approachable and loving, by being honest and accepting that yes, he was there for Gloria. However, when Oscar becomes part of the picture, his demeanour splits open to find his insecurities. If Tim loved Gloria, for who she was and could potentially be, he wouldn’t belittle her and wouldn’t want to know what she is doing without him there. He liked her dependency on him, and in a way, this might be his addiction.
And now, Oscar.
At first, he was polite, open, friendly and willing to help; then it quickly turns sour. With questionable actions happening all over the place, such as, why does he have the keys to her parents’ unrented house? Makes me question why he’s so willing to give her furniture…Almost as if he took all of it away and then gave it back to her, as a means to control some aspect of her life…A theory in itself.
Going back to the snowball effect of Gloria’s ineffective strategy to get her life back on track, it seems to happen at two points: one being Gloria sleeping with toyboy Joel, the attractive friend of Oscar’s. Because…why not? All decided in the slurred moment, of course.
Not deemed a new romance, it was essentially a one off. But when Joel and Gloria come in the same vehicle to stop Oscar messing around in his robot form, he quickly turns sour. The other point of no return is when he establishes that he is the other form, the robot form on the other side of the world. The first time, being a silly game of messing around with the lives of people like playing dollhouse, he takes it seriously and realises the amount of power he has over people he doesn’t know, and essentially, with time, the power he can have over Gloria.
What looks like the addiction of alcohol fashioning him to make horrible choices and be a horrible person soon isn’t the fault here. We, the audience, are fooled. This is because further down the line, Oscar’s actions are calculated conscious choices. Alcohol can only be the blame for so long. Particularly when he tries to make it up to Gloria by making his friend do all of the heavy lifting and putting all of the furniture into her parent’s house. And to put the icing unto the cake, Gloria herself has to seek him out for an apology. This can be seen in two ways. Still controlling, Oscar makes Joel do all of the hard work to make him expendable, almost whiny and pathetic. And in another, Oscar is too ashamed to meet Gloria herself. Either way, Gloria goes to his house, and we as the audience, take a peek into his life. He used to have a woman and a kid in his life. But no more. The camera even hovering over his picture of the woman holding the kid that he scratched the face off of. He is a troubled soul. And so, Gloria, and maybe some of the audience, cut him some slack.
It is only when he actually abuses Gloria and starts hitting her that I hope others stop giving Oscar the benefit of the doubt.
The journey to find that inner strength and to realise the abusive signs, especially when they repeat themselves, has Gloria understanding, through her clear headiness, that she does have a choice. She comes to understand that what Tim and especially Oscar are doing is not okay. That those who see and do nothing, like Joel and Garth, are not okay.
These collective of people, whether they do all of the damage, or when they sit on the sidelines and only watch and not intervene, present the concept that Gloria cannot ask for help. This is seen multiple times, especially when she is beaten down to the floor in the playground and when Oscar blackmails her into staying, using and presenting the choice of staying or letting Oscar kill hundreds of people.
And for the viewer, this seems like her only choice.
Using the ability of his robot form, he is now as good as Gloria, his own words, and uses it against her. Why? Because he’s controlling, dominating and wants her? No. Because he is madly jealous of Gloria and her life. Whilst he was stuck, she was not. And now that she is, he wants to keep her that way; to have someone inferior to him, or perhaps to have someone on the same level as him; someone who has hit rock bottom.
If you compare the domestic abuse situations here, it can be understood why Gloria would want to leave this and go back to Tim. From being belittled, to being attacked…What would you do? From something familiar and perhaps manageable to someone who is a wild card and uses fireworks in his own bar as an example of his power over Gloria, it would be safe to assume that Tim might change his ways. But we all know that is not the case. What seems like a battle between two men for one woman becomes a whole different genre. It boils down to the monsters and the people on the other side of the world.
And this leads to my last point. About the monsters.
I do not have the knowledge to understand or to explain the phenomena that happens to Gloria and Oscar when they are little children, but what I can explain is why those monsters were chosen to present the Kai-ju (the Japanese genre of huge monsters attacking cities)…or at least, a theory in a way.
Gloria’s manifestation of a monster is that giant thin lizard like creature right? Made of flesh and blood (supposedly). This representation could be of an intelligent being, and because of the actions Gloria has chosen to perform within this manifestation, shows an emotional intelligence; that Gloria, represented through the monster, is showing that, yes, she has problems, but she doesn’t intend to harm anyone around her. This shows us that she is understanding that her problems are not her own, but on a much larger scale. It’s a ripple effect that can impact, in this case, hundreds of people.
Oscar’s is a robot. Why? A theory could be that a robot is an intelligent but unemotional and thus unapproachable being; a one track mind with every intention to succeed in its goal, no matter the consequences.
Would you say this fits Oscar well? His actions speak for themselves, and though I would theorise that there is a monster in the metaphor, I can go one step further.
There is a thing called monster theory.
Monster Theory is the concept of realising, through psychology, philosophy, but mostly folklore, that monsters are those gatekeepers of the unknown; the scariness in the dark; the heeded warning in the woods; the scream before the fall of black. Monsters are everywhere, they have been for thousands of years in the art of storytelling, but what makes it so interesting is the attraction and realisation of how we as humans can give in to these desires that can make one monstrous. From thinking of external forces in lore, of monsters such as the boogeyman, the vampire, the werewolf and so on, their outside influences can scare us, to now thinking internal; with our own minds and thoughts, it all boils down to our consequences and choices that makes us a monster. Either in the eyes of others, or to ourselves.
This is aspect is termed the ‘Other’. It’s the unconscious unknown of those nasty things we feel and think coming to the surface, and how some people are fearful because of it. It is the unknown and with the unknown, what would you do? Run towards the familiar or fight back or embrace it?
Looking towards Oscar’s hatred and jealousy that consumes him, we can objectively put him in line with the monstrous theory. He is a monster. It’s obvious.
A quote from the book ‘Monster Theory: Reading Culture’ explains it in more detail:
“The monster is continuously linked to forbidden practices in order to normalize and to enforce. The monster also attracts…We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time we envy its freedom, and perhaps its sublime despair…Through the body of the monster fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion are allowed safe expression in a clearly delimited and permanently liminal space. Escapist delight gives way to horror only when the monster threatens to overstep these boundaries…When contained by geographic, generic, or epistemic marginalisation, the monster can function as an alter ego, as an alluring projection of (an ‘Other’) self. The monster awakens one to the pleasures of the body, to the simple and fleeting joys of being frightened or frightening – to the experience or mortality and corporality”
Oscar’s actions from understanding Gloria’s situation of hitting rock bottom, to essentially trying to keep her there under this facade of a nice guy, becomes too much to bear when its obvious how easy Gloria can rise and better herself. And the icing on the cake is this link to a monster on the other side of the world. When Oscar realises he has this power too, he makes it his main priority to keep it and eventually use it in an evil sense. Ill thinking thoughts of someone’s situation and comparing it to your own, to overstep your mark and become someone’s worst nightmare all boils down to something internal. And like Gloria’s realisation, she finally understands that Oscar just simply hates himself and his lack of any choices. But the sickening thing was, he didn’t even take the choices if he had any. He didn’t see that he could have left the town he grew up in, not accept the role of owner of his dad’s bar and started somewhere new. Unfortunately, we do not know how his childhood went down, but from his actions, we can assume it was not a good environment for him. Oscar is repeating the monstrous patterns, not learning, even on that fated diorama day, that this should be seen as a lesson.
And unlike Gloria, uses it selfishly and without consequence for some short sighted impact. This is his downfall. This is why his demons have caught up with him, whilst Gloria’s are set free. The choice of letting go and the freedom away from the toxicity of bad relationships, of bad habits, and of course, of the monsters inside of us.
This is the written script for the podcast Two Takes. The decision to put the script online is for those hard of hearing. And for those who like to read.
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