Posted: 9/16/21 at 12:23pm
Jordan Catalano said: "No. You said “ First of all, there are absolutely some stories that don't need to be told.” Your quote. I don’t care if you liked or didn’t like this particular film or this particular story, you said some don’t “need” to be told.
And now I’m talking about art in general, not this film. An artist has zero responsibility to lay everything out for the audience to understand. That’s up to them, how they want to present what they make and yes, it’s up to you how you want to receive it. They have no right telling you how to react to it, just like you have no right telling them how they need to present it.
And again - I get you’ve had family loss. Same. Same with pretty much everyone else on the planet at one time or another. Everyone experiences it differently. Some get angry, some withdraw, some change their lives, some turn to drugs like my brother did until one day, they kill themselves. And then I, in return choose how to react to that. But this story isn’t written for me to feel comfortable with what’s being talked about. It’s written telling the story of this person and those families and how THEY deal with it. It has nothing to do with you or your comfort level.
I'm very much with Jordan on this. Any story can be told-the writer takes the risk and the audience passes judgment. Those judgments are based on the lived experience of the viewer. There is no definitive "right" interpretation. If we start trying to say a story can't be told, we are back to book burning.
Like Jordan said, I don't know anyone, myself included, who hasn't experienced a family loss or trauma. I'm very much an "and" person, so I don't view any character or action through one lens. When I watched DEH, I didn't connect with the Murphy's being victimized, I connected with their desire to understand. I also saw the Murphys as a metaphor for the denial of grief. People tell themselves lies to quiet their minds and their hearts every day. Evan had a traumatic familial wound related to the loss of his father and his notion of connection and family. He felt, broken, missing, damaged. Both parties trauma cemented them over a fantasy. Both parties projected onto each other. The Murphy's knew the anger and rancor of their son/brother-would he really befriend this odd, awkward young man when he couldn't be kind to his own sister or mother? Would he eloquently write his thoughts when it was inability to articulate them that led to his lashing out?
In the original Broadway production, I think "Words Fail" beautifully showed this lapse of judgment out of a desire to heal a traumatic wound. Some people ache very deeply and it doesn't make them a sociopath. I think most people related to wanting something emotional they never got. They could probably understand the desire to lie to get it. Especially as a young person. Young people who experience trauma want things to be clean, nice, orderly. They want attentive parents who love them expressively, cook for them, instruct them, and are present. Like the people on TV. I had tremendous empathy for Evan. While I didn't like what he was doing and it made me uncomfortable, I had compassion for him. This isn;t saying Heidi was doing anything wrong, but it wasn't meeting his needs. She has no control over that and something terrible happened outside of her watch. It's not her fault.
