Don’t Worry Darling, I love You, Happy Valentine’s Day
[SPOILER ALERT!!!, PLEASE WATCH THE MOVIE BEFORE YOU READ THIS SO YOU DON’T GET MAD AT ME, IF YOU DON’T’ THAT’S ON YOU]
Recently Netflix released a movie titled Don’t Worry Darling, starring Florence Pugh, Harry Stiles and Chris Pine (Warning, Sexual Content) I can’t begin to know what the writers were intending to say (I didn’t ask) but I am pretty sure they found a really clever way to portray the heart of oppression (abuse) in the home.
You wouldn’t quite know that from the beginning of course. As movies go, they lull you into a space to give you context and background. The main characters live in what appears to be an almost utopic 1950’s gated community somewhere in the desert. All the women hold Stepford-Wive-esque roles. The wives keep their homes tidy, tend to children (if they have any), make sure dinner is ready and if necessary, that they are always sexually available to their husbands, who all work for the same company. This company and the town they live in, was created by a visionary named Jack. From our perspective, it’s quite cliché. The men are celebrated, elevated and supported, and the women are almost accessories to their lives. Object of the men’s desire for sure, but still, more object then partners or even human beings with opinions and needs. Since it’s a movie, telling a story, we suspend themes of misogyny and idealism because, hey it was the 50s so all seems right-ish in the world.
This is where we need to begin in the analogy of how this movie describes abuse. Abuse rarely starts off as in-your-face, violence and oppression. Very few people would willingly walk into a relationship if one of the people said:
Hi there, I want to control you, I want you to be there to serve my every need, even if it competes with your needs, and if you decide at any moment this is not for you, you will be punished, psychologically, physically, sexually, spiritually and any other way I can dream of to get you to do what I want. Eventually, you will be erased, and it will all be about me. Wanna go on a date?
It’s far more subtle than that. In the movie, there is a promise of something special. Different even. Under the guise of,
“I will care for you.”
“I will provide your every need.”
It’s alluring. The one doing the inviting is very charming and has a way of presenting things that seems good. However, the old adage holds true, if it is too good to be true, it probably is. You would think we might even be able to put a finger on the one-sidedness of the offer. “Here is how YOU will benefit ME.” Smoke and mirrors exist to obfuscate and distort and so a person attempting to lure a victim into their selfish world does so by finding out what a victim needs and exploits it. This is done subtly over some time. We need to be careful not to assume that victims are weak minded people who are prone to be exploited. Our victim in this movie, as we come to find out later, is an accomplished surgeon. She is not weak at all. When a person sets their mind on taking someone captive, anyone can become a victim. (Please read: 37 ways to be taken Captive by Sydney Millage). Before you know it, you are trapped. You are being tracked, controlled, manipulated and for all intent and purpose, erased. As a biblical counselor, I have heard this described as, walking on eggshells, I don’t exist, my spouse takes up all the room etc… The only times a partner seems to exist is when they speak up, or when the oppressor wants sex. Then they are the object of wrath or a convenient prop. Property to be used at best.
This is where our movie takes a turn. As time goes by, we begin to see cracks in the perfect image being portrayed. One neighbour seems to be in distress, and our main character is disturbed by this. In an almost Matrix-like manner, our main character begins to see things she cannot explain. There’s a glitch in the system and in some ways, it seems obvious something is wrong, but then again, how could it be? My spouse loves me, I have everything I need, I have no need to question anything, even if something inside me wants desperately to make sense of what is off. As if it weren’t enough that the oppressed aren’t able to make sense of what is happening, the oppressor makes sure their victim knows:
“You must be mistaken.”
“You aren’t seeing things clearly.”
“Look at all I have done for you; how could you question this?”
“You are ungrateful.”
“You are questioning my authority!”
“You are questioning God’s authority!”
“You are denying me my God-given rights!”
Abuse advocates like Darby Strickland, Leslie Vernick and Chris Moles assert that the business of abuse is crazy-making. The victim is not crazy, despite the oppressors attempt to convince them and others otherwise. They are made to feel and believe as if they are.
“No one will understand me.”
“I don’t even understand me.”
“Maybe even God does not understand me.”
“I am alone.”
It often drives victims to silence and isolation. Built in to the abuse pattern is isolation. Friends and family disappear. Finances are limited and controlled. You will do what I want because you have nowhere to go and no one will believe you anyway.
As the movie progresses (or devolves) our victim dares to look behind the proverbial curtain seeking truth. The truth, the actual truth is far more sinister than what we would all want to believe. Victims, and those who seek to help victims want to believe that there’s got to be a simple course correcting. If we could only solve the issue, we could move towards a solution. Victims want their lives back. Advocates want to help. Churches desperately want to keep marriages together. Abusers don’t want to lose the good thing they have. So, we do marriage counseling, because couples have a shared responsibility in marital unhealth right? We convince the victim that if only they could submit and do what is asked, everything should be fine. That approach, unfortunately only exacerbates the problem, and usually only stops when a victim has decided they’ve had enough (for the 8th time), or the harm they are receiving can no longer be hidden. Bruises, chronic somatic responses or worse, maybe even death (hard to hide that one). Just stay, pray and obey.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ”
So, what does it mean to look behind the curtain? It means that we expose what is actually true. This exposure is vital but dangerous. It is a long process and takes an incredible amount of patience all around. Most don’t have that kind of patience. I really don’t want to create a false hope here. Most situations fall apart, forever. There are survivors, but there were survivors in Hiroshima too. In the wake of abuse, no one is left the same.
What did we discover in the movie that was so nefarious? We discover that the world this couple, whose lives were caught in abuse, was a construct. Truly a Matrix-like world. The world they live in is actually being projected into their brains (through their eyes) and the husband is living out a fantasy that he bought into through some radicalization from the internet that promised “true manhood” and a “compliant wife”. In reality, his wife is bedridden in a hovel of an apartment and she is always stuck in the fantasy and the husband has to enter in and leave at an appointed time every day for practical reasons I suppose. The irony is that the husband freely enters this world, where his wife is trapped. It’s the ultimate metaphor for abuse. He bought into the lie that enslaving his wife was the best solution to get what he wants.
At the root of this person’s heart they believed that life was all about them and that there was no limit to obtaining what they wanted to make them happy. The root is bad, the fruit is ugly and counterfeit. The wife, who was once a successful surgeon, is now a surrogate to her husband’s fantasy. It’s not even real. It’s a counterfeit happiness that he desperately needs to support with a second job and it necessitates that his wife is a slave to his desires all the time. Sadly, this is the nature of abuse.
Abuse requires a monstrous selfish abuser. Abuse requires a victim.
Abuse requires one to be in power over the other.
Abuse requires that someone play the role of object to serve my needs.
Abuse is evil in every way.
Abusers want it this way.
So, where is the hope in all this? The movie doesn’t really offer much hope except for a vague assumption of escape. We don’t even really know if the victim survives getting out. I know by this time you probably think I am cynical and hopeless, but I am not. In reality, there is a glimmer of hope, but it’s not easy to see. It is at this point we need to capture something the movie may or may not have intended to say but it was there all along. The idea that a victim could sense something was wrong and want out. The idea that the oppressors knew that what they were doing needed to be hidden. This fact suggests that written inside of each of us is a morality that compels us to want something different, and a belief that there is more to life than what we can get out it that there is a right and wrong. There is value in personhood that overrides all other thinking. In fact, deep within each and every one of us, as image bearers of God, we know the moral law, we know when we’ve broken it and we know that each person before us, including ourselves, has intrinsic value that isn’t dependent on anything else except that God willed to create us.
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
Paul says that sin blinds us to the truth (Romans 1:18-32) and so, we do what we want, ignoring truth. We live for ourselves, and that kind of selfish living can manifest into the kind of abuse we have been looking at. Yet, we know it’s wrong. We are without excuse. The world for the most part does what it can for victims of abuse. We have programs, shelters and all sorts of ways to help those caught in a cycle of abuse. This is a testimony to our God-infused morality, that we would be moved, even if we don’t recognize there is a God, to do the right thing at times. For abusers, the best solution we tend to come up with is anger management. Anger is a symptom, not the problem unfortunately. Are folks helped? Victims definitely get help. Sure, I imagine there might be a few abusers who get help too. At least they are less angry. For lasting change, we need a solution that is bigger than ourselves. As a Christian Biblical Counselor, I assert that what (or who) we desperately need is Jesus. The same God that put that sense of right and wrong in our hearts also knows that moral compass is broken in all of us. The cycle of abuse is proof of that. God wants to rescue us from ourselves. God wants to rescue us from abuse. In Psalm 9 verse 9 and 10 it says,
“ The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.”
God cares about the oppressed and wants to do something about it. So, he sent his son Jesus to rescue us from ourselves. Jesus lived the perfect life we cannot live (not a selfish life), and he died for our sins on a cross (willingly, not as a victim), rendering the evil in our hearts ineffective. Jesus conquered death so that those, who believe in him and what he has done for them will be transformed, saved, rescued, set free. Jesus said,
““The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.””
In our movie, the husband Jack and his wife Alice daily spent hours lying in bed while Jack’s utopia was projected into both their brains. It’s easy to see how this was a prison for Alice, but it was also a prison for Jack. Just a different kind of prison and one most don’t care to spend an ounce of sympathy on. The oppressed and the oppressor are held captive as sinners by the grip of a broken sinful world in which they are complicit. Jesus promises to set them both free. That is how powerful the good news of salvation, the Gospel, is. Victims and monsters both have hope. The path to freedom and healing for a victim is decidedly different than the path for an abuser. The path to healing is long for both and it will take no less than the miraculous, saving work of Christ and the power of His Spirit to bring it about. Our movie may give little hope. The realities we all live in may not give us much hope, but I invite us all, victims, abusers and even helpers like me to cling to the great and precious promises of Jesus. He wants to set you free. Believe it.
Recommended Resources
If you are in an abusive relationship, see our resources page HERE
If you suspect you are abusive (questionnaire), contact us to find out how you can enrol in Men of Peace and let us walk beside you.
Authors referenced and their important works:
Is it Abuse? by Darby Strickland