We Need to Talk about the Toxic Behavior

Note: This post contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 3, Spider-man Far From Home, Avengers Endgame, and The Good Place through season 3. So many spoilers! Guard yourselves

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“This is so well done,” I say, leaving the movie theater. In my head I can already imagine discussing it with my students in class. A few days later, watching Netflix, I frown. “This is so badly handled.”

When I decided to watch Spider-man Far From Home the same week as I watched Stranger Things season 3, I did not imagine there would be any type of overlap. Imagine my surprise when I watched two very different depictions of the same type of toxic behavior. Two classic abusive patterns presented to me. Unfortunately, one was extremely well handled and the other, was a complete accident.

Last chance to abandon this ship because here come the spoilers.

One of the patrons at the theater where I saw Far From Home left saying he wished he

Promo Shot: Spider-Man Far From Home

did not know Mysterio was a villain before watching so that the slow reveal would have been more effective. I disagree. The part of his character I found so arresting was knowing he was evil and trying to figure out what his game was.

Mysterio is a classic abuser. So pitch perfect was the writing that I could have used his scenes to teach about gaslighting in my psych class.

The term gaslighting comes from the movie Gaslight, a the golden age of Hollywood masterpiece. The story revolved around a man who slowly convinces his wife she is losing her mind by causing things to happen and then denying them, including flickering the gaslights in their home. Now the term refers to a specific type of emotional abuse that aims to cause a person to doubt themselves. Mysterio gaslights the entire world, faking tragedies so he can be the one to save them. Even within his own team, he threatens the lives of his villainous staff and blames them for his violence toward them. He literally says they are making him act the way he is. In the most classic example of this type of manipulative abuse, he slowly ingratiates himself with Peter Parker. He slips into the whole that Iron Man’s death left and makes himself into Peter’s mentor. He then continually undermines Peter’s sense of self. He encourages him to give up superheroing, to only focus on his own needs. He destabilizes Peter and alienates him from Nick Fury and the rest of SHIELD. Then when the gig is up, he turns and lashes out. He uses all of Peter’s fears against him in the illusion world and ultimately blames Peter for it. The “If you left good enough alone” speech being a classic “I’m hurting you but it’s your fault technique”. Mysterio is a textbook abuser.

The thing is, Mysterio is intended to come off this way. There is a predatory nature to him that grows as the story progresses. He is Captain Gaslighting, the toxic person that can often show up when we are vulnerable. A warning to us all.

The other depiction of toxic behavior came from the newest season of Stranger Things. I

Promo Shot: Stranger Things

loved the season, but it was not flawless by any stretch. The main failing being the transformation of Hopper from hapless burnt out detective to really shitty and toxic Dad. I loved Hop in season 1, but the character in this season is unrecognizable. He is toxic masculinity condensed and bottled. He yells at everyone, throws things around, and when push comes to shove he resorts to threats and physical violence. He scares Mike out of dating El. Mike, a child.

The Hop from seasons 1-2 was a man who fought for those who were weaker than him, he went up against the bigger people who used violence to gain submission. The Hopper of seasons 1-2 would have probably fought the Hopper of season 3.

The worst part of this is, his behavior is handled like he’s just being his usual messy self. The darker aspects of his character seem wholly unintentional and thus entirely unexplored. Considering the way the rest of the season explored toxic masculinity (with Will not fitting into other people’s mold and Nancy facing off against sexual harassment), his story could easily have fit in with the theme. It could have been handled. Hop could have received some redemption in this arc. But that would have required acknowledging the difference between messy and toxic.

Even Hop’s posthumous letter did not save the character for me. As sweet as El finding his words could have been, it was overshadowed by the fact that he never gave her this letter. With Joyce’s help, he wrote out his feelings in a healthy way, but in the moment, he decided to be abusive. He kept the positive words, literally, tucked away. So her finding it only after he is dead really memorializes that he chose to treat her badly. Compare this to another aspect of Spider-Man: the Iron Man arc. Iron Man too was a messy father figure. He often yelled and repeated the mistakes of his own father. Iron Dad frequently failed to express his emotions. The difference? No one is more aware of Tony Stark’s problems than Tony Stark. He expresses to Peter (in Homecoming) that he is struggling with his father’s poor parenting, but that he’s trying to be better. In the end, he leaves behind his EDITH glasses to Peter with the words “To the Next Iron Man,” his posthumous offering was also one of love, but it was not something Peter found by mistake. It was given. Tony Stark was full of failings, but he was honest and he often got it right too. Sadly, Hopper was much more Mysterio than Iron Man.

Promo Shot: The Good Place

So, Hop did not get his redemption this season, but what if it turns out he is not really dead because this is TV? Well, it’s going to take a lot of work on the writers parts to win me back over to team Hop, but it can be done. I know this redemption arc could be done well because I have seen it done in the very best possible way. In the Good Place, Michael is slowly revealed to be the villain. He gaslights, he manipulates, he is literally a demon sent there to torture the main characters. But he begins to change. Slowly over the seasons, Michael gets his redemption arc. He has to learn to face his toxic masculinity and privilege.  He learns to have feelings and empathy for others. The humbling and ultimate rebuilding of his character remains one of the most moving things on TV. He is a literal demon, but his flaws are not treated as jokes. He’s recognized for what he is, and thus change is possible.

Yes, true believers, just like in therapy, the first step to a good redemption arc is fully acknowledging the problem. If the Duffer brothers want to fix the full turn against Hopper, they have to first admit that he was an asshole.

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Recommendations:

If you want to learn more about gaslighting and how to spot it, check out the National Domestic Abuse website.

Avengers: Infinity Catharsis!

Welcome to the promised very special incredibly spoilery edition of Existential Wednesday. Fair warning, the musings go where they go, and today that is into some deeply spoiler filled places. If you haven’t seen Avengers: Infinity War, beware!

Continue at your own risk:

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Infinity War simultaneously shattered my heart and unwound the knots in my anxiety. It was a bad week. Faithful readers know about my doc program woes, and I was still trying to unravel what was happening with my future. I was finally ready to talk about failing to get into programs, but the prospect of telling everyone who helped me so far about failing left me shaken. At home, prep was beginning for my Dad’s cancer treatment and then he had a stroke. There was no warning. Other than the (unrelated) cancer, my Dad was healthy. One moment he was working his two jobs, the next I was heading to a hospital to see him. The stroke affected the speech area of his brain. I am no neurologist, but I know enough from my psychology training to recognize based on the MRI how fortunate my father was, and how much worse things may have gone. I split my time between work, the hospital, and being there for my mom for a week. My anxiety level was maxing out.

Before the awful week began I made plans to see the newest Avengers endeavor with one of my closest friends. We were prepping by watching through the Marvel movies I missed while in grad school, and planning to go opening night.

Marvel’s Infinity War poster

By opening night, my Dad was out of the hospital. During his week there, I channeled my anxiety into managing everything that happened, but when he got home and life settled, the anxious energy remained at a high tilt. With nowhere to go, the constant strum of anxiety was turning into irritability and sometimes outright anger. I was frustrated at my Dad for being a notoriously difficult patient and with my life for continuing to send terrible surprises my way. It became clear that my mental health was deteriorating and I was one notch from yelling at my parents to just stay healthy as if their recent tendency to take turns visiting the ER was an active attack on my fraying nerves.

So, I decided to keep my appointment with the Avengers.

Infinity War ended up an interesting chicken soup for my stress fractured soul. If you watched the movie, you know that it began with the death of my beloved Loki and ended with half the population of the universe vanishing into dust. I cried when Loki died, but the ending took it a step further. It has been a long time since a movie shocked me as much as Infinity War. Seeing it in a crowded theater, I felt the tension rolling around me. It was horrifying to watch the scenes where everyone vanished. Then in the midst of so many emotional deaths there was that moment.

Screen Cap of Tony Stark in the emotional climax

Catching up on the Marvel movies I missed meant I saw Age of Ultron, Civil War, and Homecoming back to back days before seeing Infinity War. So I watched Tony Stark transform from egocentric Iron man into the beating heart that is Iron Dad in quick succession. I am weak for found family stories, where people who are not related craft together a community. Watching Tony create his android son,Vision (in Infinity War, Bruce even refers to Vision as having part of Tony in his personality) and then adopt Peter Parker (referred to by Dr. Strange as Tony’s ward) triggered all the most warm feelings inside me. So, in the end, to see Tony watch Peter fade out as he holds him pulled every emotional cord in my  body. I cannot think about that moment without getting misty eyed. I was shaky when I left the theater, and for the first time in recent memory, I did not turn on a podcast and instead drove home in silence.

I also came home no longer angry.

Infinity War was a good movie in many respects. It was well crafted and intelligently executed. The acting was superlative. The deaths were haunting. The movie was also good for me. Every emotion that rose up in me over the turns my life was taking, emotions that I buried and tried to muscle past, the movie brushed up against and released. I felt shocked about my father’s unforeseen stroke, and I felt shocked by the carnage at the movie’s end. I was grieving the loss (if temporary) of a doctorate dream, of a 5 year plan, of a life where I felt assured my parents were healthy. I grieved characters along with the loved ones they left behind. I felt the hopeless desperation at the moment when Thanos snaps his fingers reflecting back to me the moment when I stood in the hospital outside my father’s room whispering over and over to myself “this is not how my story is supposed to go.”

Screen cap of Thanos

It was not that in any way the emotions stirred up by this movie were as real or important as the ones I felt for the people who actually exist in my life. In fact, the movie helped me experience those emotions because it was fiction. The narrative allowed  me to feel intensely in a place that was harmless. I know that Black Panter and Spider-man both have sequels pending. I know that in comics, death is a temporary state. Comics use death to achieve narrative goals like resetting a situation to tell new stories or allowing characters to deepen their relationships. Nothing quite brings a family together like one of those family members briefly crossing over to the other side. I can reason my way out of even Loki being truly dead as much as the next person. But I was able to enter fully into the emotions in that moment, knowing that a year from now when the sequel comes out, things will be made right. I may not know where I will be in a year, but I know the the MCU will keep on movie-ing as long as there are tickets to be bought.

In psychology, there is a concept known as catharsis, whereby a person triggers their emotions and experiences them fully, allowing the person to release them. Similarly, in mindfulness therapies, the client learns to sit with emotions in the moment. The idea behind both is that by experiencing, the strength of emotions wane. An emotion that is surpressed grows stronger, while an emotion fully embraced loses its bite.

I saw the movie again today and each emotional beat still packed the same weight, but I also felt a warmness. This movie, like so many before it, is now forever woven into my story. This movie will be linked in my mind to the pain of that impossibly long week, but it will also remind me of the release. As the emotions rose and then faded out like…ash in the wind (too soon?).

Screen cap of Loki moments before his death

That week was hard, this year has been long, and life continues to provide moments of both beauty and pain. But, for me and for the lost Avengers it is as Loki said, “The sun will shine on us again.”

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Enjoy my existential crisis masked as a thought piece on Avengers? Come back next Wednesday for a special Mental Health Awareness Month post, and check out Friday’s bonus post for comic recommendations!