Date: February 17, 2018
01) One Author Says ‘Call Me By Your Name’ Is About Abuse, Not Love
“The Oscar-nominated film “Call Me by Your Name” is a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old named Elio and his brief romance with a 24-year-old grad student, Oliver, who comes to work with Elio’s father.
Some, including author Cheyenne Montgomery, say they’re disturbed by the age difference between the two protagonists — one portrayed as a boy, the other a man.
Montgomery (@cowboy_montg), who was abused by a teacher as a high school student, joins Here & Now’s Robin Young to discuss why she sees the movie as a “deftly directed, beautifully photographed, wonderfully acted master class in sexual predation and abuse.”
Honest questions…
…Can anyone pinpoint the absolute demonstration of abuse, given in the setting of this type of relationship?
…Are the participants not mutually happy?…Are either not growing or benefiting from it?…
…Is the relationship not filling a need in their lives, and making their lives rich and meaningful?
There are different…generally trivial and weak, excuses a lot of people will throw out there…to argue that “the whole thing is just bad, and abusive”…
…But with little exception…they tend to be shallow clichés, from people who hold in contempt anyone else who discovers meaning in life…from things maybe the majority don’t.
…It’s a lack of empathy…It’s a lack of understanding…that humans are vastly diverse…
Different humans need different things, in order to make life work for them…
One thing that’s always driven me up the wall…especially as a social outcast, myself…is all the people who not only don’t understand that point…but who also aggressively act to destroy, what gives people different from them meaning in life, and a will to go on…
Who is this person [or anyone], to rush in and destroy, diminish, taint, smear or torment…something demonstrably beautiful happening in other people’s lives?
…It’s not the life of this commentator…It’s the lives of the people living them…
…It is their lives, to live and find meaning in.…
The clear abuse here…is not in the relationship…
…The abuse is in those, who would viciously attack something beautiful in life…The abuse, is in killing joy and the ability to be human…The abuse, is stripping others of meaning in life…
There is no abuse, inherently native to such types of relationship…
…Difference in age and experience, lead to more diversity and strength in the relationship…each bringing something unique, to assist the other…If this healthy exchange is absent, then a relationship wont likely develop…not one like that represented in the movie…There is clearly something of substance, if they remain together.
Our brains are always in a state of flux…chemically…sometimes physically…
The only true divide…is that we spend about twenty five years in a state of new brain generation…then we spend the rest of our lives, in gradual brain decline…
…Is this a good, sound argument, to keep people from relationships and experiences that give their lives meaning?
Again…as a social outcast…it is crystal clear to me, why even supposedly “civilized” cultures like the U.S. have such horrible, vast problems across the board…but notably, in mental health and violence…
…This culture does every damn thing it can, to stop “the deviants” [aka, anyone different from the average] from finding and realizing their own, personal meaning in life…
…It does every damn thing it can…to keep people isolated and stunted, causing grave, crippling frustration for those people, as they attempt to get through life…
…This is a culture, which actively imposes a relentless, ruthless torment…a stunted, shell of an existence…and, ultimately…in many cases…mental illness…humans with an inability to function.
When we pull back the curtains…what is so sad…is that we normally find that most people are “deviants”, in some manner…And the people who rage against “deviancy” the most, are just propagating the very thing, which harms us all…
…It doesn’t shock me that there are so many mass shootings [and other atrocities], going on in the U.S. today…
…So many people have nothing of personal meaning to live for, after they’ve been dragged down to shambles, by those who wont allow them to live a meaningful life…
…To a world that has given them so, so much endless pain and suffering…what do you expect these countless abused targets, to give in return?
In addition…on the “brain development” argument…I want to clarify…the argument is not just bad…it’s down right pathetic…as is the “emotional development” argument…
…Our responses whenever people evoke these, needs to be something along the lines of…Well, so what?…That’s a red herring…Why wont you deal with the relationship in front of you, as it is happening and for what it offers/is, as opposed to falling into boogyman rhetoric?
“As a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old, I very much believed that I was in control, and that I was able to consent, and I would say, that’s part of being 16, is you have that illusion that you’re on top of things.” — Cheyenne Montgomery
Oh…the horrors…of discovering deeper meanings about things in life…
…The “control” red herring…
This culture has been conditioned so soundly…that much of it’s population honestly believes, that it’s been gravely injured, by the very act of having experiences while in the state of naivety…
…They imagine you need to know everything about everything you ever want to do, before you do it…otherwise, you are entitled to be furiously raged [for the rest of your life] over anything in it’s aftermath…because you can think it was “all a lie”…that you were “nothing but duped and used”…”it wasn’t real”…”you lost the all mighty control”…
…Oh…wait…
…No…they only go into this realm of hyperbole, when it comes to activities they want to heavily regulate…
…As to the myriad of countless, other human activities…those psychological triggers aren’t actively attached…nor recognized…
…Red Herring.
You have to really question…when the dialogue has been debased this thoroughly…and when anybody can deem themselves “a victim”, over the mildest of presumed trespass…
…Who is even a true victim, in this day and age?
…What does it even mean to be a victim, when the modern fad is to “be the empowered victim fighting back”?…and when there are so many social incentives, to pass yourself off like that?
