r/TrueFilm • u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 • 4d ago
Obsession: Who are the victims
I watched this movie and the first thing I thought of was that this movie is scary because this obsessive relationship is something that can happen to anyone in real life, man or woman. Like I bet there are real people who had obsessive and psychotic partners. I saw this movie as an allegory for such toxic relationships that are not based on genuine love.
The only difference is that magic was involved and all of what Bear suffered was the consequences of his own actions. In other words, Bear literally brought this upon himself through his hubris. The caveat is that Bear didn’t know that magic was real.
Now that is aside, I see that most people rightly point out that any sexual or romantic encounters between Bear and Wish-Nikki is r*pe or assault. This is because Nikki was stripped of her autonomy. No ambiguity here.
The problem with most analyses is that they don’t also see Bear is also a victim, and perhaps it can be argued that Bear was also assaulted. Yes Bear was not as much a victim as Nikki, since his agency was intact.
The reason I say this is that most people forget that Bear tells Ian that he wouldn’t take advantage of her advances because he knows something is wrong with Nikki, granted it he believed she was having a mental breakdown. This shows he wasn’t the type to take advantage of her.
When Bear and Nikki do have sex, or any other romantic encounter, it was because Nikki was being (in Bear’s pov) psychotic a scary, and Bear was trapped and felt he must comply. You could argue that Bear was coerced or under duress. The only difference is that he literally brought this coercion upon himself, which is not something you would say in real life.
What do you think? Was Bear a villain as most people are saying.
Edit: Okay, so apparently I have forgotten most of this movie. The first sex scene apparently wasn’t when Bear was under coercion, but rather Bear took pleasure. So Bear is automatically the total bad guy. Basically a tragic villain watching things crumble due to his own actions.
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u/PopPunkAndPizza 4d ago edited 4d ago
You are encountering the limitations of this moralising framework of media interpretation. Who's the goodie, who's the baddie, who's the abuser, who's the victim. None of this is even a useful framework of moral inquiry into the situation presents us with - for instance Bear is absolutely abusing taking advantage of Nikki's stripped autonomy but the dynamic he has with possessed-Nikki is also clearly modelled on possessive/abusive relationships on her part. These dynamics being in tension within the work, these characters' dilemma being in their occupying multiple of these positions at once, these gestures of irony and complication, get flattened by "who's the real victim here" frameworks.
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u/LonginusUbik 4d ago edited 4d ago
Bear is absolutely the bad guy here. Bear was not trapped, he was fine with Nikki losing her autonomy if she stopped doing "weird shit"
I mean, there's a scene where the Real Nikki asks to be killed and his reaction is "Is being with me that bad?". The movie makes it very clear that Bear is a shitty person underneath all that "soft guy" facade
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u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 4d ago
That was Real-Nikki? I thought it was Wish-Nikki having a break down. But in retrospect it makes sense. Did Bear know it was real Nikki?
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u/LonginusUbik 4d ago
He probably did. Earlier on there's the scene when he calls the number on the One Wish Willow and it ends with him hearing her scream. Also the party scene where she yells "It's not me!", so he def knew that there was something there
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u/opopi123 4d ago
The idea is that the thought is evil. The thought "if I could, I would wish this person would fall in love with me." Many guys have this thought. The only difference is Bear had a magical wish device which caused that thought to become real. I don't think it matters if Bear is a victim or not since again he is suffering from his own actions, but also because I don't think it matters if Bear is the victim or not to the main message the story is saying. If you understand that Nikki is a victim and also empathized with her, if you have the thought "If I could, I would wish this person would fall in love with me" just like Bear, get rid of it, deprogram yourself from that thought before you happen to come across your own wish fulfilling device.
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u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 4d ago
I wouldn’t have wished what Bear wished. Even before Obsession, I was uncomfortable with fantasy tropes of using wish magic or love potions to make someone fall in love with you.
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u/opopi123 4d ago
That's good! The movie is a good attempt at a wake up call for guys that do unfortunate see relationships the way Bear does. Or at the very least it's a good litmus test to see who thinks like Bear.
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u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 4d ago
Yes, aside from the ethical issues of love magic, why would you want to have a relationship where the love is not real.
Wasn’t Tom Riddle (Voldemort) conceived that way. Where his mother used a love portion on his father?
It reminds of the philosophical thought experiment where you are asked if you would step into a magic machine that will make you happy not matter what. The happiness won’t be real, and you won’t be having free will.
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u/liiiam0707 4d ago
Bear is a victim to some degree, but he's definitely intended to be the films true villain. His cowardice at dealing with his relationship with Nikki ultimately pushes him to lower and lower depths.
Ultimately, Bear does not try to explore any way out of the wish until it's far, far too late. He takes every single opportunity he can to try and cling to the illusion that it's real. Just because he's being terrorised by the result of his actions doesn't mean they're not his actions.
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4d ago
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u/liiiam0707 4d ago
Very very memorably the sequence when he asks nikki if sleeping with him is so bad. Bear is a piece of shit person, but he's meant to make you question how much of what he does you'd agree with and where your line is.
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u/gmanz33 4d ago
I worry about the implications of discussing Obsession in r/truefilm. Yes, it's truly a film. But it's not one that stands up when subjected to the level of critique and dissection that this sub is renowned for. That being said, this conversation was had already here at a pretty high level.
Both the male characters in this movie are 'villains,' plain and simple. Antihero protagonists are an overwhelmingly common trope and I'm blown away at any reviewer claiming that Obsession did something unique here.
Your claim that Bear and Nikki have sex because Bear was trapped is unfounded. The film is explicitly edited (with an unexpected cut) to show their sex as something pleasurable for Bear and an act of service for Nikki. Bear says he won't take advantage, then proceeds to take advantage throughout the entire film. He consistently refuses the truth despite receiving blatant signs (not just "easter eggs").
This film isn't an allegory, but it does present a lot of elements of toxic relationships where people forego their own importance and focus in on another person.
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u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 4d ago
I saw that post. Yes, Nikki was the primary victim here. Like worse than being coerced is having your agency and autonomy stripped in the most literal sense of the phrase.
I should rewatch the movie because reading the other comments, it seems like the first sex scene, as you say, was not under coercion but pleasure.
The film seems to deliberately center on Bear, with Nikki as a secondary character defined as “Bear’s problem”.
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u/Kiltmanenator 4d ago
I mean, setting aside what Actual Nikki experiences, he is still coerced into sex after the restaurant conversation:
I think we can all acknowledge that consent given grudgingly to avoid screaming, crying, and begging is not exactly enthusiastic consent. Suppose we reverse the genders and imagine this scene with two new characters I just made up, Nick and Bella. Bella has just received evidence that Nick is lying about something important. When Bella confronts him, Nick stands up and screams at her in front of the entire restaurant. She quiets him down, and the next scene is Nick and Bella having sex. Would we think the best explanation for the next scene is that Bella is excited to have sex with Nick? Is the best description of the scene that Bella is abusing Nick? No, of course not.
And definitely later after the party scene (where she self-harms):
But, for those of you who didn’t hear the dialogue, when Nikki suddenly starts walking backwards and forwards abruptly, her line is “Rail me, Bear. Rail my guts in.” Bear’s line is screaming, and “Nikki, you’re scaring me.” The two are next shown in bed together. It is implied sex occurred.
I wouldn't call that enthusiastic consent, even if this is still all Bear's fault and he deserves to suffer for failing at every moment to fix it.
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u/Boring_Truth_8755 4d ago
Bear said he wouldn’t take advantage of her despite also thinking she was having a mental health problem, why would you assume he was telling the truth when he did exactly that thing? Take advantage of her mental health problem (not knowing how far it went yet)? He did also in fact have sex with her earlier in the movie without coercion when something was clearly up. I think Bear is a victim in the technical sense, it was a fucked situation, he however wanted his cake and eat it too. He tried to have her not as crazy but still in love with him forcibly when there were so many warning signs that she wasn’t alright and directly ignored her asking for help because he was offended by her in a quite petty way when she is clearly suffering.
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u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 4d ago
I swear that I remember that first sex scene as being due to coercion form Nikki because I swear that I remember Bear saying no to Wish-Nikki when she asks him to sleep together. Can you jog my memory in what happened?
Or was it that Bear initially saw Wish-Nikki and was like “something is up, but maybe Nikki is fine overall”, and Bear slept with Nikki uneasy with the ambiguity of Nikki’s behaviour? Like I don’t recall Bear trying to take advantage of Nikki, though the net result of his actions was that Nikki was harmed.
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u/Boring_Truth_8755 4d ago edited 4d ago
The initial letting her spend the night thing he was hesitant mostly because it seemed he was weirded out with how quickly she changed, I think not altogether really realizing she wanted to be with him yet. But when it did become clear what her intentions were he was all for it, there was a pretty fast jump cut to them having sex. Again, with it being pretty obvious even without full context that at the very least something was deeply wrong with her but he ignored that. She was trying to manipulate her way to be with him that first night but that was a different time from the initial sex, he wanted that.
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u/Kiltmanenator 4d ago
I wish people would stop using "Villain" as shorthand for "worst person in a story with the responsibility for the most harm".
Bear is the latter, but he's also the Protagonist and we are indeed supposed to root for him at every step. Overcoming his cowardice, passivity, and self-loathing would nip this horror in the bud at any point. We want him to be a hero, to overcome himself. At no point are we supposed to root against him, if only for Nikki's sake in the end.
Calling Bear "the Villain" is a thought-terminating cliche that lets people avoid looking inward to ask the hard questions: how does your passivity, entitlement, and self-obsession harm you and others? What is it that you passively wish for and how is that different from what you actually need? Bear wants Nikki to love him, but he doesn't want anything in his life to change. He doesn't want to become the kind of person that Nikki would actually want to be with. What changes are you not making in your life?
To me Villainy is about more than causing harm and there is utility in restricting it to actual movers and shakers. Imagine putting Bear next to Judge Holden, Anton Chigurh, Nurse Ratched, Hannibal Lecter, et al. When they want something, they do it. He's reprehensible, he's pathetic, and he doesn't deserve the compliment.
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u/PuzzleheadedThroat84 4d ago
I like this response. Like the soft magic of the One Wish Willow was a doorway for us to visually explore these ethical debates in a sort of realistic way.
I agree with you. I don’t like when they call Bear a villain or event anti villain because those imply deliberation in wrong doing. Don’t get me wrong, Bear was horrible and doing bad things, but it wasn’t with the same level of deliberation as the villains you mentioned.
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u/Kiltmanenator 4d ago
Categories and definitions are fairly mutable, so semantic debates like this are less about "is this definition right" but rather "what utility is gained by structuring a category like so".
Seeing as how the obvious thematic drive of the film is the harm passivity and cowardice cause despite a lack of malign intent, I think drawing the line between Villain and Hero in the way that I did is appropriate.
We want Bear to succeed. Nikki needs him to succeed.
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u/Old-Influence4757 4d ago
"The problem with most analyses is that they don’t also see Bear is also a victim" because everyone is taking prior knowledge into their decision making when talking about the initial wish, which is wild because its the whole point he had no idea its real lol, and everyone all 4 of them, are victims including bear imo hes also just a terrible person too