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thegodgaze · 4 years

Text

Fade to Ash

Obviously, if I had done something like that, I'd be...

I've got nothing but memories right now. There was a time when I was absorbed by the deep sorrow and concern that I had blood on my hands for the choices I would soon have to make. Choices made to abandon someone I clearly wasn't sure would be up to waking up the next morning or some morning further down the line. That potent...ground shifting fear.

"You don't sound so stressed anymore..."

Only because it's no longer this eroding anxiety, but just a pit of well-groomed sorrow. Can't even ask what's happening in the middle of a pandemic; how my questions and concerns fill up every incinerator I've got. It's not that I want to treat it like this... it's just.

- [Ozarks Spoilers] -

Got through watching the recent season of the Ozarks, and the entire story of Ben got me real weak. It made me feel like I watching Of Mice and Men for a bit, but the sympathy grew ever more for a man who was just trying to make sense of a brutal reality. No...you don't actually want to exist on the cusp of the American Dream, you don't want to actually win when the cost is having to give up your humanity. Maturity suggests that absorbing these changes and consolidating "humanity" into bite sized snacks you throw at the dog you keep around is the only way to exist proper - when actually feeling, feeling anything at all, that much is a sin punishable by death. I won't push aside the note of his mental illness, but I don’t think it actually takes away from his argument. We got to see the decline of a human being, who...just didn’t belong there. For all the most emotive cogs in the grand machine they built - his intensity brought home the fact a few hard points. Whether you found hatred for his childish demeanor, or...honestly the guy was fucking charming. Smooth as fuck, weird as fuck, but didn’t give a damn about it and stood with principle. He belonged in the house of Snell. Say what you will of that woman, this season really made her into something...different. Her house was the den of the rejected. Not the iniquitous hovel of they that damn, but a home in the middle of burning world. The Langmore clan’s exodus here was something that didn’t stick out to me until the end, but the transition has been a fascinating one. You can’t help but trust the woman in this circumstance because for all of her wild card plays you begin to realize just how much she values principle. Principle is all the Langmore’s got except...for poor Ruth. Who, given the circumstances, Ruth is portrayed as “mature”, in her dealings with Byrde, and literally everyone else in this fucking world. At first you admire her tenacity, ingenuity...and then loyalty. But that loyalty nearly got her killed. It’s now that it becomes apparent that the Byrdes might not be the people you’re rooting for, no matter how much like Jonah’s character.

No, it’s...in this den of the principled few that I can’t help but admire. Ben...Ben got there too late. The first time he sets foot in there is his last, and he’s unsure of how to fix anything and the music played along these scenes gutted me. It was...it knew what you knew. From the start, his introduction, I was left wondering who would become the next fodder in the scene of character development - nearly as a joke, I teased the tropes but I didn’t immediately expect this one, though, to an extent, I always knew. Initially my thought is that it would’ve been about him gallantly taking out some douchebag’s life down with his own, considering his stark introduction at the school - even from then its clear just how principled he is. But what I got was...painful. I don’t always sit around to watch painful things, because usually they are presented as levels of cringe I don’t see worth in waiting around for, but this level of pain was something I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. Maybe it’s a personal thing, I can hardly know but for my skirting encounters with mental illness, I’m left adrift when it comes to Ben.

Ben died like a child. The music let you feel that...slowly growing into a melody that wouldn’t leave. Everytime you heard it, you knew what was going on, what was growing. It was methodic pacing; Ben didn’t belong anywhere. After the fact...you almost want to hear it again, but it never fully comes back, only in pieces, only in fading as if it was memory. It got too real, I mean...frankly I’ve never known what it’s been like to lose a loved one; but for all the simulations these dramas pose, this one...was really effective. I’ve never been one to latch onto character so quickly in fiction - sure this man or woman might be exceptionally badass, but as any writer dreams, the real chalice is getting a handful of the audience’s heart strings. Sure, several tropes can tug and pull and generic excuses for conflict may work as a standard bus, but then you’ve got to get specific. Ben’s illness, specifically, is not entirely a component of his character. I feel like it’s nearly asking me to believe that’s why he had to go, but cosnidering how it’s portrayal, and very possible mismatches with reality, I feel this misdiagnosis and key character point are not at all important. His interactions with Ruth define this, and for all his cool-headed light at the start of the season and throughout his decline, he doesn’t flip out against her. The show keeps repeating that he’s dangerous, to himself, and what is seen, others as well, but not to Ruth, not directly anyway. Maybe this isn’t grounds for determining his misdiagnosis, but it is grounds for consider the way his mental capacity is treated going forward. The pills stop him from feeling. As the audience we’re confused as to what should happen. His ability to experience life as most himself endangers everything, and honestly seems like poor judgment; obviously if you’re using something to get by and stay functional, by no means is it ideal to undo for a bit of feeling - but... He’s given pills...not therapy.

I get it, there is a lot of his story that’s off screen, but the solution to Ben is not the pills. Ben just doesn’t belong. Granted, the pills would help Ben keep himself in check, but there is no indication that he wasn’t using those pills at the school? I guess that is the implication, but going into the Byrde house, it’s clear that he’s been taking them rather regularly. No...Ben’s solution was the Snell’s abode. It was Ruth - and the show makes you feel so close to that closure, then rips it away...slowly...and that’s why it hurts. You can’t just kill off one of the kids...no, they’re not kids anymore. But this guy? Yikes.

As if any of this is decent analysis of anything but frankly...it just...brings back memories. Many of them I don’t really want to think about. Ben didn’t belong in not just a world like the one the show presents, but...anywhere, here in the states. For the regard of central themes, that old hearty American principle is what makes you admire him and his new clan but...they don’t belong either. The mainstay of America prosperity is profit at any cost, and the Byrdes are pristine examples of that. Everyone is “protecting their family” but...that’s a lie. Too many ways out were presented, such that the entire season, I was waiting for the big reveal of him just bowing out to the feds but, they won, instead.

---

I looked at her and shuddered. Every day I peek over some platform to see...something, anything, I’m reassured that what she said about herself getting by just fine was more than true. While I am at ease, I sit down still very perturbed. Either she was lying to me for the longest time for the effect of that principle, something had changed while I was around, or it all was an unconscious attempt at keeping me still; whatever it might be, I hardly feel well about signing it off as such. It’s easier to just absorb the blame because that means I wasn’t suckered into something twice as toxic; it means that I was trying so fucking hard for a decent reason. It means that I failed, but I was not fooled. I’d much rather take that than assign villainy or that much confusion to someone I still admire, but can’t. It’s easy at a first glance to say that this “Ben” reminds me of her, but frankly...it feels more like a mirror. Being lied to or omitted at all angles for the perception of just not having it together enough to be trusted as an “Adult”. You can’t fix this Benjamin, go back to sleep; the music will fade soon enough, you’ll be fine.

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