If a man and a woman are at odds in a film, does that automatically make the film about gender war?
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Without answering that question myself (or I will answer it - “possibly”. Abstract noncommittalism for the win!), I will point out that, if the answer is ‘yes’, that is looking at movies through a somewhat specific lens: “Identity Politics”. Identity politics focuses on gender, race, and sexuality, and how those groups have been oppressed (by white men in particular), and the dynamics of that oppression.
I’m certainly not saying that’s a wrong way to look at movies, and it certainly isn’t wrong to apply it to “Obsession”. In “Obsession”, Bear (Michael Johnstone) finds novelty wish giver in an occult store, and makes a wish that his crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) would love only him forever. The result is, her personality is wiped out completely, and replaced with a new model that only wants to be with him and love him. He essentially takes her voice and her agency completely away from her. She is the co-star of the movie, but she is simply there as a way to look at his choices and define his character, while having absolutely no character of her own. This is what we call a “Classic patriarchy move”. It happens all the time, not just in entertainment but in society as well. Do you know Christine Blasey Ford or Renee Good? What do you know about them other than how they frame the actions of men? That’s right. Patriarchy has a way of front-and-centering women while not actually allowing them to have a history or independent voice. To say that lens *doesn’t* apply to “Obsession” just seems... Willfully short sighted.
But, the reason I’m not a huge fan of identity politics, is that it provides the endpoint as well as the starting point. So... Bear subjects Nikki. Bear is an allegory for all men and Nikki is an allegory for all women, and the moral of the story is that men oppress women. Done! That’s your movie! That’s... Not a very satisfying endpoint for analysis, because it doesn’t ask the most important question: Why? *Why* does Bear oppress Nikki? If identity politics is your start and your endpoint, then it tells you the answer: “Because he’s a man”. Heck, if you want to bring ALL of the stuff in, it’s “Because he’s a privileged straight white man who believes he’s better than, and should be able to oppress, everybody else”.
Really? If you believe that it’s just genetically baked into all men that they’re sexist, I’m not going to say you’re wrong... But how do you even start to solve the problem of *the sexist gene* when it doesn’t really exist? If you’re putting forth sexism as a film analysis, is it supported by scenes in the film? Prior to his wish, does Bear read forums or talk on discord channels about the inferiority of women? Does he treat women like shit? He doesn’t. Where was the “man” part of him then? It’s only after he makes his wish that he is actively oppressing Nikki. Is the wish patriarchy? Was patriarchy just waiting in the weeds for Bear to make a wish, then pounce on him and remind him he’s a man?
The wish answers the question “why” a bit better than identity politics, because the wish represents something more subversive and dangerous than sexism or racism: Power. Absolute power. Bear doesn’t even ask for it, really. It’s a classic “Monkey’s Paw” scenario, where the wish is interpreting the desires of the wisher in order to create maximum havoc and carnage. Granted, wanting Nikki to love only him is a dick move, but he doesn’t think the wish is real at that point. He certainly doesn’t ask that her entire personality be demolished and replaced with a Bear-loving psycho-sycophant. But that’s what the wish gives him. It gives him absolute power over another human being.
If there is one thing that living on this fucking planet will demonstrate over and over again, it’s this: You want power. It’s the goal. Competition. Capital. Money. Equity. POWER. That’s it. THAT’S the endpoint.
Over the last couple centuries, we, as a civilization, have decided that owning another human being is bad. That’s slavery. Except... We haven’t. Your boss can fuck your world because they have power over you (they also exploit you, but we won’t talk about that here, except I just did #Marx). Billionaires can prevent you speaking out by booting you off social media platforms, buy tons of houses to prevent you from being able to afford just one, and can fuck you in so many ways without ever knowing who you are (or, conversely, by knowing who you are). And. You. Can’t. Do. SHIT. To. Them. Not just that, you shouldn’t want to! Our society is built on the premise that accumulating as much wealth and power as possible is WHAT YOU SHOULD WANT. We venerate people with money, and don’t give a passing thought to people that don’t.
So, Bear is given power over Nikki by a novelty wish, an entity that doesn’t give a shit what race or gender he is, and we expect him to... What? Not abuse that power? Because he abuses it. Every time he has sex with Nikki, she has no choice in the matter. It’s rape. HOWEVER, she is telling him she wants to have sex with him, so he doesn’t have to have any moral quibbles about being a rapist. That is what POWER gets you.
So what do we want Bear to do with that power? Well... It’s pretty easy to say, reject it. If you’re given the keys to the powermobile, throw them in the drink! If this were a Japanese horror movie, Bear would spend the entire movie going to the old steel mill to find the dusty tome about the dude who made the wish in 1953 and how to reverse it (probably only to be fucked by it anyway). But... Bear doesn’t do anything to try and reverse the wish until the end of the third act, and only then when it becomes obvious to him that Nikki’s undying love for him presents a physical danger. Which is to say, he spends a lot of the movie holding on to his power even when he learns that the “real” nikki is in agony while the demolished form is proclaiming her love for him. So yes, it’s easy for us to look at him as a villain, because he is, and say that he should have tried to free Nikki from the wish a lot earlier than he did.
Except... Asking somebody to give up power when we live in a world that presents it as the ultimate goal... It’s a big ask. Of course we want Bear to give up his power... But we shouldn’t be surprised when he doesn’t. He doesn’t give up his power because society demonstrates to him that he shouldn’t, even as his moral compass is telling him he should. Abusing that power isn’t really a function of being a man.
If you reversed the gender of the two main characters, is it a completely different movie? If you think women don’t want power and won’t step on anybody (including, possibly especially, other women) to get it, I invite you watch an episode of “Real Housewives” or read any book ever. Women can be power hungry too, but they frequently have to be a lot more subtle about it, because they’re operating under patriarchy. Except... If an alien entity just GAVE Nikki that power, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be just as villainous as Bear. So... Does that remove identity politics? Are we now watching a banger of a horror movie and not a gender commentary because a woman is the villain? No. We’re watching a movie about the corrupting nature of power, and how society *tells* you to reject it while *demonstrating* that you should hoard it.
Whatever happened to world peace? If you’re making a novelty wish you don’t think will come true anyway, why not wish for an end to all war? Every single wish made in “Obsession” is for selfish, personal gain. The problem isn’t that “Greed is good”, as Gordon Gekko would say, it’s that greed is omnipresent. Asking somebody to “throw away” their wish on world peace in that kind of environment is borderline herculean. Plus, doesn’t making a truly altruistic wish kind of checkmate the wish inverter? Maybe if your wish is selfish, you get pwned, but if your wish is truly for the good of mankind or whatever, it goes through? Although, I would imagine that folks would bet on world peace on kalshi right after they wished for it. So maybe the altruistic wish is truly impossible. Let’s hope not.
I will say this: “Obsession” *is* a banger of a horror movie. The explosions of violence are genuinely gory and fun in an 80s way... And the way we get these shots of Nikki’s shadowy silhouette watching Bear from the shadows... It’s creepy AF. The “phone call” to the wish customer service is downright disturbing. To go from chilling to campy violent fun is a pretty rad ride. Yup, I just used “rad”.
Before I get too full of myself (too late!), let me say this: If identity politics makes for a bad endpoint of analysis, I’m not saying power dynamics is the right endpoint either. The fun of being a cinephile (#moviesnoot) is that you can discover new lenses through which to view the movie. Heck, when I was taking film studies courses in the early 90s, the whole thing was trying to figure out which character was an allegory for jesus. Do we still do that? The danger of identity politics is that it gives you your start AND your end before the movie even begins, and that eliminates the fun of discovery altogether. It’s not *wrong*, per se, but it’s also not *the whole thing*.
Andy Richter was definitely jesus. I guess we still do it!
2/10