My Eltingville Club Crackpot Theory/Speculation
(I was thinking about this for a while but not sure if this falls under the misogyny argument. If it does, think of this as part 1/2)
I was thinking a lot about the Eltingville Club and how they became the way they were. In this case focusing on a very hyperspecific one rather than a broad summary.
In this case, this mini-essay will be less based on concrete details of the comics and more asking people to put on their tinfoil hats and listen to my crackpot theory. That being said, The Eltingville Club can be viewed through the lens of the failure of American sex ed, as well as adults not having an eye on their kids and the content they look into, all folding into how it warps their opinions on women and relationships.
There isn’t any information given on the school itself aside from characters like Bill being victims of bullying, but the US is mainly known for being shit when it comes to discussions of any type of sex ed, mainly because of the prioritization and emphasis on abstinence and scaring kids with STDs rather than actually talking about the topic itself.
* *The goal of being able to reduce sexual behavior through abstinence fails because it doesn’t actually delay said behavior, it just comes with the add on of reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes and people having no clue how their body works without it in a sexual context.
* **Also add in the context of Eltingville being a small suburb area, so these characters are stuck in a small town with nowhere to go aside from a comic shop, and probably social pariahs by everyone else not in their group of nerd friends.
It’s clear that the parents of the Eltingville Club aren’t really involved in their kids lives. Bills mom is a single mother and also implied to be abusive, Josh’s parents spoil him and lack personal responsibility for their actions, Pete’s parents both abuse and neglect him, and Jerry has neglectful parents as well. Aside from surface level, their parents don’t really want their children in their life, or wish that they were different from not meeting their expectations.
The only other adult in their life aside from their parents is Joe, who only lets them stick around because of the amount of money they drop on comics and collectibles in the store. His first appearance shows him selling adult content in the form of trading cards to children (maybe 10 years old), he doesn’t really care what he exposes to anyone of any age because the only important thing to him is profit.
From this, I would argue that Joe played a role in their lives by encouraging the club to look into content they shouldn’t be looking into, and because it is alongside content they already enjoy, it makes it easier to consume and gives them the desire to have more of it.
I partially bring this up because a lot of the stuff Pete is interested in (such as the gore/rape clips and gory comics) isn’t just something you find in the open, you have to go digging for it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe was involved in helping to find said content/expose it to him.
With all of the factors combined, it has left the club brain rotted with a warped idea of women, specifically being that women aren’t actual people but just eye candy and mechanisms for pleasure while also having no fucking clue about sex itself (body parts being referred to as things or characters being confused at what the hell the comic is portraying come to mind.)
Joe can take part of the blame considering he has unrestricted adult content in the open, but he was probably not the sole cause of the characters turning out the way they did, again this is more of a tinfoil hat theory, it could have happened from chat forums or a variety of other things, this is just something that has been on my mind for a while.
Credit to @sapphicsandman for this as well, I referenced a lot of the things he had to say on the topic, so this did not come from my brain alone.
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