****SPOILERS AHEAD DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED OBSESSION!!!!****
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The more I think about Obsession, the more convinced I become that it functions as an allegory for rape and coercion. (to be fair i thought this the moment he made that wish lol)
Not because it contains a traditional assault scene. Quite the opposite.
The horror comes from the fact that Nikki appears to consent.
That is what makes it so disturbing.
The wish does not chain her to a wall. It does not physically force her body to move. Instead, it takes control of the thing that allows consent to exist in the first place: her ability to choose.
The moment Bear wishes that Nikki will love him more than anyone else in the world, Nikki's autonomy begins disappearing piece by piece. We watch her recognize that something is wrong almost immediately. She repeatedly asks what she is doing. She mirrors conversations instead of participating in them. She argues with herself. She seems confused by her own actions. At one point she outright says, "Wait, what the fuck am I doing?"
That is not the reaction of a woman freely choosing a relationship.
That is the reaction of someone realizing she no longer has control over herself.
What makes Bear so unsettling is that he knows this.
The film goes out of its way to show us that he knows.
He keeps asking if she is okay. He keeps commenting on how strange she is acting. He repeatedly looks uncomfortable and confused by her behavior. Yet every time he is presented with evidence that Nikki is not acting like herself, he chooses to benefit from it anyway.
That is why the bedroom scene is so important.
When Nikki kisses him and then immediately recoils in horror, screaming and panicking, Bear's response is not concern.
His response is, "You kissed me."
Because the film has already established that Nikki is not operating with normal judgment. Bear knows something has fundamentally altered her behavior, yet he immediately removes responsibility from himself and frames the situation as something that simply happened to him.
From that point forward, Nikki becomes less and less like a person and more like a prisoner trapped inside her own body.
The film repeatedly visualizes this loss of autonomy. She stares at him for hours. She follows him compulsively. She structures her entire existence around him. She becomes physically unable to separate herself from him. Even when she appears happy, the audience is constantly shown flashes of terror underneath the performance.
And then the movie does something brilliant.
It shows us the consequences of being trapped inside a body that no longer belongs to you.
Nikki's body begins breaking down.
She stands for hours without moving. She soils herself. She vomits. She deteriorates physically and mentally.
Many viewers interpret this simply as obsession taken to an extreme.
I see a body rejecting a reality that the mind cannot accept.
The real Nikki knows something is wrong.
The real Nikki knows she does not want this.
The real Nikki knows she cannot escape.
And her body begins expressing that distress in ways her mind no longer can.
The most heartbreaking part of the movie is that every time Nikki briefly resurfaces, nobody helps her.
Ian notices something is wrong.
Sarah notices something is wrong.
Bear definitely notices something is wrong.
The audience notices something is wrong.
Instead, people continually return her to the man benefiting from her condition.
Even the hotline scene reinforces this reading. When Bear calls asking to modify the wish, he never asks how to free Nikki. He never asks how to restore her autonomy. He never asks how to undo the harm.
He asks how to make the situation more manageable.
The focus remains on his discomfort rather than her suffering.
That is what ultimately convinced me that the film is not about romance gone wrong.
It is about what happens when someone's desire becomes more important than another person's agency.
The horror is not that Nikki loves Bear.
The horror is that she doesn't, and is forced to love him/be raped by him constantly.
i don't know... i can't stop thinking about it...
areudirty
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
