English Majoring It Up

CW: Violence, child death, pet death.

Spoilers: Pet Semetary

Gotten into a surprising number of conversations about Pet Semetary of late, or maybe an unsurprising number given the recent new movie. One awesome Twitter comment stuck with me: namely, that the story is about how everyone dies because dudes don’t listen to advice.  (Yeah, yeah, #notalldudes, whatever.)

And yeah. I posted this on FB and was like yeah, I’ve read the book, I know there’s supposed to be an eldritch horror with mental influence, but frankly in this day and age I think that guy could just sit back with a beer. Except…okay, maybe the story is “everyone dies because dudes won’t listen to advice except from a creepy corruption figure who tells them to give in to their worst impulses,” which makes the Wendigo in the story, like, Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro, and I’m cool with this analogy.

Then I went to buy milk and a sweater, which involves a lot of walking, which is generally when my brain comes up with Dubious Ideas. And so: Totally Unintentional (obviously, a lot of these assholes weren’t even born when the book came out) Pet Semetary As Analogy For Incels/MRAs/Those Dudes That Whine About Girl Ghostbusters.

So okay. One of the basic concepts of the book is that sometimes shit happens and it’s often unpleasant and not necessarily fair, but our job as people is to accept it, do what we can, and get on with our lives. Going forward is painful, but the best option. Trying to bring things back ends with zombie children.

Now, obviously, not getting laid by the people you want or having girls in your video games or whatnot is not a problem compared to having your kid or your pet get run over. But I’m going to be charitable–mostly for the sake of a literary metaphor, not because these assholes in any way deserve it–and say that, okay, it does hurt when you legitimately do everything right and the person you’re into doesn’t return the feelings, and the patriarchy is bad for men too, and when you’re used to privilege equality feels like loss and so on. So there’s some pain.

The route that doesn’t end in badness, the Victor Pascow/Mostly Jud Crandall route, is acceptance. Yes, whatever’s going on hurts, but there’s nobody to blame for it, and you can’t change the situation by force. At best, you can maybe keep it from happening again, but often it’s just a case of sitting with the pain and then moving forward.

Unless you listen to Peterson/Shapiro/the monster beyond the deadfall. What they tell you is that you can totally keep or make things the way you want them to be, that you don’t have to let go and move on, and that you’re right to cling to what was, or what you thought was, or what you wanted to be.

This is where the metaphor shifts.

Because it’s yourself you bury if you listen to those people. You’re sticking your mind in the Dubious Resurrection Pit, because you can’t let go of your old self enough to take in new information like “I’m sad right now, but it will pass, and nobody owes me a relationship,” or “some of the things I liked did leave a lot of people out, at best.”

Most people who do that, thank God, get the animal resurrection model. They’re not pleasant to be around, they’re surly, and many of them smell weird, but basically they’re harmless. Some go all Timmy Bateman with the verbal or emotional abuse. And, as we know from the news, no small number end up full Gage.

Don’t listen to the fucker in the woods. It does not end well.

And that, folks, is what I’m still paying off student loans for.

Next week,  I finish Swords!