Broken, Damaged People

Okay, so I was watching the movie Dedication, starring Mandy Moore and Billy Crudup, directed by Justin Theroux, which is a fantastic film. But, there's this moment where Henry (Crudup) and Rudy (Tom Wilkinson) are discussing Henry's girlfriend and Rudy explains that the girlfriend will leave Henry because he's actually a damaged person. Rudy says that women think they like damaged men, but what they really like is men who pretend to be damaged "in a complicated, let's talk about it over Chardonnay way."

And this made me think. Not about the obvious, which would be the gross oversimplification of women's desire for men who need to be fixed somehow, but about the idea of whether or not a person can truly be damaged.

We all have our little quirks and foibles and we carry the stigmas and baggages of things that have happened to us in the past. These things help to form the way we think about how other people think about us. For example, if someone is told over and over that people don't like them, they will expect that whenever they meet someone new, that person will by default be unable to like them. And then the unlikable person will, assuming they will not be liked, not make an effort to be charming and interesting and likable, and will therefore be disliked.

In Henry's case, he has OCD. He becomes somewhat agoraphobic in stressful situations and needs to lie down with heavy things on top of him to become calm again. He has to have things a certain way, he refuses to ride in a car because "statistically you have a 100% chance of being in an accident," he can only turn things counterclockwise, he is afraid of numbers, and (the most endearing of his quirks) he has a towel he cannot throw away because he thinks it may have feelings. Henry has real problems and issues. But should we say that he's broken?

I honestly don't believe it's possible for a person to be broken. I think it's possible for them to be hurt, angry, confused, scared and selfish, but not broken.

But broken is such a trendy buzzword for people who have feelings or who express negative emotions. Henry does and says things "no one" would ever really think to do or say in "real life." He gets angry at Rudy for giving away their Nicks tickets, so he tells a little girl there is no Santa Claus. He says hurtful things to Lucy (Moore). But Lucy isn't having any of it. She understands where these things are coming from and stands up to him, and he falls in love.

But back to being trendy. I think we've become a society so obsessed with being positive and upbeat and avoiding anything that's negative that anything or anyone who expresses negativity needs to be dismissed as wrong. Hence, broken people. If someone who is justifiably upset with the level of service they get at a restaurant and complains, other diners apologize to his waitress and tell her he's just an angry man. Something wrong with him, not with the experience. So many soma holidays for our Brave New World.

I think this is why so many films center around characters who are angry or disappointed or are in some other way expressed as broken. It makes them interesting. It makes them human. Far more human, in fact, than the idiot who calls them broken. Of course, they're usually fixed or on their way to being fixed when the end credits roll, but Hollywood still has to pander, after all.