I think it’s about victims and how we’re quick to apply that tag without seeing the entire, extraordinary person.
Almost everyone in “Glass” is someone society would classically treat as a victim - a person with DID, a pedophilia/rape survivor, a family that lost its mother, another family dealing with a man whose bones constantly break...these people, even though we might shower them with kindness, are defined by their trauma as a handicap and sometimes less-so by their strength in overcoming it. It is something to “fix” or fixate on or remove, rather than a part of someone that allows that to gain extraordinary (superhuman, even) strength from and be an embraced part of who they are.
There are a couple of exchanges in Glass that I think reinforce this notion:
First, in what seems like a simple nod to Unbreakable when Night makes his obligatory entrance - his character says that he used to run with a bad crowd, but that he’s reformed now due to positive affirmations. He says this to two strangers, openly, unabashedly, focusing on who he became - a better person, by embracing his past in a positive way, learning from it, rather than fixating on who he was or running from it. He didn’t let society’s brand of judgment or pity stop his transformation. He seems to accept both parts of his life as necessary to where he is now and not a victim of his past bad choices.
Second, in two separate scenes that mirror each other - the doctor tells Hedwig that it’s horrible for him to be trapped as a 9 year-old, doomed to never know the joy of growing older and having different perspectives to all the experiences he will have - he will only ever have the one perspective and he’s a victim for it (she also tells Casey she’s the victim, point blank).
Mr. Glass, on the other hand, when speaking to Hedwig, remarks at what a wonderful thing being always 9 years old must be, because his perspective can never be twisted by society with age - he will always be able to see things as they really are. A strength, not a victim’s handicap.
I think this is the film and even maybe the trilogy at its core. David’s weakness, from the very first film, is drowning, a clear metaphor. He never overcomes this weakness, but through his eventual acceptance of it along with the rest of his abilities, he becomes something greater. Believing his weakness is real means all his incredible strengths that come with it are, too. Casey’s rape actually makes her stronger, the lone survivor; Kevin is his own weakness, whereas his personalities make him stronger, Elijah’s insanity is what created David and Kevin and led the world to realize the existence of superhumans.
And this just one of the things that Night recognizes with comics so well (the trilogy on the whole being an excellent deconstruction of comics): a comic character is the sum of its extremes - kryptonite makes Superman more interesting, more fantastic, not less so. Something we should all embrace - that once we can get past society’s crushing need to define us by our most glaring trauma or perceived flaw we can see the unique, extraordinary whole that we should all see ourselves as. The “clover society” sees humanity as the potential victims of the emerging superhumans, rather than the superhumans bringing a new age of awareness and potential to humanity. These are the core definitions of Lex vs. Superman and I think Night nailed it.
Submitted January 19, 2019 at 12:40PM by kappachow http://bit.ly/2RDE15u