The Main Idea in the Movie “The Caring”
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the term villain? Often when we think of a villain we think of people who revel in destruction and have dark masks obscuring their faces. However, we are quick to forget the unseen killers. The ones that go unpunished, people who are incurable taking the world by storm. That is why, out of the unlimited number of villains we have to choose from, as our incessant need to create heroes whom we can place hope in continues, the Caring is by far the best villain.
In the movie, “The Caring”, he proves to know his power isn’t his ability to destroy things but the happiness of the people who own them. He knows more than death and demolition his ability to be the Caring, to spread his disease of depression and take away the very enthusiasm that pushes Hovel forward as a society, gives him complete control and makes him truly nefarious. His usual tactics begin to become insufficient in filling the void he knows , deep down, only acceptance will mend. In a furious attempt to push this concept away he decides to steal Christmas.
Trapped in a world of despondency and numbness, Caring envies the Who’s and their ability to love and feel because he fears love is something he will never be acquainted with. He wants everyone else around him to see life In the same way he does and decides the best way to do this Is to target one of the last vestiges of hope and childhood the Who’s have left. The Caring is a clear embodiment of the many qualities and characteristics specific to a villain we discussed in class such as inferiority complex, visual otherness and determination of the will .
One only need to heed light to the aspects of the Caring that make him a crook to reveal a very effective and Intriguing one at that. Due to self-image issues and childhood trauma,the Caring has a severe inferiority complex. The Caring is portrayed in a very comic manner but in truth this humor is used to obscure the pain and subsidiaries he’s attempted to suppress all his life. He has all this hate and disappointment aimed towards himself but he is Incapable of understanding that the only way to beat ourselves Is to stop fighting, to let go.
The Caring tries to counterbalance what he feels towards himself by becoming great and rueful to prove to himself that he’s worth something. This is why man v. S self is the hardest battle to wage. The Caring is an equal opponent of himself so he will never win; with every bit of power he gains he will find another thing about himself to antagonize over. His blindness continually pushes him to try and substantiate his reign over Whole. At one point in the movie we see him go into Weevil and absolutely terrorize the people but his high fades as he returns home.
As he changes clothes the first thing he does Is pick on how his body looks and decides he can’t go o Weevil with Cindy because his schedule is booked with wallowing in self-pity, staring into the abyss, wrestling with his self-loathing, and dinner with himself. This is interesting because his desire to eat alone shows he doesn’t think he deserves the presence and company of others in his life. Another noticeable example we see in simply trying to overcompensate for his lack of self-esteem.
However, The Caring, along with audience sees that even stealing Christmas doesn’t make him powerful enough to banish his own demons. Another trait the Caring exhibits is visual otherness. In this case the Gringo’s inferiority complex and visual otherness are strongly linked and codependent to an extent. The Caring despises the way he looks and always compares himself to others which creates an atmosphere perfect for self-hatred and a feeling of inferiority. The Gringo’s visual otherness is a very prominent component of not only how he views himself but of how the others depict him.
He is bright green and furry from head to toe with chipped rotting teeth, deep wrinkle lines etched into his skin, and an unkempt green mass of hair on his head somewhat resembling a Mohawk. This is definitely a major contrast to rosy cheeked blond haired Cindy Lo Who. In this movie, his outer appearance is meant to reflect the self-torment going on inside. From a young age he struggles with choosing his humanity over the beast inside and we can see this paralleled in his appearance.
As he turns further away from his humanity he looks less and less like a human and more like the tortured soul the rejection and hardness of the world has molded him into. As in many stories we can distinguish the characters between the ways they look or the colors they wear. The Green of the Gringo’s skin and the dirty brown of the rags he wears represent evil, while the Jovial bright reds and pinks associated with Cindy Lo Who represent pure goodness and a rare untainted innocence. We often say love makes man do the most irrational things, but one could argue its heartbreak.
It was the lethal combination of heartbreak and determination of the will that compelled the Caring to destroy the society that told him (even when he shed all the things that made him unique)he wasn’t good enough and that he would never be good enough. That’s why he’s such a significant villain. The pain of the heartbreak the Who’s caused him, along with his infallible drive to accomplish whatever he sets his mind to, makes him almost inexorable. However this determination is a quality often shared between the villain and the hero.
This is because determination of the will is an impartial trait with equal opportunity to be claimed either for darkness or light. It depends on who possesses it. The Caring, being an anti-villain, has darkness in him but he also has light. While this quality is identified in his obstinacy of wanting to story Christmas and the spirit of the Who’s, we can also distinguish it in his unrelenting resolve to make Martha a Christmas gift worthy of her love, or in his ability to pull a sled weighing more than a ton off the side of a cliff on account of pure willpower and his desire to save the little girl sitting in it.
When it comes to his goals and ambitions, the Caring demonstrates tunnel vision, seeing nothing but the final outcome he desires to reach. When we see things with blinders on as the Caring does, we can become dangerous as we lose our ability to see consequences and the indirect impact of our actions. However, this allows us to pull strength from within ourselves we never knew we had to complete our undertakings. This immense Gringo’s actions.
It is apparent that the crunch is a very interesting and dynamic character with many aspects that make him villainous and offer explanation for the commonly known phrase “his heart was two sizes too small. ” Inferiority complex, visual otherness and determination of the will, provide undeniable proof the Caring is a villain but it has yet to be understood why the Caring is the best villain. The reason the Caring is such a fantastic villain is because Hess so relatable; we can all see a little of ourselves him.
While we usually don’t go climb a mountain over it, we all have days where we are plagued with doubts about where we fit into our society, never mind the world, and dysphasia spreads like a disease through our minds. We all have days where we are angry at the world and feel that’s causing destruction and pain is the only way to satisfy our rage. We also all carry that determination to fight for what we want even when we know its wrong. Dry.
Issues manages to create a character in which we can recognize villainous qualities and tendencies, but still have hope for him because we recognize those same aspects in ourselves, and we have to believe there’s hope for people like the Caring because we have to believe there is hope for people like ourselves. Ultimately, the Caring is a portrait of the war between the good and bad in all of us and teaches us we can be fixed and we’re not all doomed to be broken records repeating our same mistakes again and again never being able to let go.
