The mother of invention

I've only watched one or two Half Man interviews amongst the many, and I haven't seen Gadd discussing this. (Perhaps I've missed it?)

The "now your turn" prison scene was dreadful/captivating for several reasons, but after some unpacking, I realised that the aspect which really set my teeth on edge stemmed from Ruben's (possibly) disingenuous understanding of how and why language is so important.

The effect of Gadd's writing (on this viewer, at least) was that it was extremely difficult to tell if and when Ruben in particular attains self-awareness, and how deep it goes. Consequently, the certainty that their shared confessional was inherently doomed only increased as the revelations piled up. (For what it's worth, I don't think it would have mattered if Niall had never confessed about Mona and Baird. There's an implicit chasm that can never be crossed between Ruben and Niall regardless).

In one way, the scene seems like the high point of Ruben's ability to reflect and to understand himself. He makes it plain that he understands the connection between his childhood sexual abuse and the impact on his masculinity. He has been terrified his whole life that he has been rendered an incomplete man. But he refuses to see (or cannot see?) that years of verbal abuse, threats and non-contact bullying towards Niall has a comparable impact. (Let's set aside the variety of sexual/sexualised assaults for a moment). Words only having meanings "if you let them" is effectively saying, "get over it, it's just banter." (Every word has meaning, says Gadd the writer). Ruben's attitude shifts culpability: your pain is your own fault.

But Ruben does, on some level, understand the primacy of language when it comes to abuse, trauma and self-expression. It takes him at least two decades to find the words to communicate his experiences, and feels compelled to stop and ask permission to keep laying words down in front of Niall. ("Is this too much?") He does have an instinct that certain words in a certain configuration are simply too horrible to air, and the deflated look on his face when Niall tells him that he can't bear to hear anymore is appalling. (Niall being forced to listen to an echo of his own abuse being recounted to him by his sobbing abuser really is the icing on the cake).

The upshot of this for me was twofold.

1) I felt provoked as a viewer into quantifying and hierarchising forms of abuse (physical and specifically sexual abuse is apparently worse than verbal), by means of Ruben's pain tugging so forcefully on the heartstrings. (To be clear, I don't think Gadd is stating there is a hierarchy).

By the end, we are able to see that Niall is a conniving liar, lacking in empathy and a sense of duty to others, a misogynist who is content to treat women and children as collateral, unwilling to take offered opportunities (even as an adult) to self-reflect and to improve himself. He is cruel and petty and selfish. His own suffering is where the world begins and ends.

Ruben is a violent rapist, a murderer, a bully, a lazy sexist, and a brute. His self-image is as fragile as spun sugar, and he holds life cheaply enough that people (both men and women) may be considered merely things to be destroyed and obliterated, property to be held or discarded.

(They are, I think, both addicts).

And yet.

They are the products of their environments, as we all are. The choices that we are capable of making as adults are made possible by the nature of the mechanisms with which we are fitted in our formative years. How are we composed, mixed, alloyed, wired, patched, rigged up, constructed brick by brick, or chipped and chipped and chipped like the knapping of flint? (Pick your metaphor, I suppose).

Niall is bullied, abused, assaulted, raped, dismissed, mocked and belittled, again and again and again. As a child, as an adolescent, as an adult. His opinions, views, fears, doubts and worries are minimised and invalidated repeatedly. If we are supposed to learn moral courage, compassion, and emotional intelligence from adults/elders/family, then who, precisely, was modelling any of these things for Niall?

Ruben is raped, abused, (implicitly) neglected, left behind and passed around from home to home, institution to institution. He is everyone's problem because he is no one's responsibility. (And certainly should never have been Niall's). If we are supposed to develop a sense of self-control as we grow, to understand boundaries and autonomy, to learn to recognise the necessary barriers between self and other, how, exactly, was Ruben meant to grasp any of this? Who is showing him the way, and making him feel safe?

Of course, these are explanations for their behaviour, not excuses. Or are they? Where does one end and the other begin? At what point can we say that decisions made as an adult should not be allowed to sprout from the muck of our childhood any longer? Our 20s, 30s, 40s? When, when?

And is it even possible to do otherwise?

I've personally been frustrated with reviewers and critics who have found Niall and Ruben crudely drawn or unbelievable, and most effectively read only as metaphors of masculinity, because those critics haven't the experience or wit to imagine real people living such lives.

I am in my 30s, a parent, a homeowner, employed, responsible, sensible...an adult by any metric. I still make decisions that have their origin in childhood experiences and trauma. It is draining to be constantly on guard against an earlier iteration of yourself, to act in opposition to wiring installed by a shoddy workman. And, obviously, there is plenty to be said for the way in which boys/men are permitted or quietly encouraged to react to trauma, and the ways in which women are disallowed these modes of expression. (And must, like women generally do, perform the cleaning up afterwards).

Nevertheless, reckoning with abuse means that it costs you to fight your worse instincts, just as it costs you to pursue them when you fall into old patterns.

So, when do you get to put down the burden of such work?

We were both children, both victims, both frightened and suffering. We reacted to the difficulties of family breakdown and an environment of normalised abuse in ways that mirror Niall and Ruben in an intimate and startling fashion. All the shades of introversion, self-doubt, self-abuse, and yet an inexplicable sense of oneself being special (me); extroversion, brutality, hollow self-confidence and a desperation to maintain a physical masculinity at all costs (my brother).

We should have been closer. Strangely, Gadd's vision of sibling intimacy almost makes me wish we had been. I couldn't see my Ruben's "charm", though others in our lives apparently could (hence the endless excuses for his behaviour). I got the explosive violence, the cruelty, bullying and non-consensual sexual experiences. I didn't get the protection, generosity or love from my Ruben. Which is just as well, perhaps, because I would have been up to my ears in devotion and it would have done me as little good as it clearly does Niall.

Still, Gadd's characters have turned up to the light some old, odd feelings, not least the sense that the romantic strain of the sibling relationship in Half Man could have knocked the sharpest edges off the painful reality of my own. It's obviously a bootless sort of longing, which, just as obviously, excuses nothing. But I think it's not naive to want painful disconnection to have been something less painful, and more mixed with love.