Polytechnique (2009) — II: Injustice and Impotence
*SPOILERS*
A World Chaotic
This story tracks three characters as they begin with various delusions.
The Killer
The Killer harbors the delusion that society has become unjust due to power structures that confer advantages to women such that social asymmetries have emerged in their favor. He shows no literacy in the vocabulary of social theory, such as the distinction between equity and equality, so he feels society has overshot women’ equality and created male disenfranchisement, as if the Information Age had nothing to do with that. Kid was rejected from law enforcement for being antisocial but sure, feminism is what stacked the deck against him. And he’s still living off student loans. What strikes me about the most vocal of these red pill guys is this worldview of a society stacked against them despite how young they tend to be. Life hasn’t even had a chance to beat you down yet. Now you might be able to learn about the specific nature of injustice academically but this same movement tends to skew heavily conservative — in other words these kids aren’t reading social theory where they’d learn properly how to frame their angst with society without being wrong. Anger from ignorance.
While his frustration in society may be valid, creating fair opportunities for women isn’t what’s behind it. The reason things feel stacked against regular people is corporate overreach, both into our lives and into legislation that favors such special interest institutions. Now if this kid picks up a gun and shoots up a corporate HQ or a lobbying HQ he becomes the figure he thinks he is — one that most people would disapprove of but still be like, yo I get it though. And there’s more; self unawareness comes in many flavors. If he’s like a lot of red pill types then he’s also got a layer of self victimization coexisting with a conservative entrepreneurial ethos. Yet his existential anger renders this incongruity beyond awareness.
He clearly represents Toxic Masculinity, a term conservative thought leaders love straw-manning to represent all masculinity in order to justify their counter-assertion of the existence of Healthy Masculinity, truly a subset of all masculinity that no one who identifies the toxic subset disavows. (You’ve heard of fighting without fighting, conservatives have embraced a new tactic: arguing without a premise). This story is based on events in 1989 so The Killer likely wasn’t familiar with the red pill movement as it exists today, however that doesn’t preclude him from the same ignorance. Presumably he acknowledges subsets of masculinity (maybe without calling them chads and incels), which underscores the philosophical inconsistency required to assert that only a subset of masculinity is toxic then turn around and symbolically attack the female justice movement as a monolith. What’s more, in his monologue he leans heavily on fallacious reasoning like women relying on the wisdom accumulated by men over the ages, despite the fact that that asymmetry results from the very oppression feminism is responding to. He leverages the statistically lower female involvement in war as evidence of hypocrisy rather than a naturally selected aversion to violence, then fails to acknowledge the diminished incidence of war following WWII as a function of global coalition-building, betraying his simple ignorance of how to frame the structures of the world with which he finds himself frustrated. He talks about how women in sports benefit from male-female distinctions but doesn’t extend that logic to the existence of weight classes (boy 9-time 74kg gold medalist Buvaisar Saitiev was really milking the system, he should be put in his place by wrestling a 300-lb man. Surely the purity of sport is corrupted when you have to fight people your own size). Here we see the inconsistencies and insecurities on which the most toxic forms of masculinity rely.
To be fair, there is a real space to discuss tangible and serious issues arising for men in the Information Era, which no feminist I’ve personally met disagrees with (the Venn diagram of people who support justice for women’s issues and justice for actual men’s issues is probably a circle). However if you approach this topic from a place of fatalistic-victimization-at-the-hands-of-a-nefarious-outgroup (instead of instituions/systems), like many intellectual bottom feeders do, you will never actually touch on relevant men’s issues in a way that aligns with reality. You’ll be Don Quixote fighting windmills.
Jean-Francois
Jean-Francois, the ally in the story, believes the world is a place of hope. Now I don’t remember a singular moment where this is made clear but rather it’s a view that emerges by trying to understand the conclusion of his arc; he feels hopeless in the state of the society as his former roommate revealed to him so he kills himself. He also maybe takes for granted that women still have to deal with some bullshit. This I think is shown very subtly when Villeneuve has Jean-Francois copying Valerie’s notes, implying that she is more diligent than he is. Given the illustration of her unique struggles and pressures, this is probably because she feels she has to be.
I’m also making the assumption that each character represents an idea in a conversation. He represents Healthy Masculinity confronting the toxicity mutated from itself — he was The Killer’s roommate, saw the signs, and probably just didn’t think they would extend to lethal depths.
Valerie
Valerie, our female protagonist, is not under the delusion of an 💫 equitable society 💫. She believes she will have to struggle more but can still close the gap. Her personal experience with a sexist job interviewer hiding behind the standard excuses, of “Look, it’s just a biological fact that you having kids would be a disruption to our operations,” precludes her from this delusion. I imagine this might feel similar to how it makes me feel when I get a senior leader to feel comfortable and non-judged, and they confess to excluding our newly immigrated Indian and African colleagues from non-work social events, “Look I have nothing against them, they’re just really loud and I don’t know how well they’d mesh with the rest of the team.” The onus to include is always on incumbent leadership. Sorry the unsophistication of people who share my heritage ruined your shitty country club but we’re here to stay. I digress.
Valerie’s delusion is one of depth. She doesn’t understand the depth to which this toxic line of masculinity extends. She represents Feminism, a movement seeking justice and dignity in the face of a social reality that differs from the one perceived by the toxically masculine.
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Polytechnique Essay —
II: Injustice and Impotence
