Fatal Attraction (1987) with Paige Harden

Welcome to Love Faction! The podcast that analyzes romcoms and romantic films using the science of close relationships. I'm Paul Eastwick, author of Bonded by Evolution. I'm here with Eli Finkle, author of The All or Nothing Marriage and Eli. What are we talking about today? Today we're talking about fatal attraction, the erotic thriller and literal pot boiler, starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. The disturbing 1987 film grossed $320 million, that's $900 million in today's money. Oh my god. Oh my god, it's like the Avengers. It's the Avengers! And it garnered six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture and Best Director. Some of the themes we'll explore are how people feel about their own wrongdoing, what stalking actually looks like, and when we want to see people punished. And fair warning, we'll be spoiling this movie today. So if you don't know that it's super totally normal, when the police say that the person stalking you probably got it out of her system and we don't want to take any action because it could provoke her further. Yeah, then go ahead and watch this movie and come back. She's going to help us out with a few of the themes in this movie today. But first Eli, who are the key characters and couples in this movie? The protagonist of fatal attraction is Dan Gallagher, played by Michael Douglas in his Wall Street era. He's a suave, successful, and happily married lawyer. He's also impulsive and entitled. He has an affair with Alex Forrest, played perfectly by Glenn Close. She's an intelligent, successful, and single book editor. She's also lonely and mentally unstable. Dan's wife, Beth, is played by Anne Archer. She works as a real estate agent, but her primary roles are domestic, wife, mother, and homemaker. She performs these roles with a gentle sweetness that belies hidden ferocity. Dan and Alice have a golden retriever named Quincy and a six year old daughter named Ellen, who herself has a pet bunny. So Paul, those are the chess pieces. Are you ready to give us one minute on how the film moves them across the board? Yes, certainly a stressor in here. So I can be that fun. On your mark, get set, go. Dan Gallagher, a married New York lawyer, has a brief affair with book editor Alex Forrest, complete with hot elevator sex, taken the dog to the park and a home cook dinner, while his wife, Beth, and young daughter are out of town. When Dan tries to say thanks for the lovely weekend, Alex attempts suicide. She calls repeatedly. She shows up on an announcement. She says she's pregnant and she threatens to tell his wife. Dan changes their number and even agrees to Beth's long-standing wish to move out of Manhattan into the suburbs, but Alex tracks Dan Datsis's car with acid and leaves a threatening tape. Alex next begins to terrorize in the whole family, including infamously boiling the family's pet rabbit, which finally means Dan has to come clean. He and Beth separate, but then Alex kidnaps their daughter for a brief ride in a rollercoaster, and in the chaos Beth gets in a car accident. Subsequently, Dan nearly kills Alex at her apartment. Then finally, maybe the police are going to get involved. Ah, they'll pick her up for questioning sometime later. What's her hurry? So we get the obligatory final slasher scene as Alex invades the home attacks Beth with a knife. Dan attempts to drown her. Alex rises like a zombie and Beth shoots her dead and they all lived happily ever after. You had plenty of time to luxuriate on the final line. Anyway, it's crazy listening to you do that, but honestly, that's what it felt like to watch the movie. Ah, yup. And, yeah, everything's totally fine and totally normal. So Eli, what is your relationship to this movie? One thing that stood out to me when watching this movie is how far Dan is willing to go and how vulnerable he's willing to make himself to avoid admitting to his wife that he had this affair. Yeah, I mean, right, there's like the moment where he goes to the police. And the police is like, you know, somebody might have to admit something and he's like, "You're right. I'm sure this won't escalate any further." Right. I'm sure I can handle it by like going to her apartment and yelling at her. It's, you know, good choices. Good choices throughout the movie. I mean, she's threatening it. She's like, "I'll tell you why." Yeah. And he's like, "If you do that, I'll kill you." And I just was struck by that old Dan Savage idea of the Monaga Mish relationship. One that's basically like, "Look, we're generally monogamous. We're clearly each other's right or die." But some stuff on the side is acceptable and it's not going to destroy the entire marriage. And I don't know what to say about what norm the two of them should have adopted in their marriage. But I do think that this is the sort of thing that a Monaga Mish norm in your marriage can help you deal with before it becomes homicidal. I think this is one of your hottest takes. I don't even know if you appreciate that like having an affair with Alex Forrest. Yeah, but if we don't just listen to Dan Savage, it probably would have been okay. This is something. I'm looking forward to having more of this conversation. Yeah, you were totally right. This is an outlierish take. If he ends up in this situation and there's some understanding that he can share this without assuming that it will end the marriage the moment he opens his mouth, they could have avoided a lot of the stress and dishonesty that came from him. Intriguing. Well, look, I had never seen this movie before. So my relationship to this movie is essentially Nill, but I'll tell you what I have a relationship to. The TV show that Ellen is watching, it is the Nickelodeon and actually Canadian classic. You can't do that on television. Yeah. Which is exactly what I would have been watching on TV when this movie came out in 1987. That's what I watched on every six day and every snow day. I mean, I would only been like a couple of years older than Ellen at this point. And so this show is notable for a couple of things. One is that even eight year old me was like, who is this a Lannis? No kidding. That was a Lannis Morissette who appeared on a few episodes of this show and was certainly very memorable to eight year old me. But, but okay. So here's a genuine question. Do you know what you had to do to get slimed on the show? No, I remember that people got slimed, but I don't know what the error was that resulted in that pun. So here's the error. And frankly, as a scientist, it offends me. And the error is you utter the phrase, I don't know. No kidding. Yep. And like, that's a dumb message. That's terrible. That's a terrible message. Like, what are we doing on children's sick? We're trying to teach people they're not supposed to admit. They don't know something when they're supposed to be intellectually curious. Like, what's going on here? So, you know, I don't know. Nickelodeon, do better. I'm totally traumatized by that. We need more humility, not less. I know, seriously. All right. Let us transition to this movie, Eli. Tell us a little bit about what you think this movie gets right about the nature of attraction and relationships. I think it captures the idea that even when we are in the midst of committing pretty evil acts, we often from the inside feel like we're coming from a place of righteousness. Yes. Yes. There's good science on this. There's one of the books that handles this well is Virtuous Violence by Tejray and Alan Pagefisk. And they argue that most violence is morally motivated, not a moral. It's enacted because perpetrators believe they're enforcing the moral order or they're protecting relationships or they are restoring justice. And they don't perceive the violence as a problem. They perceive it as a necessary good thing. Yeah. I think this does a great job of capturing Alex at her darkened. Interesting. And that tape that she leaves for him, the threatening tape, is a master class in the righteousness of violence and threat. I'm just asking you to acknowledge your responsibilities. Is that so bad? I don't think so. I don't think it's unreasonable. And another thing is that you thought that you were just walking to my life and turn it upside down without a thought for anyone but yourself. I think those moments are in many ways like where we get the best insight into what's going on in her head. It's very powerful for that reason. I suspect that Dan is also doing a lot of the same things, right? Yes. I see some of this in Dan as well. He also shows something that I think is well captured by Roy Balmeister and his research on evil, where he talks about how people are able to maintain a positive self identity, even while perpetrating statistic, hate-filled sorts of acts. And they do it. What we do is we see ourselves as decent, we frame our actions as reasonable responses to circumstances. In this sense, Dan is like a paradigmatic case of how people end up escalating to evil. And I found a study in preparation for today's conversation that I found fascinating. So this is a sample of people who use Ashley Madison. This is a website whose slogan is Life is Short, Have an Affair. And how is it that they think about themselves? And this research, what they see is that people who had more affairs reported that they had achieved more beneficial personal growth from their behaviors online. Let me just be clear about how this stuff was assimilated. the sample items are things like by engaging in these behaviors, I have learned a great many new things, and my bad habits have diminished. And just to be clear again, among people having these over here, gone have had, those who have had more affairs, are able to say, yeah, I've just become a better and better person. And I think we're seeing some of that in Dan. That's his real heroic at not accepting that he's doing my agree with that. And that does feel like that effectively captures his psychology here pretty well. You know, I was struck by some things in the flirtation between Dan and Alex at the beginning of this movie. It's good. Yeah, it's an interesting sequence that's pretty compelling. There are a few things that happen here that are intriguing. One is we, you know, she breaks her plans. I'll just play this here. Can I ask you something? Why don't you have a date tonight and Saturday night? I did have a date. I stood him up. That was the phone call I made. Does that make you feel good? Doesn't make me feel bad. Yeah, so that's playing selectively hard to get. That's exactly how you do it. It's like I'm especially into you. Perfect. Not into other people. And so I do think this sequence is some of the best writing in the film. Also where he's like a little self-deprecating at times in a way that's genuinely kind of funny like the waiter ignores him. And he's like, I got a lot of pull around here. And I think there are ways that we think about humor in the process of becoming attracted to somebody. There was a while where we thought, oh, humor signals something about your good genes and stuff like that. I think that people have moved away from those sorts of explanations and more towards explanations that are more like, if I use humor, I'm signaling interest in you because, and maybe even especially self-deprecating humor because I'm exposing a little bit of vulnerability there, we know that vulnerability is appealing. And so that sequence that they have there that ends with them having dinner together, I thought that was pretty compelling. You know, I haven't kept up with the humor literature, but yeah, it's flattering in a way that I hadn't thought about to tell a joke. It says, I would like to impress you. I would like you to like me. And you're right. I do think that's what he's doing. When he's doing this sort of self-effacing humor, he's very funny. He's investing in her and she can tell. Yeah. Okay, what other things do you have in this category? I just want to give Dan. I've been hard on Dan in this section. I want to give, we're starting of a bone. Yeah, it's not going to go better for him now. But before we leave the gets right thing, so Dan is not exactly wrecked with remorse. We just talked about how he's minimizing what he's doing. That said, he also doesn't think that he's done nothing wrong. So he's at this interesting, like simultaneously minimizing what he's done, but also a little bit of guilt. And I think where we see that is something that you brought up briefly at the top in your overview. Beth has been wanting him to be receptive to moving out into the country, getting this other house. He's like, no, I don't want to do that. No, it's too expensive. Then she checks out the house again and she says, well, what can I tell you? It's absolutely perfect. So when are you going to come up and take a look at it? He says, how about tomorrow morning? And she is shocked. She says, you mean it? What we can glean from that, and I think from his character more generally, is he wasn't really inclined to be especially accommodating to her about this one. I think his willingness to accommodate her is related to the fact that he knows he did something wrong. And I actually think what's going on here is that he owes her a little something. It's easier for him to accept than he has engaged in a serious moral violation. So he sort of gets off easy by doing her a favor. Interesting. So you're pulling from general transgression research. I was late for dinner or I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home. So I will make it up to you by, I mean, in this case, moving to a house in the country. But it's that literature that you're pulling from. I hear that. That's really interesting. And I think that helps to explain things a little bit better for me that he just, he isn't interpreting it like the truly life altering transgression that in fact it is. And one of the reasons it's a life altering transgression is because he gets his own stalker. So let's talk a little bit about the stalking literature. And I have this intentionally right here on the border between Get's Right and Misconception because I think some things work here and some things. I mean, just go off the rails at least in an normative sense. So here was something I learned prepping for this episode. Do you know that the first anti-stocking law was 1990? No kidding. Yeah. And also like restraining orders aren't a big thing at this time. They're mainly limited to marriage. But within the realm of stalking, about this point in time, people thought of stalking as really being about like John Hinckley and Jody Foster. Right. It's like classic example. It's something that people do to celebrities or people they don't really know. But then as people started to do the research, what they realized is that actually the lion's share of stalking is taking place from the remnants of a nascent or already developed relationship. That's where someone knew that. Yeah, right. So that was the big new insight. And what they also started to realize is that what stalkers do are behaviors that in another context would be considered kind of nice. Like it's courtly. It's romantic to call somebody, maybe show up unannounced, have some flowers. These things are appealing in some context. But the person on the receiving end in this case doesn't want it. So actually the research literature shifted away from the term stalking and they started using the phrase instead. Obsessive relational intrusion, really emphasizing like there's often some sort of ongoing relationship here. And that's where these behaviors are coming from. And that's why it's upsetting. So now pause. That much the movie is getting right. It is understanding that there is a, you know, we traditionally might have thought of as a stalking relationship. But it's really part of a nascent relationship that according to Alex died on the vine. And that's why she's engaging in behaviors. Okay. Now the most common form of obsessive relational intrusion includes things like unwanted messages, monitoring, exaggerated affection. We see some of that here. Five percent of the time do you get to showing up places physically threatening kidnapping? Those are the far rarer versions of these things. And like we actually don't know a lot about how these obsessions wind down, right? How do they come to an end? But I think watching this movie one could have the sense that, you know, if you, I mean the police lieutenant at some point says like, oh, you know, if you ask her to stop, it might make it worse. And usually no. That's not how this goes. Confronting can often be very good. Oh, a lot of times the ending is kind of ambiguous because you don't see each other anymore. Like you change your social interaction patterns. He tries that and it doesn't work here. So anyway, it's a bit of a mixed bag here. Yes, it is capturing the idea, the real idea that obsessive relational intrusion is very much a relational phenomenon. It grows out of something like a failed affair, but the odds that it escalates to this point is like nearly fantasy. Yeah. I mean, this is got to be at the extreme outer end of house of your stock. Exactly. So I like the way you led into that discussion by by characterizing Dan's transgression as major and part of why it ended up being so major is because he basically invited a stalker into his home and into his marriage. And this I think points to another theme that the filmmakers are playing with. And I think they mostly get it wrong. The movie seems to suggest that the home is like a bounded sanctuary and that we can keep our family safe as long as we don't misbehave. Yes. Okay. That's right. It's like the opening shot of the movie. It's so Reagan. It's so Reagan. Oh my God. Yeah. It's the opening shot of the movie is like a long two minute pan across the New York skyline. And then the camera gets closer and closer and closer to the Gallagher's apartment and it gets close to the window and as it gets there, Beth shuts the shade. And I think this is something that's positioning her as, you know, the. protector of the house. Yeah, she's the century at the gate. She's the century at the gate exactly. And one echo that I saw here is the opening to the movie Psycho, the classic Hitchcock film. Also starts with a long pan through a cityscape. Also the camera gets closer and closer to the window, but this time the camera goes right on inside. Oh, interesting. And so this film, fatal attraction, seems to be suggesting that the home is a sanctuary. And as long as you don't invite evil in, you can keep it at bay. That there's this menace out there, but with good behavior. I see where you're going. You're safe. Yes, because the fact is there is difficult stuff outside. It is in the form of stress. It can be in the form of poverty. And these things really do affect relationship well-being. But the fact that our relationship is struggling because of the stress we have isn't some sort of indicator that one of us has committed some sort of moral failure. Right. The movie has what I perceive to be a rather like, you know, 1980s message of personal responsibility, like, woo, you committed transgression, then you will invite the evil outside forces upon yourself. So be strong and have self-control, and you will avoid those ends. It's like a very-- Yeah, it feels like a very great message. OK. OK. So this is me cracking my knuckles and getting ready to talk about the nature of infidelity and what is going on with my guy, Dan. Dan Delecker. OK. I want to talk about how we historically have treated infidelity on this show. If a movie had shown us somebody's declining satisfaction or escalating conflict, and then they have an affair, we'd put that in, gets right. If a movie had shown us a genuine heart-breaking love triangle, we've seen a number of these. I mean, before Sunset's an incredible example, but there's almost a little struggle. This part pretty well. My best friend's wedding, I mean, we'd say, gets right to love triangles, too. If for whatever reason, the movie had wanted to show us that somebody was interested in Dan, and he was doing the whole derogation of alternatives thing, not seeing that alternative as being as desirable as they actually were. Maybe he didn't even notice her. Maybe he did notice her. And then he got excited about his partner, like we talked about in "Isewide Shot," then we'd say, gets right. And if the movie had shown a momentary slip up and then some guilt, some panic, or some anxiety, I think we would have said, gets right to that, too. So what fresh hell is this? Because there's no relational risk factor whatsoever. No. OK. So maybe the movie's theory is that it's an individual difference. Like it does kind of seem like he loses control initially. And then I don't know, loses control for the whole weekend. But OK. But he's got really good self-control in the rest of his life. So that's not a compelling explanation. OK. He's a narcissistic prick. We've seen that. Guess what? That's not a predictor of infidelity. So I believe the theory of the case that this movie has is that he cheated because he's a married man, and he had an opportunity. Oh. Interesting. And by the way, we talked about opportunity. I'm love and basketball. And yeah, opportunity matters. But we were talking about like in the aggregate, if you have lots and lots of opportunities, we'll then have a small effect on the likelihood that you committed to deli. He went one for one. So in the absence of these larger predictors, and in the absence of a, whoa, what a mistake. What have I done here? Sort of event. And in the absence of a love triangle, I mean, and then he takes the dog to the park, and they do dinner. And he's not like, whoa, if somebody sees me, I'll be in trouble. I'm just-- I'm just that a no. I'm just a no. I don't know what this is. But it ain't in the sense. When you say that the theory of the case that the movie offers is this is a man with an opportunity, are you suggesting that the movie is implying that this is something that men would do more than women would do it? Yes. And that is a genuine gender difference. Men are more likely to cheat than women are. It's a small effect. You do see it. But I think what I'm objecting to is something that kind of happens in the scientific realm too, which is especially when you point to something like gender, and especially if you have a theory of a case that this thing is evolved, you think you can stop there. And I'm just saying not sufficient for me to find this movie believable on this point. You know what I wish we knew in the field? Is what percentage of happily married people are susceptible to a come on like the one that Alex is giving? Because she's very forward. She's sexually forward. She's making herself available. She's definitely suggesting this is going to be no shrinks attached, no big deal. We all know your wife's out of town anyway. So like why not? And I have no idea. Is that like 5% of happily married people? Let's set aside gender. 25% is it 50% probably not? But I do think that if we were going to set up a situation that would place people at the greatest risk for this sort of behavior, it would be this sort of situation where an attractive person is extremely assertive, promising discretion, acknowledging the opportunities here. There won't be any strings attached. My guess is that the proportion of people, men or women alike, would lose their compass for a while over that is not as close to zero as we might like. So Eli, this is an interesting thought experiment. I think I mainly disagree and let me mention two things here. So the first one is this. By the time you get into a situation, like what Dan is experiencing here, there have been cascading failures of the derogation of alternatives, removing yourself from the situation, et cetera, et cetera. So many people would have stopped well before getting to this point. The second piece of evidence that I want to bring up, I think many people share your intuition that humans are a cheaty, cheaty species. And sometimes we look to things like birds, you know, monogamous, and supposedly monogamous birds, and then you look at their clutches, and it's like 20% are sired by some other guy that's not the pair bonded partner. If you look across mammals, that number is closer to 50%. What people have figured out how to do recently is look at genealogies and look at the Y chromosome. And you can see basically, does the Y chromosome belong to the person whose last name you have? And we can go back pre-birth control, we can go back hundreds of years and do this kind of work. The answer in humans is 1%, 1% of children were sired by somebody who is not their purported father. - That's fascinating. - So I just, look, people commit infidelity. There are many risk factors. Those risk factors are real. I don't recognize what is happening with Dan and his psychology here, not that he wouldn't be tempted necessarily, but the way he goes through it, how he experiences the thing, and how he acts towards Alex for the rest of that weekend, absolutely bewildering. - You know, something else that I think is really strange about this affair is how quickly the movie seems to imply that Beth and Dan basically recover. It goes from, in a matter of weeks, so finally he confesses and he only confesses 'cause he has to, 'cause the family is in-- - The rabbit. - Oh my God. - A serious physical danger for its life. And her reaction, Beth's reaction is, I hate you. I grant that there's some unusual circumstances, but by a few weeks later, we're left to believe that this is happily ever after. The movie ends on a really long zoom in on a photo of the happy family. And I think we're supposed to believe that the threat was ended and now we're fine. I looked to find out how long does it usually take people to recover from this sort of an affair. And the fact is, a lot of this work is among clinical samples, who could be non-represented for a bunch of reasons, some of its qualitative, but the best estimates I can figure out is often more than a year. And so this, like six weeks and happily ever after, seem to be a very, very unusual way that such a thing would have been resolved. - Yeah, 'cause there's gotta be like so many different stages that people have to go over. - There's the shock and then you look at this. - Yeah, slowly rebuild trust and forgiveness and then you recover, yeah. - Yeah. Okay, one other thing, sorry. (laughing) You had feelings about the life. I have a lot of feels about this one. I wanna talk about intimate partner violence and gender. Now some of this really does capture a moment in time where people didn't understand intimate partner violence as well as we do today. Okay, so I wanna kind of walk people through this and talk about it the way I talk about it in my class. But in brief, we used to think in the time period, in the decades. preceding this movie, that intimate partner violence was very uncommon, that it became increasingly violent, increasingly controlling, right? Violence would escalate, and it was basically 100% of the time perpetrated by men. We got these data from police records and shelter records, and it was often caused by mental illness of some kind. Interesting. And around the time that this movie comes out, what researchers start doing is they use more representative samples, and they just kind of ask people about engaging in violence, and what researchers realized they were like, "Wait a minute, it's not rare at all." Like we thought it was like 1% of the population or something. It's like 20% of the population, and even more wild was, "Oh, it's 50/50." Right. Men win. Remember that? That's the perpetrators. People thought at first, as Suzanne Steinman, talk about the battered husbands. Like people thought, "Oh my God, there are all these poor men out there who are being terrorized, and we don't even know it." So it turned out that was the wrong interpretation. They really, we were capturing two different phenomena. We were capturing an overwhelmingly male perpetrator phenomena that escalates in intensity. And then on the other side, we were capturing a phenomenon that's like, a lot of times angry aggressive people get in relationships, but the violence there doesn't escalate to the same extent, and that's not to excuse violence in those relationships. It's a very different form. And it's not the escalating I'm afraid for my life, usually, in the same way. So I think there's confusion in this movie, because at this point in time, it's like, "Oh, women can be controlling escalating murderers, too." But the reality is that's pretty uncommon and doesn't really reflect the domestic situation. You know, I'd love to pivot here to, are we okay with this? Because it builds on the point you're making here. I think this movie is egregiously anti-feminist. In fact, in fact, if I were to try to build a movie around the 1980s, so again, second wave feminism is really like 65 to 75, we're finally getting women with careers in relatively high ranking sorts of positions. And if I were to try to say like, what would you try to do to characterize a woman like that? To try to think everybody think that having women in the workplace or women who neglect their child responsibilities is a nightmare. It would be this. The high-powered career woman, but she's really desperate for a man and a family. She entrapes him with a pregnancy. She vomits when she sees the window that he's got this happy family life. In short, she uses gender and femaleness as weapons. And this, I think, would capture a lot of anxiety or insecurity about this major shift that we were seeing with women really having full-fledged careers. That's right. And it makes me think too about the short-term long-term distinction. They're clearly trying to set her up as somebody like, this would be somebody that would be good for a short-term relationship. Oh, right. And she's kind of hot. But she's no mother. You wouldn't want to have a long-term relationship with her. And then they make her out to be like an actual murderer. So again, I talk about this concept all the time and how short-term, long-term, that dimension is not really consistent with the science at all. But I'm totally with you here. This is a moral message of the movie here that is very much of its time. And I say no, thank you. So we've decided to bring a bonafide expert onto the show to help us out with some of these topics. I am so happy to introduce my friend Paige Hardin, professor of clinical psychology and author of The Genetic Lottery and her new book. I'm going to read the whole thing with the subtitle because it's awesome. Original sin, The Genetics of Vice, The Problem of Blame and The Future of Forgiveness, Paige, thank you for coming on the show. Thanks for inviting me, guys. I'm so excited to get your takes on some things in this movie. So here's where I want to start. Everybody is violent. And I need you to help me come to grips with the fact that in some cases I'm like rooting for it. And in some cases I don't mind. And in some cases I'm like, well, that was a little much. And in some cases I'm totally horrified. So please help me to understand my own reactions to what the hell is happening in this movie. Yeah, that's such a good question because it is every adult character, every main character. Does something really aggressive at one point in time? So Dan breaks into her apartment and starts to strangle her, starts to strangle Alex and then can't go through with it or doesn't go through with it. And then the wife at the end of the movie shoots her and then Alex, she boils the bunny, she kidnaps the child briefly and causes the parents great amount of grief. And then there's that really horrifying scene where she's in the bathroom threatening the wife with a knife and also cutting herself. So when you're watching it, I would say the average viewer is cheering for the wife. Like when the wife comes at the end and shoots her, you're like, okay, well, you know, murder is wrong. But this woman was here with a knife threatening her and had threatened her child. Whereas Alex's violence is portrayed as Mercurial and impulsive and really hard to make sense of. And yeah, like couldn't she just not do that? Couldn't she just not be like, well, it's not like, they're relations it was so short, right? Like she barely knew this person and yet she's behaving so aggressively towards him and to his family. What I think is really interesting about this is a portrayal of how people's intuitions about blame change when the perceived cause of it is external versus internal. Right. So for the wife, I think it's Beth as the wife saying, it's clearly she's portrayed as maternal and as faithful and as innocent throughout the movie. And then she's violent because this external element has invaded her home and threatened her life and she's responding to them. Whereas Alex's violence is clearly motivated internally. Her attachment to this guy is sort of mysterious, it's unusual. She clearly is having a lot of, you know, emotional dysregulation problems and distress. And so in order to think about the wife's murder of this woman, it's easy for you to think, what would I do in that situation? And when it's, I can imagine myself who I have positive self regard for acting in this way, which is an extreme environmental situation. That is so much more mitigating on our attributions of blame. Then when we're asked to imagine being a very different person with a different psychology whose motivations are really portrayed as much more internal to herself. And we get a little glimpse of her internal motivations when she leaves that audio tape for him. Right. You get a dialogue of it. She feels very compulsive, very compelled. But in this internal dysfunction that gives her rise to violence, we tend to think that we tend to respond to much less sympathetically than these external pushes towards violence. Yeah. Like, is it just that Alex's psychology is alien to me that I don't go around leaving tapes for people where I leave threatening messages and other things? Like, right, it's all very strange and foreign. And therefore, because I cannot empathize with it, I condemn it more harshly. I mean, that feels like an indictment of me. That doesn't feel like I'm being fair. Feels like I'm being kinder to people that are similar to me or when I can understand their perspective. I wouldn't say that's an indictment of you, but I do think that's part of what builds empathy. I think about there's a story in the New Testament in the Bible where this woman is about to be stoned. And Jesus says, those of you who've never done anything wrong, right, then you can cast the first stone. And what I think is really interesting about that is that it's a parable in which the thing that mitigates our punitiveness is not, she couldn't have done otherwise. It's not an argument about free will or choice that she could have avoided. She had no choice to be an adulteress given her life circumstances. It's you could have done the same thing is the thing that mitigates their punitiveness. And so when someone has a personality disorder and I think Alex is a very extreme sort of caricature portrayal of a personality disorder, that's really what do we mean by personality disorder? That means someone's habitual ways of thinking and feeling and behaving are really statistically aberrant. They're outside of those are kind of normal range of patterns. And so it is very difficult to empathize. And so that question of what would I do in that situation, you're like, I would never be in that situation. I would never be stalking a person that I had sex with, you know, for two days. And that inability to empathize as them is a real barrier to our willingness to be less punitive towards other people's violence and harm. Yeah, I find all of that like fascinating and disturbing and the implications for our criminal justice system for thinking about whether people are responsible, have control over their actions, like things start to break down. I mean, luckily in this movie there is no criminal justice system. So, yeah, right. Good luck. Page, can you help us understand what we're doing? What is happening with Alex's psychology? You mentioned personality disorders. I am a social psychologist. You are a clinical psychologist. I was thinking she seemed kind of borderline, but then at the end she seemed kind of psychopathic. And I'm a little lost as to what the film was suggesting. Can you unpack that for us? Yeah. So I think she's a really classic but extreme example of borderline personality disorder. So borderline, that's just an interesting phrase. The border between what and what? So, when Floyd coined the term borderline, he was referring to his distinction between patients who were neurotic. So they were anxious or depressed or distressed, but otherwise seemed to be in touch with reality and able to benefit from therapy. And then patients who were psychotic, who were schizophrenic or manic with psychotic features who had delusions that they couldn't be convinced of their falsity and who might have hallucinations. And then there was this curious set of people who were in his view on the border between neurotic and psychotic. And depending on the environment and depending on the stress, they could come across as quite normal, maybe a little impulsive or maybe a little bit depressed, but otherwise fairly take other people. But under situations of stress, their psychology would decompensate such that they appeared much more impaired in their psychological functioning. And then they would suffer from delusions. They would suffer maybe from hallucinations. And they would be not responding to reality in the way that we typically think of people who don't have a psychotic disorder as experiencing. And so I think what you see in this arc over the movie is this decompensation from neurotic to psychotic. So she initially presents and she's fashionable and she's hot. She can flirt. She's a book's editor. She has this great apartment in New York. She's clearly, you know, can present as very put together. And then as her attachment system gets triggered, you see her become more and more unmoreed from reality. More and more detached from what the rest of us agree on is what's happening. And Dan gets more and more confused. He's like, I thought you were this hot sexy woman. Yeah. And now you're acting crazy. And what just happened here? It's that sense of, I thought I was dealing with someone and we were on the same page and now the script has shifted. And we're in a different interaction, I think is very characteristic of borderline psychopathology because they don't have just one level of functioning. It varies depending on their level of stress. So that's one thing at the end when she is completely dysregulated and she's talking nonsense to the wife and she's self-harming. She's psychotic in that point of time. She's delusional in the way that we would expect of someone who's suffering from sacriotifrenia. But it's not a permanent condition. It's something that you're going to see at certain states when she's very stressed and very overwhelmed. Boy, I didn't realize that borderline had that background as people who are on the border of these different sorts of psychological profiles. And I do feel like I have a better sense of Alex now than I did before. I think something really interesting about our ability to make sense of this movie. So by way of bringing everybody out there up to speed on this, the end of the film, as we've discussed here, involves Alex entering the house, trying to kill everybody and Beth shoots her. And I guess the Gallagher's live happily ever after. From that point, that's the way the film ends. That the original version of the movie had Alex killing herself to the Madame Butterfly music that had been playing throughout. Which is very much forecasted. It's very much forecasted that that was coming. Yeah, it was forecasted from the start. There would have been elegance in that design. And his fingerprints are on the knife and he gets arrested. And the reason why they changed this is because early screeners, the early audience that looked at this movie didn't feel like she had been punished enough. They were upset that she only killed herself and that there hadn't been some more vengeful killing. But I'd love for you to chime in, Paige, about how these two different endings intersect with the potential psychological diagnoses. Did the film make things incoherent or do things still hold together even with the revised ending? That's an interesting question. I think it would have been more coherent psychologically if they'd stayed with the original ending because self-harm and suicidality is a more common and core feature of Borderline than other focused aggression. It's not that it never happens. So people with Borderline personality disorder, most of them are not, I think I should just say, most people with Borderline, the vast majority of them, are not engaged in other aggression towards other people or violence like this. This is obviously a very extreme portrayal. But it's not unheard of. When I was on my clinical internship, I worked at a psychiatric hospital outside of Boston. The word that I worked on included a unit that had women who were diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder and were hospitalized under court orders. So they had done something violating the law and the judge had said you have to get psychiatric treatment. And almost all of the acts of violence were against a romantic partner or a desired romantic partner. My boyfriend threatened to break up with me or I thought my boyfriend was cheating on me. So I set his apartment on fire would be. And again, this is very extreme cases. These are people who are in psychiatric hospital under court order. But what links the other violence to the self-violence is this desperation at the idea of abandonment and a sense that without the other to contain them and to be with them, that they are going to be left alone with this void or this emptiness that feels intolerable. So from that perspective, whether or not you're stopping the wife or stopping yourself, it's a form of impulsive aggression that's designed to, whatever happens, I just don't want to be alone with myself. And so I need to do something to prevent that outcome. So in that way, the choice between her suiciding as in the amount of butterfly and her attacking the wife is their part of the same psychology, which is this delusional desperation at the idea of being abandoned. But I think as interesting is that both ways she dies. So what is it about us that wants to see her die at the hands of someone else versus herself? And I think this gets at something that Nietzsche wrote about, which is the idea of cruelty or violence as a really basic lust that's inhuman nature and that part of the function of our ideas about guilt is to give us this feeling of entitlement to engage in this pleasure that part of us knows is actually a really, really dark pleasure. So people would pay more money to see this movie if she gets shot by someone else versus inflicts her own wound. And I think that says something about our lust for punishment. punishment, which is pretty dark actually. It's a pretty dark indictment about what's going on in our brains. - Yeah, I mean, that is very much like, it just tracks my general feelings about this movie is that it makes me feel pretty grim about the world, but it also did a pretty good job of making me feel grim about my own reaction. - The movie makes you complicit, because you see how Dan has hurt her, sort of unwittingly at the beginning, and then he's desperate to regain normality. And by making you sympathize with the Gallagher's, you're complicit in this violent ending towards her. - Yeah, seriously. Paige, I'm so glad that you joined us to talk about this movie today. Please tell us a little bit about where people can read more about you and your work. - Yeah, so I'm on Instagram at Catherine Paige Harden, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N, Paige Harden, or you can look at my website, which is kpharden.com, or you can Google my book, "A Original Sin, Not the Jake Tapper One on Biden, but Original Sin, Genetic Suffice." And you can get that one. - That just is the better one. (laughing) - This is the one you want. - Yep. Paige, it has been such a pleasure having you here. I learned a huge amount. Thank you so much. - Oh, thanks for having me. - All right, that was very helpful. - Yeah. - You lied. You have anything else in the moral quandary space in here? - Maybe just like a synthesis of what we've been talking about with the anti-feminism and then the new version where Alex is a murderer, but she gets killed. And so everyone's happy. I looked this up. It turns out that the American Film Institute has identified the 100 worst villains of all time. It's a little dated, it's from 2003. Alex Forest is number seven. Above her is Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates from Psycho, Darth Vader, the wicked witch of the West, Nurse Ratchet from one flew over the Cooke's Nest and Mr. Potter from it's a wonderful life. But I think that this-- - Long with our culture. - Yeah, but I think this is a serious problem. Like Alex has a personality disorder. She is very manipulative. She is a troubled person. But the movie ultimately turned her into a two-dimensional villain. And I think it was a pretty unfair thing that they did to women and to be-- - A speciality with the ending, but yeah. - Yeah, the two women and to people with mental health issues. - Oh God. (laughing) - Okay, let's pick it back up here. So quotes, I mean, so I just have one here that I want to play. I just, I think this is an interesting interaction that's worth digesting here. - Look, Alex, I like you. And I wisdom with somebody else and maybe I'd be with you, but I am. - Please don't justify yourself as pathetic. You tell me to fuck off, I'd have more respect for you. - All right, then fuck off. - And you get out! - Not that that's like a pleasant scene or anything, but I do think it gets at this tension and that maybe often characterizes breakups where we'd like to be nice. And people have a funny way of like pushing our buttons and then if you really want us to be honest, it's gonna get kind of nasty. And usually you hope in close relationships, people don't do this with each other. And they, you know, they are able to be vulnerable and also understanding and also validating. Anyway, we don't get any of that here because these two are absolutely on the road to ruin. All right, so what do we wish we knew? Talk to me. - There's like a little moment in the movie that I find interesting. So this is the scene where Alex and Dan are in a group meeting and he's eating a bagel and he gets some cream cheese on his nose and she very discreetly lets him know that he has some food on his nose and he wipes the food off and he's grateful. And it's like an oddly intimate thing to do for people who don't know each other very well. - Yeah. - And so under what circumstances do people do that and is it like the right thing to do if you're trying to enhance intimacy with a person? - Yeah, I mean, it really is, it's something that, you know, you'd imagine like couple so a couple together a while, like they know how to do this but to do this with somebody you don't know that well is kind of interesting. I know I gave the movie some credit early on for the early flirtation scenes, but actually as I dug into it more, I realized some of these things should probably be more in the what do we wish we knew bucket, which is a credit to the film, especially this idea of like having some humor about yourself, poking fun at yourself, there is a tendency to think that on dates we are supposed to self-promote. I think there is volumes of evidence suggesting that that is the wrong instinct. It is better to be a good listener, it is better to ask questions and if anything, it's better to suggest like actually you could use a little help with something rather than acting like you have everything under control. Now is that the same thing as kind of like that self-deprecating kind of humor? I don't know, like I often think that kind of humor is pretty funny, it's a little bit of my personal brand but I don't actually know if any of this is good idea. - Yeah, I mean I share your instinct about it. Another question I had that the movie makes really vivid is when is it that people decide to confess to their spouse that they had in a film? - And I think it's especially vivid in this movie because of how extreme things had to get before he told her. And I was just so shocked throughout the movie. Like you can reduce a lot of the threat that you're under simply by confiding in your wife that you did this, right? And I just, especially in this case, especially in this case, I just don't really know what calculus people go through to decide when and how they're going to confide that they have committed this transgression. - Isn't there stuff that looks at how often it is that people get caught or that in many of the cases that people get caught as opposed to admitting it kind of the way he does? I thought that also has a big sense here. I doubt that the work can be especially definitive. It seems like it would be really hard to do that work. - I agree with the instinct there. Okay, on this podcast, we rate movies from one to five stars. I'd like to go first with this. I am a big fan of horror movies and thrillers. Three of my top 50 movies of all time are Alien, Rosemary's Baby and The Shining. And these are wonderful movies that are actually also, I was just reading a book about this, they have something deep and incisive to say in all three of those cases, it's about like domestic terrorism. But look, there are lots of ways that horror movies and thrillers can say something interesting and contemporary. I mean, get out. Okay, Jordan Peel or Zach Kregger or Arias. All these, I mean, even when these movies aren't done that well, these people are trying to say something. And it just feels like this was the moment where we get the dangerous sexy entraping woman thriller. And as social commentary, that sucks. I'm gonna give this movie two stars because it's very well acted and it is a good thriller. But ultimately, it's really not for me. So where are you on this? - I also give it two stars. - I think it is entertaining and it is somewhat thought-provoking and Glenn Close is magnificent. But when they switched the ending, they made the story incoherent. I don't really know what it's trying to say. I was left kind of flat at the end. - I totally get it. On this podcast, we also rate these movies on R Usbolts. Now the R Usbolts is named after Eli's advisor, the late great Carol R Usbolts, pioneer of Close Relationships Research, with five stars indicating a near perfect depiction of the nature of Close Relationships. Eli, where are you on R Usbolts? - I'm at two R Usbolts as well. There's some interesting stuff in here, but by and large, these relationships don't seem that credible. I don't think the psychology of the main villain holds up. I don't really understand what's going on with the protagonist. I just don't think it is any sort of guide to understanding how relationships really work. - I hear you. I really got a lot out of listening to Paige talk about topics related to how we the audience think about blame and about Alex's character. I agree with you. There were some interesting points about the way Dan justifies his behavior. This is my first one, R Usbolts, rating. - Oh my goodness. - This is not, no, it happened. - This is not there. - I don't know you're gonna end up. - Yeah, I can't salvage this one. I really can't do it. There's too much here that is all over the place. There is a loving relationship, and yet the movie also somehow manages to make that relationship make little sense in the context of everything that's gone on and the way that they get over it. So sorry, fatal attraction. I certainly enjoyed covering it and we got a lot of it. - Interesting discussion out of it. - But one rustball film from me, this has been the Love Actually podcast. I am Paul Eastwick. I have been here with Eli Finkle and now in two weeks. We're gonna cover a movie, a recent movie that makes a key point that you gotta pay attention to the tides. And if you are an avid movie watcher, you now know there are two movies that this could be. - Whoa, I'm gonna provide no additional clues beyond that. - Okay, Abby, I look forward to doing this with you next time. - I'm excited about it. The Love Actually podcast is produced and edited by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkle featuring music from Andrew Fraker and Sons. If you'd like to support the show, don't forget to rate and subscribe in your podcast app and please reach out to us at [email protected]. To learn more about the research we discussed in this episode, find the notes on our substack at lovefactually.substack.com. (upbeat music)