I had no idea, until a few minutes ago, that someone made a movie out of Gillian Flynn's second novel, "Dark Places," with a cast of famous and beautiful actors. The level of absurdity is so high that ... I have no words.
I'm not necessarily a big fan of the novel itself --- the pacing is a bit too slow in the first half but too fast in the second, and the local flavors are overwritten --- but it does impress me with the unflinching grubbiness in its depiction of farm life in Missouri (or thereabouts). From the farm on the verge of bankruptcy to the toxic waste dump, from the mean neighbor to the mean school coach to the mean policeman to the mean legal loan shark. What I appreciate the most in the book is all the money pinching (a rare topic in contemporary literature) and the common madness and even the slightly voyeristic attitude, all with no whiff of the moralism that pervades American popular culture. The moral nihilism is what makes people call Gillian Flynn's writing "dark." I wonder if this is also what had made it so hard for her to produce any new novel since "Gone Girl" 14 years ago. Once you become popular, the public pressure to conform can be daunting.
What I find most fascinating in the novel is the question of complicity.
The grubbiest depiction of all the grubby things about farm life in Kansas is Runner Day, the patriarch. He is truely a great character, one of the most despicable men I have read about. I can believe there are such men walking the earth throughout history through this hour. The domestic scenes of Runner trying to squeeze the last drop of blood from his ex-wife Patty are vividly appalling. Runner's particular kind of evil is something I only come to see in the world around me well into my middle age. But once I see it I cannot unsee it. It appears everywhere in various degree of severity and manifestation. His psychopathic charm and self-righteousness are fundamentally incurable and seem to have a hypnotic power on people in general and many women specifically. It's not about how bad a character is but how he is bad ... and Runner is a winner: So bad that he is hilarious.
As such, Patty is utterly unable to do what she should have done to Runner before he impregated her: smash a bottle on his skull and throw him out of her house. Instead, she has 4 children with him and allows him to intermittently live on her farm, smack his children around, eat her food, and steal her money. This father-mother relationship seems to symbolize the real-world gender politics better than most academic feminist studies: Patty commits suicide while Runner lives on in the toxic dump.
Some highly-educated women friends often blame the condition on "the system" or "patriarchy." I don't disagree, but I do wonder at what point can we at least bring up the question of complicity. Given Patty's unwillingness to sell the farm, paired with her unwillingness to smash a bottle on Runner's head and throw him out, how is "the system" ever going to change? And by what or whom, if we deny women's agency altogether?
Forming Patty's mirror image is her son, Ben. Just like Patty, Ben is depicted largely as a victim throughout the novel, falling under the spell of the crazed rich girl Diondra. His mind may have also been poisoned by patriarchy's notion of "chivalry," whatever that means. Compared with Runner, Diondra's evil feels flimsier but can be captivating in its flame of rage. In his sister's murder, Ben's complicity is more intentionally presented and goes beyond average cowardice. In contrast, I cannot be certain that Flynn was consciously pointing out Patty's complicity in Runner's evil, considering how such things are normalized in real life. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to regard either Ben or Patty as pure and absolute victims, and that's where the darkness lies.
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