merrysithmas:

Theo and Pippa

Just adding my agreement to my friend @mandarinastronaut ’s post about how Pippa and Theo’s dynamic is unnervingly romanticized in the trailer, and adding a little meta of my own below:

It’s definitely frightening how glorified they made he and Pippa’s relationship appear (in the trailer at least). Theo’s creepy, desperate, stunted obsession with Pippa is supposed to parallel (in a way) Boris’ abusive relationship with Kotku. Theo, stagnated by his PTSD, creates an idol out of Pippa and in a way torments her and himself with it. Theo is physically inappropriate with Pippa’s clothes (smelling them), her bed (sleeps in it without her knowing, cuddling all her toys), strands of her hair (saves them from the shower), admittedly changes his personality to make her like him, to the point where it is straight up alarming. We have to remember in the book Theo and Pippa spend very little time together at all, especially in childhood, where Pippa is purely friendly to him, not remembering a kiss she gave him (while drugged on morphine!!) –that Theo wipes off his mouth. Let’s also recall after this Theo refers to Pippa as his “morphine lollipop” - just another one of his numbing drugs that he uses to avoid coming to terms with the past and reality. Not to mention, Theo, in an ableist manner, remarks on his preference for Pippa’s arrested development from her brain injury that occurred at the museum explosion, her perpetual “child-like” state (ableist). We know he likes this about her because, to Theo, it “keeps” her the same as she was the day they met – the day his mother died, and the day he refuses to move on from.

Boris, in a similar vein, deeply misdirected by abuse and neglect similarly treats Kotku as a possession but to divert his own internalized homophobia, even going so far as to be physically violent with her. (Theo, on the other hand, uses Kitsey to divert his internalized homophobia, but I digress). Boris does hard drugs with Kotku, insists on dating her because even though she has another boyfriend, and uses their relationship as a drug itself to avoid the truth of who he is.

Both Theo and Boris, fucked up by their own traumas and internalized homophobia, mistreat women in various ways. Pippa, a brave and smart person, recognizes Theo’s unwellness and directs him elsewhere with kindness and, very much earned, impatience. Her rejection is one of the truths Theo has to face at the end of the novel as a representation of the crumbling of the fake life he has concocted in his mind. Kotku breaks up with Boris for another boy, leaving him alone in Vegas which adds to Boris’ utter breakdown– the loss of one of his many lies, all falling like a deck of cards after Theo is gone, and he is stuck with the painting, as a lonely, homeless, thief, drug addict, violently abused by his only parent.

In the trailer at least, Pippa and Theo’s dynamic is so glorified from it’s canon creepiness - and Pippa’s agency in their dynamic which literally comes from clear and persistent rejection of Theo and her insistent pursuit of her own life, her own city (London), her own boyfriend, and her own health - that if I didn’t know the creators admittedy no-homo’d a novel based on queer characters I’d guess it was hetero-baiting to get the GA to watch. I’m thinking, since that Pippa scene was really the sole peak and moment of importance in their relationship in the whole book– and yet they chose to show it in the trailer – that the trailer itself is misleading and Pippa does, like she does in canon, deflate his idealistic and extremely unhealthly fantasy of her at the end of the scene, allowing the narrative to move elsewhere.

Basically the purpose of this post is to point out to non-readers of the book why it is very valid to criticize the portrayal of Theo and Pippa’s dynamic (NOT PIPPA herself, who is an important and good character in the novel) in the glorified sense we have seen in the trailer, when a woman (Tartt) wrote the novel specifically showing how toxic their dynamic was, mental health recovery-wise and obssession-wise, and how badly Pippa wanted to be separate from Theo and for Theo to get well on his own, and then a man (Crowley) adapted and took that toxicity (as we have seen so far in the trailers) and then, unsurprisingly, called it romance.

Posted 2 years ago with 128 notes
Via: merrysithmas, Source: merrysithmas
Tagged: #great meta #the goldfinch #tx #lit
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  5. merrysithmas posted this
    Just adding my agreement to my friend @mandarinastronaut 's post about how Pippa and Theo's dynamic is unnervingly...