The One Thing All Antiheroes Are Afraid Of

this episode is sponsored by nordvpn that take's favorite way to stay safe online go to nordvpn.com the take to take control of your internet experience do you know why a shark keeps moving they gotta keep moving or they'll die they can't breathe or something what do most anti-heroes have in common beyond all the questionable deeds and egos there's one striking theme they share they refuse to look back and engage with the past insisting on looking only ahead to the future I have a life and it only goes in One Direction forward but this always backfires as they avoid dealing with the messy and painful parts of their traumatic childhoods they find themselves controlled by this emotional baggage they repeat the same mistakes in their lives and commit monstrous acts and they pass their emotional trauma on to Future Generations so their cautionary tales proving the adage those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it the individual craves almost ceaseless action which enables them to avoid acknowledging the abhorrent things they do here's our take on why the anti-hero tale proves how important it is to honestly acknowledge and process the past so it doesn't come back to bite you you look at my old pictures and they all want you to think it's also [ __ ] simple but it wasn't what they say you know if you're new here be sure to subscribe and click the Bell to get notified about all our new videos did it ever occur to you that I might be the one who deserves your confidence and your trust not your sons that you might have the most to contribute to your legacy that you love so much more than your actual children through no fault of their own many iconic anti-heroes didn't get the unconditional love and supportive relationships they needed as children leading them to develop feelings of Shame and self-loathing nobody loves Dick Whitman you're a piece of garbage a real shitty piece of garbage madman's Don Draper AKA dick Whitman was born to a prostitute who died in childbirth and raised by his abusive father my father beat the hell out of me all it did was make me fantasize about the day I could murder him and his father's wife who deeply resented him before moving into a brothel that led to confusing early sexual experiences Bojack Horseman's mother Beatrice is a cruel harsh influence and we see how she birthed his tendency to equate the attention that comes from performing with love now you want your mommy to love you you go out there and you do the only thing you're good for which is singing the goddamn Lollipop song The Little we can piece together of succession's Logan Roy's childhood is that he last saw his mother Helen when he was a five-year-old boy he was mostly raised by an uncle who beat him and he blames himself for whatever happened to his sister Rose all those years blaming yourself for Rose I'm not interested that really wasn't your fault in The Sopranos Tony's childhood memories are riddled with violence due to his father's mob ties and they're tainted by his mother's untreated mental health issues I say what your mother has at the very least is what we call borderline personality disorder but the real problem them for all these characters is that they try to avoid all their feelings about these dark events by not dealing with them and instead repressing the past they all run away from their painful childhood memories Bojack when you get sad you run straight ahead and and you keep running forward no matter what in Game of Thrones anti-heroine Cersei has a literal Prophecy from her childhood that she's running from and you'll have three that doesn't make sense gold will be their crowds gold the shrouds yet by trying to prevent it from coming true she inadvertently helps its tragic events materialize often the anti-heroes running forward takes the form of elaborate self-reinvention I knew I needed to find some way to show the world that I cut ties with Mr J for good it was the closure I needed a fresh start a chance to be my own woman on the extreme end of the spectrum dick Whitman runs away and joins the Army eventually creating a whole alternate identity Suave masculine ideal Dawn Draper in Breaking Bad in the pilot of the show we see Walter White working out while staring at a plaque for the research he did that won the Nobel Prize as part of gray matter Technologies and he's never been able to let go of his resentment and self-loathing over having missed out on the mega success his former business partners Gretchen and Elliot went on to achieve I took a bio five thousand dollars care to guess what that company is worth now 2.16 billion as of last Friday I look it up every week it's this past eating away at him that's largely driving him to invent Heisenberg his drug manufacturing Alter Ego who's evil and destructive but great and recognized by the world for his genius Logan Roy is the ultimate self-made billionaire businessman when he visits his hometown of Dundee Scotland he balks at each opportunity to engage with the past I think maybe a photo no thank you let's go refusing to tell his family almost anything about his Origins Rosebud it's a dollar bill it's whatever it took to get me the [ __ ] out of here he goes so far as to say the past isn't real the future is real what oh it's all made up as convoluted as it sounds the future has always been realist to him because it's a blank slate that he feels he gets to shape almost like a god Tony Soprano's way of avoiding the truth on the other hand is to paint the past as better than it actually was it takes Tony multiple Seasons the guidance of Dr melfy and his mother's attempt on his life to finally accept that she was abusive joyless and probably not cut out to be a mother to anyone you're supposed to take care of your mother she's a little old lady you Accord this little old lady an almost mystical ability to wreak havoc later in the series when Tony meets his father's mistress Fran and learns what a problematic figure she was for his father he covers up the truth and by the end of the episode he mythologizes Fran to his cronies this one was like uh like a princess BoJack Horseman engages in a similar revising after Diane ghostwrites a warts and all biography of Bojack he lashes out and attempts to rewrite his history instead of reflecting on her honest insights my parents loved me so much it was crazy nice writing Shakespeare we see this self-serving over romanticizing in Game of Thrones is Daenerys Targaryen too she clings to the story of her family's ancient rule of the Iron Throne my father sat there before he was murdered while inventing herself as a supposed Liberator and savior of peoples somewhat glossing over the true implications of the Fire and Blood motto that's always defined the Targaryen rulers and I will take what is mine with Fire and Blood I will take it all these anti-heroes are driven by a certain illusion or idea of who they want to be Which is strikingly far from the self that so far materialized in the past the present story we watch is about the anti-hero trying to catch up to that image and often the pretty terrible things they have to do to get there these anti-heroes have a lot of secret it's that they want to keep buried in the past if you want to keep your information private the best method is nordvpn you need a VPN to keep your internet experience secure and what makes nordvpn the best choice is it offers double protection it changes your IP twice to cover your web traffic with an extra layer of security because nordvpn masks your IP you can keep your browsing to yourself and make sure others can't track what you do online I love that it even offers privacy on the go so I can use it on my phone and protect my online life with one click Next Generation encryption the latest feature from nordvpn is threat protection threat protection majorly steps up your cyber security once it's on it protects from malicious sites downloads trackers and intrusive ads threat protection is constantly on the lookout even if you're not connected to a VPN right now you can get a two-year plan at a huge discount plus one additional month for free when you go to nordvpn.com the take it's risk-free with nord's 30-day money-back guarantee the additional free month is available on YouTube only so make sure to click the link in the description description below or go to nordvpn.com the take [Music] in their childhood trauma it's understandable why these characters developed this defense mechanism of looking only forward get out of here and move forward constant forward motion has allowed these anti-heroes to survive however they repeat the same mistakes over and over sometimes impulsively act in horrible ways and at times continue traumatizing future Generations all due to lack of reflection you can put this behind you it'll get easier as you move forward oh dick I don't think you're right about that much of what we witness of these anti-heroes lives is filled with repetitive self-destructive Behavior Dawn womanizes Bojack disappears into substance abuse and they face negative consequences for these actions but they still don't change anything Walter White completely destroys his family and his legacy as a good man in order to prove his Greatness by making drug money that won't really benefit his wife and children at all Olivia Pope hasn't dealt with her issues with her parents and that's reflected in her romantic choices are you finding that no matter how far you run that all men in fact are like your father don't talk about me like you know me Jessica Jones hasn't dealt with the trauma she suffered thanks to kilgrave so when we meet her she's using a very hard drinking messy lifestyle to cope it's a joke and succession how closed off Logan is to therapy he's incapable of reflecting on much less analyzing his past and how his childhood trauma continues to affect both him and those around him you know my guy says that if Dad had therapy I wouldn't need so much my guy surprised I got through it all what's clear in all these stories is that the refusal to reflect is exactly what keeps anti-heroes burdened by the past and destined to pass on trauma to the Future in Ozark Wendy and Marty Bird's kids eventually get wise to how often their parents keep promising that with the next play their family will be out of their crime business six months we could be completely off from under this even when people are Whispering you just hear the same things repeated over and over and over enough but it often seems that Wendy can't really see that she's lying she too is constantly moving forward to not think about all the risks she's taking for her family only and the past death of her brother that she's responsible for your own [ __ ] world don't you look at me I've spent my whole to avoid thinking the Terrible Things he's already done craves constant distraction what happens when he's anti-social personalities aren't distracted from the horrible [ __ ] they do they crash and his inability to face issues gives him panic attacks as if his body is literally shutting down because his mind can't process what he feels these panic attacks are in addition to being genetic explicitly linked to his past he's triggered by the smell of meat because his first panic attack involved his parents being sensual after his father brought home meat from the butcher whose finger Tony's dad cut off Don's toxic relationship with women stems from his early sexual experiences and because he's not properly processed that he seems unconsciously driven to relive those experiences and because Daenerys hasn't really dealt with her rage over what happened to her family this suddenly comes out at the worst moment resulting in her massacre in King's Landing and becoming a tyrant instead of the beautiful Liberator she set out to be it's in that moment where she's looking at that symbol of everything that was taken from her when she makes the decision to to make this personal similarly when Olivia Pope has PTSD after being kidnapped because she hasn't dealt with it wonder where I get now [Music] she snaps and kills someone William Faulkner wrote that the past is never dead it's not even past and we see how the actions and misdeeds of these characters aren't over and done with as they believe them to be throughout The Sopranos we see the past rising up and demanding Tony's attention like when he spots a former FBI informant by chance and decides to kill him on Meadows College trip or when a murder he committed decades ago forces him to go on the lamb this is what life is still like at our age we also see the past finally catch up to Bojack when his prior abuses against women including his involvement with Sarah Lynn's death during a bender come to light in an interview I just keep thinking about those 17 minutes you waiting in the parking lot after she died at this point Bojack has made significant strides to better and reform himself like addressing his addiction issues but the public Reckoning sends him spiraling down yet another bender and backsliding demonstrating just how easy it is to slip into Old selves even when we think we've moved on moreover while he may feel he's over it all the women he harmed are still shaped by that trauma and that's why Bojack has to be confronted with the consequences of his actions I keep hearing you say I've changed but how can we believe you've stopped this pattern of behavior if you won't acknowledge this pattern exists I don't even know what pattern you're talking about in succession Logan tends to blame most of the problems that plagueway star royco on his children's ineptitude but actually a lot of them are caused by his past choices more personally responsible for the death of this planet than any other single human being the giant loan he took out puts Kendall in an impossible situation when Logan Falls ill and the stock price drops and for years Logan allowed and covered up the cruise ship Scandal which eventually comes out requiring a big executive blood sacrifice at that point Logan tries to make his son the scapegoat essentially trying to steal from the future what could you possibly kill that you love so much it would make the sun rise again Tony likewise may act like he's presiding over a kingdom he can bequeath to his descendants but he destroys all the people who could actually represent that future he eventually kills the nephew he was once grooming to be his number two Christopher while anti-heroes shy away from their own past they embrace the future and romanticize it as a new beginning most anti-heroes believe that the future will provide them with a clean break and absolve them of who they actually are instead of seeing themselves as they truly are and putting in the work to change because I wanted to be someone else I wanted to live a different life they simply project a fresh start with some future person achievement or place I could do it right this time I could start a whole new family we see Dawn marry both Betty and Megan because they both see him not as he is but as he wants to be seen I just like the way she laughs the way she looks at me I know that you have a good heart I know that you're always trying to be better but neither of these women can change how he still sees himself internally so he's destined to backslide and both relationships are ultimately doomed although Empire obsessed Logan also has multiple wives and adult children in season three we see him pinning his hopes for a better future on a new child you're trying to have a baby with my dad because that's an incredibly stupid idea hey it'll be born old attached to a walker most of the series involves him vetting one of his children pitting them against the other potential heirs and changing his mind on a dime as he finds each of his children defective for one reason or another the truth is no child will ever live up to Logan's standards he's a supreme narcissist who judges his children as reflections of him and cannot stand if they ever mirror back to him anything that's less than great Bojack having internalized Secretariat's advice to keep moving forward no matter what you stop running and don't you ever look behind you fetishizes the future by believing that his next achievement will somehow be different from his last but when he finally believes that he's gotten nominated for the Oscar he always wanted he finds that it doesn't really change anything you're an Oscar nominee how do you feel I feel [Music] the same throughout the series we also see Bojack repeatedly leave Hollywood thinking that he'll magically be a different horse somewhere else but he's the same no matter where he is it doesn't matter where you are it's who you are and that's not going to change whether you're in California or Maine or New Mexico so what each of these anti-heroes faces is that the beautiful future they so romanticized never actually materializes and they're stuck with a choice they can admit that it's never going to happen in that form or they can continue to rush forward ignoring the fact that they're actually going in circles if we look back at classic film anti-heroes we can see this theme clearly in their stories too Gone With the Wind Scarlett O'Hara is a Survivor hell-bent on moving forward from the Civil War no matter what after all tomorrow is another day but her lack of reflection ultimately causes her to lose the man she loves as she chases after the idea of another man who isn't really right for her I'd love something that doesn't really exist in Citizen Kane all of Charles Foster Kane's misery stems from his childhood being suddenly upended when he was taken away from his family to have the opportunity for riches for all his wealth and power Kane becomes an isolated and unhappy man because he never got over that loss in his past as embodied in the iconic Rosebud which turns out to be the sled he was playing with that day and in Casablanca Rick Blaine is a bitter and cynical bar owner when we meet him because he's refusing to engage with his pain over being jilted in the past by ilsa it's only after he reconciles with the past and ilsa that he's able to move forward and redeem himself we'll always have Paris we didn't have we we lost it until you came to Casablanca foreign so given how much the past continues to affect these anti-heroes despite their best efforts to escape it how can we move on from a painful past in a healthy way first we have to address and process our true emotions surrounding the past when anti-heroes don't face their baggage they are frequently controlled by their emotions sometimes in ways they aren't conscious of or don't completely understand we spent hours getting to the realization that your feelings for your cousin stem from guilt and shame yeah it's just that it doesn't matter now that here we are as always back at square one with you going into high sentimentality mode Don Bojack Olivia Danny Cersei Tony and Walt resist processing what they feel about what happened to them so they cling to their misery repeat toxic Cycles hurt their loved ones and make irrational impulsive sometimes catastrophic decisions but if we process our emotions this is how we actually stop being controlled by them it's what we start to see Dawn doing near the end of Mad Men as he at last makes some progress towards self-acceptance foreign the whole premise of The Sopranos a mobster going to therapy is interested in whether a guy like Tony can do this self-reflect and gain the perspective to break out of the habitual patterns he's stuck in still in his case it's a false promise that talk therapy while not only being useless with sociopaths actually serves to validate them this is in part because Tony's not doing a second thing we must do take responsibility for our actions and not blame others in an interview with fresh air The Sopranos Creator David Chase said you can no longer blame your parents your mother you cannot go through your life or go through therapy just leaning on that crutch all the time that after a while it's you the problem is you Todd and BoJack Horseman says the same thing to Bojack it's not the alcohol or the drugs or any of the shitty things that happen to you in your career or when you were a kid it's you Danny in Game of Thrones takes such a bad turn in the end because she neglects to exercise this self-responsibility she clings to how her family was wronged in her eyes yet seems to believe that wrong excuses any amount of Senseless violence she inflicts this ends up making her delusional spouting rhetoric about the beautiful new world she'll build for people build the new world while in practice she's just killing them in the final episode of Breaking Bad Wolf finally accepts this responsibility after evading it for seasons one more time that you did this for the family you did it for me and it's this brief glimmer of honest reflection that enables him to have whatever moderate Redemption he experiences in the end when he saves Jesse before dying part of taking responsibility means forgiving those who caused our pain and moving on you need to forgive her and move on throughout his life Bojack holds on to anger toward his mother and remains willfully ignorant about her own painful childhood had he been open to learning about the past which formed her he would have seen that he did nothing to deserve her abuse but that she was also a human who was suffering and damage by the traumas she failed to address what must your mother think of you no she doesn't think much about anything anymore and he may have been able to forgive her learn from history despite anti-hero's reluctance to look back on their own personal past as it may be too painful for them many share an affinity for history and do learn from it in a way that benefits their strategic moves at work Tony Soprano liked history in college Napoleon the Roman Empire the Potsdam Conference that kind of thing and he watches multiple World War II documentaries in the background of several episodes to a man like Tony who doesn't like ambiguity tends to aggrandize being a soldier and sees the past nostalgically it's easy to see why World War II would be the area of History he keeps going back to Logan Roy shares this fondness for history he collects War medals and tells his son that he enjoys reading historians Oswald Spangler and Edward Gibbon I read a history you know Spangler given the big boy Gibbon wrote the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire while Spangler is also best known for his two-volume work the decline of the West so both were concerned with the fall of cultures and Empires just as Logan is facing the decline of his own media Empire these anti-heroes can and do learn certain tactical lessons from history but many times don't study their own pasts with anything like the same clear-eyed Detachment and often these characters bring up historical comparisons in a self-serving way to self-aggrandize the Romans where were they now you're looking at him [ __ ] they see what they want to see in the history linking themselves to historical generals and Empires that are still remembered makes them feel their achievements and choices have significance that will last into future Generations but they make us see how we shouldn't romanticize the past Tony excessively idealizes the past and glosses over whatever hardships were there but lately I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end at the end the best is over but the actual flashbacks we see reveal that Tony's parents lives with the mafia was full of just as much stress and ugliness and The Sopranos prequel many Saints of Newark reveals that Dickie multasanti Christopher's dad whom Tony worshiped was a Darkly impulsive man who murdered his own father and his lover so Tony Grieves a past that was never really there I think about my father he never reached the heights like me but in a lot of ways he had it better he had his people they had their standards they had Pride the same is true with Walt's obsession over what could have been for him as a scientist or Danny's romanticization of the Lost Targaryen Empire as these anti-heroes show we must learn from the past as it really was not as we'd like it to be like many of these anti-heroes we as a society too often shy away from looking at our painful Collective history romanticize the past and have seen history repeat itself as a result although it may seem easier to avoid dealing with the more painful and messy parts of our past and simply keep moving forward it doesn't work to paint the past as we'd like it to be or idealize a fresh start in the future not easy to see something that's never been before because I know what is good instead we must be honest about the past and accept ourselves as we truly are we must reflect on and learn from history in order to avoid mindlessly repeating it we have to forgive and despite whatever happened to us we must take responsibility for our own actions none of this is easy but it's the only way out of anti-hero Health keep going a lot of places and ending up somewhere I've already been this is the take on your favorite movie shows in pop culture thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Take

Views: 116,717

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Id: sZo-nIIieBE

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022