"The Truman Show" and "American Beauty" are the two definites. "Boogey-Man" is the third possibility.
"The Truman Show" is an allegory for life as we all know it to be. It rather savagely depicts precisely how our attachment experience years, years in which our primary caregivers establish for us where, how, why, when, and what we must be; the movie illustrates just how totally our lives are controlled by phantoms from our early formative years. Only in the last fifteen or so minutes of the performance does the savagery give way to mere struggle. The horrific violence is wrecking destruction on Truman, not when he is caught in the hurricane gales on white capped seas and almost drowns, but when the comfort of a status quo causes Truman's false reality to seem acceptable, even desirable! Truman had to battle his fears and artificial weather to reach the end of his enslavement, but when he found his door, he walked on through. Caregivers are not purposefully malevolent. They mean well, but are not privy to the essential Knowledge presently emerging which offers an Understanding of the attachment experience years dynamic. There is a Truman's Door for each of us, but first we must recognize our status quo for what it is, an artificial reality. In order to run where we each need to go we must comprehend what we are running from.
The third possibility, "Boogey-Man," a horror flick, provides a pretty good picture of what it is that causes most of us to prefer an artificial status quo to real freedom. I'll try to be as brief as possible. Physical and emotional needs are the two foundational levels of not just child development, but all of human development. Without security and stability at these foundational levels, all future development will be built on flawed, if not ruined, foundations.
Grown-ups are anywhere from twelve to twenty-four times the size of children. Children are helpless. Oh, they can breathe, keep their own heart beating, cry, poop and pee for themselves, but they are essentially helpless. Imagine you are in this essential state of helplessness and something twenty times your size yells at you with a voice twenty times louder than loud. Then, when you cry in fear, they get angry, scream cuss words at you and for good measure, give you a whack who knows where! Then there are the countless times you get hit just out of the blue. Imagine being hit by something twenty times your size! Sometimes it's you. Sometimes it's a sibling. Sometimes it's just the waitress. You just never know who is going to be the next victim. But when the status quo is broken by a caregiver's volcanic explosions, you either hit the deck or run for dear life. Then after the eruption everybody scrambles to put the status quo back together again. When these sorts of caregiver behaviors are established when the child is attaching; when the child is learning experiential protocol; when the child is developing his or her image of Self; when a child should be building secure and stable physical and emotional foundations, a vile, heartless, savage boogey-man is hidden deep within that child's living foundations, and that fear stealthily controls that child throughout his or her life. Even the best of intentioned punishment is gut level frightening to a child. I'll be anybody, anything, you want me to be, just don't hurt me, scare me, or reject me! Can you feel their terror? Do you recognized the terror. From our earliest years the fear and terror of being hurt and rejected drives us into dark isolated corners no sane individual would step foot in. And just because our body grows doesn't mean our emotions and our sense of physical safety grow. They don't. They're stuck back there in that dark isolated corner where the frightened child has established some sense of safety and security; a personal status quo. Several of my other essays deal more thoroughly with this reality. What you end up with is a grown-up body acting like a child, and sometimes even getting paid for it! Take a look around. Well, if you haven't walked through your door and dealt with your boogey-man, all you're going to see is an acceptable, even desirable, status quo; a status quo that no matter how many clinical studies totally contradict it, no matter how dysfunctional human behaviors have become, no matter how illogical it is, no matter if that status quo will inevitably cause the extinction of your species if not all life on planet Earth, you will be quite satisfied with the status quo, just as long as you don't have to be in the same room with that Boogey-Man. Everybody, me included, would much rather not upset the apple cart, keep the boat on an even keel, keep the bull out of the china shop and the firecrackers out of the synagogue! Don't ask questions and just do what we've always done! Confronting your boogey-man is scary business. So is the movie!
The third movie, which is really the second one I mentioned, "American Beauty," is a beauty. Basically, the main character, Lester, is thumbing his nose at his boogey-man. He reverts back to the period in his life when his development stalled. That's right! He acts like a three year old, basically. But, in a healthy sense, he is picking up where he left off, which is what each of us needs to do; within reason! Good movie, but the spine tingling whoosh scene is the one where the young guy, Ricky, is showing Jane, a significant person in his life, a video of a piece of crumpled paper being moved in and about and around and all over by some invisible force. The piano and visuals are enough to make even a boogey-man melt. Then the Ricky speaks:
"It was one of those days where it's a minute away from snowing, and there was this electricity in the air. You can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me like a little kid begging me to play with it... For fifteen minutes... That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things... And this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid... Ever... Video's a poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world; I feel like I can't take it... And my heart is just going to cave in..."
That's Benevolent Parentalism in a nutshell. The panther scene in "Awakenings," is another kicker! But I'll stop here.
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