Howl, because it's hard to be a family

I recently watched Spike Jonze’s film adaptation of the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. I have to be totally honest from the get go. I saw the movie when it was in theaters years ago and I absolutely hated it. Here’s why. I grew up with parents who both worked very hard to provide for their children, however my mom was more consistently employed than my dad (she has worked the same job for over 21 years). My dad frequently read to my sister Tara and I before we were going to bed because my mom usually worked late. On those rare occasions when my mom made it home early there were two books she usually read to us and one of those was Where the Wild Things Are. She put on her monster voices whenever the wild things talked and it was such a positive memory for me of both being encouraged to be wild by my mother but also feeling safe with her beside me. Spike Jonze’s movie did not do the same thing. Admittedly the book is only ten sentences long so in order to make a two-hour movie one has to do a fair amount of inference. That being said, obviously Mr. Jonze didn’t feel the way I felt about the book. After a second viewing of his film however, my mind was changed.

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Spike Jonze presents a movie about why it is sucks to be a kid, or maybe, more accurately, why it is so hard to have to grow up. I think that at some point most of us came to a place, as children, where we realized we were small and our influence, if not our voice, was nearly inaudible. Some discovered this when their older siblings ignored them, others when their teachers ignored them, for others it was other adults and for the rest it was their very own parents. It seemed that what we said did not matter anymore. Our desires and maybe even our needs were suddenly not guaranteed fulfillment at the drop of a hat. And it was a harsh realization. In truth, I think that it is not that our own voice becomes smaller or less important but it is the realization that there are many others speaking and our ears are uncertain what to do with the new voices presenting their own needs. However, I think there is a very important reason we come to this stage of feeling small and unimportant and it is this: at some point in our life we need to move from being self-centered to being others-centered.

This is admittedly a subjective and retrospective study but in my experience very few people make this transition smoothly. The realization that we are not the only people on the planet with needs and feelings hits us unexpectedly when we realize that our desire for X does not mean our providers can fulfill that desire. Unfortunately, some people never make the self-centered to others-centered transition. Some that do take it really hard and convince themselves that no one wants to hear what they have to say and they become quiet, confining their voice inside their own head. Others take it to the opposite extreme and instead decide that it is time to say more and speak more loudly, as though making their desires most loudly heard will make their desires most important. Spike Jonze’s movie is about a troupe that fits largely within this last category.

At the start of the movie we see our main character Max building a snow fort and preparing snowballs for a snow fight. When the opportunity presents itself, he fires upon his sister’s friends who are considerably older. When they return fire with their own snowballs he runs for his snow-fort and finds safety there until his sister’s friends leap on top of it bringing the whole structure down. As the friends leave quite satisfied and smug, we see Max appear from the pile of snow that once was his fort and he is horrified. With tears rolling down his face and snot leaking from his nose he realizes that the fort, which he had so confidently trusted for safety, was no match for what the world had for him. I could not help but ask myself what my own snow forts are, but following that path would be tangential to our discussion. Suffice it to say, his world was crushed and for many of us events like this can be the catalysts for learning to leave self-centeredness behind.

After the snow fort incident we see Max’s resultant temper tantrum as he destroys some of his sister’s things, most important of which is a small heart made of popsicle sticks that he had made for her. Often our reactions to our world being crushed results in us quite literally breaking hearts in the midst of our rage because we do not know how to react to the paradigm shifts we are presented with. The day after his tantrum Max is presented with a shift too great for him to handle. His mother has a man over to the house causing her to unintentionally ignore Max. Max comes to his mother huffing and the ensuing argument climaxes in Max biting his mother. Realizing the weight of what he has done he runs away and eventually finds a boat in which he sails off to where the wild things are.

Max arrives where the wild things are in the midst of the wild things arguing amongst themselves and trying to convince a creature named Carol to stop destroying their homes. Amidst the argument, Max makes his presence known to the wild things and declares himself to be a king, a statement that has the entire wild bunch impressed. So, they decide to allow him to be their king because he claims to be able to keep “the sadness” away. (Though he does not explain this to the wild things, he intends to do this by bringing his own rules and way of life to the wild land.) Then the wild rumpus begins! We see Max and the wild things go running through the woods destroying trees, running into each other, throwing each other and causing utter chaos. It is during this initial rumpus that we begin to see that the wild things are not careful with each other and are even quite inconsiderate. As their oversized heads knock into each other we are reminded of the ways our own heads enlarge and we end up knocking into each other as we so forcefully try to go this way or that.

We see the self-centered attitude exemplified during Max and the wild things’ dirt clod war. During the war we see an all too familiar mix of “This is fun!” “I gotcha!” “Ouch!” and “Why’d you do that?!” Eventually, the goat-like Alexander (brilliantly voiced by Paul Dano) is clearly hurt by a clod to the back of the head. At this point he quits the war but still is not safe as another clod knocks his feet out from under him while he tries to get away. Spike Jonze hits the nail on the head as the scene makes us viscerally and tangibly feel Alexander’s heavy emotional pain as though we were in his shoes. Because the odds are we have been there. If you for some reason do not know what I am talking about imagine this:

This is that moment from your childhood when everyone was having fun playing dodge-ball until your big brother got you with the ball right between the eyes and everyone knows he did it as hard as he could and everyone stops because some say he was playing by the rules and others say he needs to apologize and in the middle… is you… You are hurt both physically and emotionally by your brother’s inconsideration and the added insult that almost hurts worse than the injury comes from the fact that he silently exudes self-justification and an apology would be insincere even if it were offered.

Spike Jonze takes us back to those feelings in ways that are uncomfortable to say the least. Even if we don’t have a particular memory to go with it, we know that feeling and the odds are we have been on both sides of it. This visceral reminder is important for us as adults because it is a feeling that we still cause in people today.

            When we prioritize our own needs, schedules, petty wants and laziness over the feelings and needs of others we become the older brother with the dodge ball or the fellow wild thing with the dirt clod. The difference is that these encounters rarely take on anything other than an emotional form when we are adults and the response frequently becomes animosity with which we try to cover up the pain we feel. For Max, he realizes that he has had everything his way and it did not lead to goodness, wholeness, or even any meaningful duration of happiness. He and Carol at one point long for a place where “the only things that happen are what you want to have happen;” a place where they can be kings. As they soon realize, however, “There are no kings, we are all just regular.” Even the most wealthy and powerful cannot have all that they want.

Towards the end of the film it is KW’s revelation that brings it all together as she simply yet poignantly states, “It’s hard to be a family.” It is hard, and if you have siblings or parents or anyone else you call family you are well aware. The most beautiful moment of the whole film, for me, was when Carol and Max howled together. It was the one moment when they were family as they let out their raw howls of emotion and neither cared what the other sounded like. It was a moment of childish beauty in the midst of the pain of growing up… and it was so right.

If I may, I’d like to encourage you: take off your crown, find your family and howl with them. Stay close to the ones to whom you want to say, “Please don’t go. I’ll eat you up I love you so.” Whether you believe in God or not, you will feel his love when you do.