It’s NOT a monkey’s paw, though. If anything it is maybe a deconstruction of a monkey’s paw trope.
See, the One Wish Willow does not manipulate your wish to give you something you didn’t ask for, nor does it backlash. Bear wished for a selfish wish. There were a ton of people throughout the film that wished for things and got exactly what they wished for. Heck, Bear’s friend gets a billion dollars.
Like, I get that Bear’s wish is corrupted, but he could’ve wished to be someone that Nikki liked. He could’ve wished to be better at talking to girls. He could’ve wished to be less cowardly. Those are less selfish versions of the same wish.
It wasn’t the act of wishing that ruined his wish, but that he used his wish to manipulate someone else. He was the reason his wish was ruined.
“Monkey’s paw” does not necessarily require an evil twist. The whole point, the lesson to be learned from the fable, is that our own desires and fantasies often clash with reality and end in disaster. It shows how are own fantasies are poorly thought out, short-sighted whims.
That’s why I said its a “love potion” trope- those very often do not have any sort of “twist” or “gotcha” to them either. It stems from a paradox at the heart of what love is. We want someone else to love us, and we want that tk.be secured and guaranteed and unconditional. But we also.want it to be CHOSEN. True love requires the freedom of.its own non-existence. Without that freedom, it is meaningless. Philosophers have talked about this for centuries, pehaps.most notably Sartre. So the lesson from these sorts of love potion stories is that free will is an important component of love. It is risk and vulnerability and its terrifying, but necessary.
The love potion trope is fictional of course. One Wish Willoows do not exist. If the lesson Obsession is trying to teach its audience is “be careful.what you do with magical artifacts” the I think that’s a pretty silly lesson. What these stories are really metaphors for is all of the other ways that people can subtly try to influence each other into “love”, and the pitfalls of that. The man who earns money and becomes wary of “gold diggers”, or the woman who tries to use her looks to “snag” a man only to worry how she ages. The person who changes themselves to attract the person they like. The man who uses violence and abuse to force a woman to stay with him. The woman who gets pregnant hoping the child will convince the man to stay. There’s tons of these too that all have the same theme.
Another clear distinction that I don’t see anywhere is that Bear, even as he makes his wish, does not believe in it. He is clearly skeptical and only buys it because he thinks Nikki will like it. Then when he fumbles the conversation he breaks it himself, not in an act of desperation but in an act of futility. He could have chosen to save it tk.give it to her another time, but instead choses to literally break it to symnokizd giving up.on that idea. Movies also use this trope all the time:throw away the flowers before she seeds he bought them, eat the chocolate himself, etc. He expresses what he wants in a moment of privacy, and he is completely unaware in that moment that his expression will actually influence the world at all. He does not wish for Nikki to be possessed by what is basically a demon. In that sense, he does NOT get what he wished for because the real Nikki herself says she was never with him.
The phone call with the company gets brought up a lot. He’s clearly still skeptical at that point but desperate. What the audience does not get to see is… How did Bear want to “alter” his wish? My guess is.that he wanted a solution to the paradox of love- he wanted something that could never exist. Immediately when told that is impossible, he instead asks to cancel it. He buys another one and tries to use it to cancel the first wish. He tries to get Ian to undo it (low key Ian is probably the most malicious person in the movie, sabotaging Bear’s attempt to ask Nikki out for his own selfish reasons). At last, when he is out of options, Bear finally chooses to end his own life to free Nikki. The tragic lesson learned.
It’s NOT a monkey’s paw, though. If anything it is maybe a deconstruction of a monkey’s paw trope.
See, the One Wish Willow does not manipulate your wish to give you something you didn’t ask for, nor does it backlash. Bear wished for a selfish wish. There were a ton of people throughout the film that wished for things and got exactly what they wished for. Heck, Bear’s friend gets a billion dollars.
Like, I get that Bear’s wish is corrupted, but he could’ve wished to be someone that Nikki liked. He could’ve wished to be better at talking to girls. He could’ve wished to be less cowardly. Those are less selfish versions of the same wish.
It wasn’t the act of wishing that ruined his wish, but that he used his wish to manipulate someone else. He was the reason his wish was ruined.
“Monkey’s paw” does not necessarily require an evil twist. The whole point, the lesson to be learned from the fable, is that our own desires and fantasies often clash with reality and end in disaster. It shows how are own fantasies are poorly thought out, short-sighted whims.
That’s why I said its a “love potion” trope- those very often do not have any sort of “twist” or “gotcha” to them either. It stems from a paradox at the heart of what love is. We want someone else to love us, and we want that tk.be secured and guaranteed and unconditional. But we also.want it to be CHOSEN. True love requires the freedom of.its own non-existence. Without that freedom, it is meaningless. Philosophers have talked about this for centuries, pehaps.most notably Sartre. So the lesson from these sorts of love potion stories is that free will is an important component of love. It is risk and vulnerability and its terrifying, but necessary.
The love potion trope is fictional of course. One Wish Willoows do not exist. If the lesson Obsession is trying to teach its audience is “be careful.what you do with magical artifacts” the I think that’s a pretty silly lesson. What these stories are really metaphors for is all of the other ways that people can subtly try to influence each other into “love”, and the pitfalls of that. The man who earns money and becomes wary of “gold diggers”, or the woman who tries to use her looks to “snag” a man only to worry how she ages. The person who changes themselves to attract the person they like. The man who uses violence and abuse to force a woman to stay with him. The woman who gets pregnant hoping the child will convince the man to stay. There’s tons of these too that all have the same theme.
Another clear distinction that I don’t see anywhere is that Bear, even as he makes his wish, does not believe in it. He is clearly skeptical and only buys it because he thinks Nikki will like it. Then when he fumbles the conversation he breaks it himself, not in an act of desperation but in an act of futility. He could have chosen to save it tk.give it to her another time, but instead choses to literally break it to symnokizd giving up.on that idea. Movies also use this trope all the time:throw away the flowers before she seeds he bought them, eat the chocolate himself, etc. He expresses what he wants in a moment of privacy, and he is completely unaware in that moment that his expression will actually influence the world at all. He does not wish for Nikki to be possessed by what is basically a demon. In that sense, he does NOT get what he wished for because the real Nikki herself says she was never with him.
The phone call with the company gets brought up a lot. He’s clearly still skeptical at that point but desperate. What the audience does not get to see is… How did Bear want to “alter” his wish? My guess is.that he wanted a solution to the paradox of love- he wanted something that could never exist. Immediately when told that is impossible, he instead asks to cancel it. He buys another one and tries to use it to cancel the first wish. He tries to get Ian to undo it (low key Ian is probably the most malicious person in the movie, sabotaging Bear’s attempt to ask Nikki out for his own selfish reasons). At last, when he is out of options, Bear finally chooses to end his own life to free Nikki. The tragic lesson learned.