One of my favorite commentary accounts on Facebook is that of author Jason K. Pargin. He usually takes something from media and spins his opinions about them into nice, thoughtful essays.
His most recent video involves one of my very favorite films of the 21st century: Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 masterpiece THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It’s a challenging film starring Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil Man whose sadistic pursuit of money and power leads to his downfall.
Here’s what Pargin says about this character’s issues:
I think Pargin is SO CLOSE to getting it right, but he’s missing the one key ingredient that pulls this film together: HIERARCHY.
You see, the Daniel Plainview character is a Destroyer Alpha who does indeed want to ruin everyone perceived as a competition, as Pargin correctly identifies.
However, Plainview’s issues with Paul Dano’s character really come from the fact that Paul Sunday is a BETA MALE who is attempting to usurp Plainview’s Alphahood. This is made quite clear during the church scene when Sunday humiliates Plainview.
Plainview refuses to accept that, and ends up killing Sunday at the end of the film, correcting the Hierarchical power structure.
It underlines what I’ve been saying about people needing to accept their natural place and not acting out of turn. Alphas despise betas who try to insinuate themselves into the Alpha fraternity or usurp an Alpha’s position. It always ends badly!
Sunday just happened to do this to a very dangerous Destroyer Alpha, and be rightfully paid the price!
Thoughts?
