Been obsessed with Prodigal Son recently and the poster cover is gorgeous and I wanted to try to so it since it was a bit more abstract. Kinda messed up on Malcolm but i still like it!
imagine not understanding that malcolm bright is a victim of circumstances and psychological torture who has severe ptsd just so you can be like “good for her” to ainsley who is clearly being written as an actual villian for what she has done and is doing. malcolm wasn’t right to lie to her, but he wasn’t gaslighting her because gaslighting is a specific kind of manipulation with insidious intent. lying is part of gaslighting, but not all lying IS gaslighting. malcolm did hide what ainsley did, but he did not do it to hurt her. he did it to save her. to save her the trauma of what she did, because he thought she would feel as crushingly guilty as he does - which she CLEARLY does not. he did it to take the fall for her despite it costing him everything, including his sense of self.
if he were gaslighting her, it would be to hurt her and control her. also, an important factor is that he comes to the conclusion on his own that keeping the truth from her was wrong, he apologizes and promises her that he will be there. if he were truly gaslighting her, he would not have done that. he would have shifted the blame on her for his lies. but he didn’t. then we see ainsley actually gaslight him by making him think that she killed a second person. she literally did this to torture him emotionally.
men can be victims, and it is important to see a male character be as open and emotionally vulnerable about trauma the way malcolm is. it’s refreshing to see him say he has trauma, to know it isn’t his fault and to cry openly about it. plus, in that moment we are supposed to be realizing that ainsley doesn’t love or care about malcolm. she is a killer just like their father. it is not a #yas queen moment and if you think it is you probably watched midsommar wrong too. malcolm isn’t perfect, but he isn’t meant to be. he is a traumtized individual making the best of his situation without getting any breaks in the process. he is bound to make mistakes along the way. but he isn’t malicious. that’s the point.
Very true! Might I add that one of the goals of gaslighting is to make the person being gaslighted doubt their own ability to distinguish the truth from the lies in order to eventually make that person dependent on the gaslighter for the “truth.” While I think Malcolm lying to Ainsley may have had a similar effect due to her memories coming back which were contradictory to what he was telling her (remember in 2x04 when she said “I feel like I’m going insane”?), Malcolm definitely didn’t do it to make Ainsley dependent on him (which is what Martin would have done) - he literally says in 2x07 that he did to “save [her] pain.” One could argue he lied to Jessica about it too to save her the pain of finding out that another member of her family, “perfect, nontraumatized” Ainsley, was a killer.
Lying to Jessica and Ainsley and covering up Endicott’s murder are all mistakes that Malcolm has made, some with bad consequences to come if the 2x08 promo is anything to go by, but he didn’t do any of it maliciously, certainly didn’t enjoy any of it (I don’t believe the “flashbacks” in 2x01 are actually what happened - more what Martin is planting in Malcolm’s mind), it has caused him severe emotional pain, and once he realized he’d made a mistake and he needed to rectify that, he apologized in person to Ainsley, comforted her and offered her support. And Ainsley, already having set up her sick “prank”, went ahead with it anyway. She watched her brother breaking down in front of her, made him worried on purpose all day by ignoring him, made smart remarks about him in front of their aunt and their mother and expressed no remorse. Honestly, I’m no expert so I don’t know if Ainsley is a sociopath or what, but I do think that this could be a dark path that the writers are setting her down on (but I’m here for that because I like dark female characters).
This is a 40-minute reminder to start using #ProdigalSontonight at 8 pm EDT during the live rewatch of 1x03 and 1x04! Make sure not to go over 2 hashtags per tweet and to rotate between tagging Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Paramount+ and others! See you there!
Hi guys, I’m not sure if I have the energy to post on Tumblr as often as I have been at the same time as tweeting to save Prodigal Son, so I’ll be taking a hiatus of a few days on here.
