Rage's Fatal Weakness
More Brian thoughts for Brian Kinney Week.
In episode 215, the creation of Rage, Brian comes home from Babylon to find Michael and Justin have fallen asleep in the bed at the loft after creating their comic book. He gets angry and pisses -- literally -- all over the pages of the comic that are strewn around the loft.
Later, he's sitting at the diner when Justin and Michael storm in, yell at him for being an asshole, and leave a urine-soaked drawing of Rage on the counter. Debbie picks it up and points out to Brian that he's jealous.
Brian denies it, saying he doesn't do jealous; "Jealous is for lesbians."
"Then you better start liking pussy," she shoots back.
Debbie tells Brian, and he appears to accept it, that he's jealous that Michael and Justin were involved in something that wasn't about him, and then she points out that Rage is him, and that both Justin and Michael worship the ground he walks on: "You're their hero."
Later, Michael and Justin are discussing what happened, and Michael makes the comment that inspired this post:
Michael: Look, we both know how he can get when he's pissed. Justin: What, that we're doing a comic book? Michael: Well, we did kind of exclude him. Justin: We were working. Michael: In his place. In his face. Last night we even wound up in his bed. Justin: It's not like we were fucking. Michael: Well, I guess even a superhero can morph into a jerk. Justin: Don't tell me you're gonna forgive him. Michael: Who said that? Justin: Knowing your guys' dysfunctional history, you'd put up with anything. Michael: Well, you'll be happy to know that even a glutton for punishment eventually gets his fill. Justin: All this time I've been fooling myself, thinking he loves me. Michael: He does love you. You saw his face this morning. We could have removed his teeth with pliers and he would have let us. Justin: Maybe we should have. He deserves it. Michael: Well, at least now we know what Rage's fatal weakness is, and it isn't kryptonite.
Well, what is Brian's fatal weakness? This is what he says when Michael and Justin come back to the loft when they demand an explanation:
Brian: I'm sorry. Justin: That's not good enough. Brian: Well, what the fuck do you want me to do, grovel? Michael: MEAN IT! Brian (after a pause and clear internal struggle): What I did was immature. Childish. Vindictive. It was an act of cruelty based on irrational fears and unfounded... (pause) jealousy. If I were the two of you, I'd never speak to me again.
Although I think that Debbie was right and Brian was experiencing jealousy, I don't think jealousy is Rage's fatal weakness.
Although he usually denies it, Brian does demonstrate some traits of jealousy (not sexual jealousy, though), possessiveness, and envy at various times during the series. There is some possessiveness at play in his reaction to David (although of course, there are also other issues). He clearly experiences some sense of loss when Michael gets involved with Ben, although he handles that a lot better than he handles David, for a number or reasons not really related to this post so I'll skip them but not the least of which is Ben's the best thing that ever happened to Michael. :)
He's envious of the guy who gives him the Atlas Award. He's possessive of Justin (again, not sexually jealous, just possessive) many times -- in 108 with Emmett, (although he's semi-joking), and I believe he shows clear jealousy, sense of loss and possessiveness in early S3 regarding Justin and Ethan. He also is clearly ragingly pissed off and jealous of Gui in S1, about Gus and, perhaps, about Lindsay, too. I also think there is some jealousy on Brian's part of Melanie -- at one point he says gloatingly to Lindsay that Mel hates him because Lindsay loves him best.
Nonetheless, I don't think jealousy, envy, or possessiveness are Rage's fatal weakness at all. I think Brian struggles with them more than he'd acknowledge, but they're fairly minor issues for him.
No, I think Rage's fatal weakness is the other thing Brian mentioned: fear. Or as I usually term it in my head, fatalism, pessimism, a lack of belief in any ultimate outcome but doom.
Considering how opportunistic and intuitive Brian is, and how often he succeeds at what he tries, it's kind of interesting just how much of a pessimist he is about his life. He figures he's going to get old and die so why live past 30? Justin's going to leave anyway, so why not make it easy for him and just toss him, and his DVDs, out the door?
Of course a sense of doom would make perfect sense given Brian's childhood. I hate "characterization by human nature," or in other words, using generic human experiences to create motivation or backstory for specific characters, but it's consistent with having grown up in an unpredictable and unloving home that Brian would learn to protect himself from disappointment and betrayal by expecting the worst and trying not to care about the outcome. Just enjoy the ride because the destination is 90 miles an hour into a brick wall.
And that's why the bashing has always seemed to me to be the most profound tragedy of Brian's personal story (not of the story overall, because of course, the bashing first and foremost happened to Justin). Because in a moment he let himself be open and experience a sense of hope... however fleeting it might have been ... Brian got reminded of the hard lesson he'd clearly learned all too well in his childhood, that happiness is inevitably punished. And for a control freak like Brian, to have that lesson delivered to the person he'd been trying to make happy? How doubly reinforcing of his fatalism.
This is made extremely explicit in season two. Michael tells Brian he should visit Justin because it would make him happy, and Brian says that it's been proven already that making other people happy causes nausea, severe cramps, and even diarrhea (in reference to Michael having just stuffed himself at the diner to make Debbie happy):
"I just told you," he says, "making other people happy can be hazardous to your health." Although clearly here, he means their health.
An inability to believe in the future, in an outcome other than a doomed one, a fear of loss and failure, and a fear of letting others down, is in my opinion Rage's real fatal weakness. And I think the apparently uncharacteristic jealousy he showed over Michael and Justin creating Rage (at least before he realized it was all about him) was really his extreme fear of losing Michael and Justin (which of course is ultimately what jealousy is, but I'm just making the fear more overt as a motivation).
I think that conflict is at the heart of every one of Brian's personal struggles in every season. In S3, he tells Vic and Debbie that there's no real difference between Deekins and Stockwell. His reluctant realization (with Justin's help both direct and indirect) that he's wrong about that is one of the most powerful moments of transformation and growth we see Brian undergo in the series.
He clearly strugges with fear when Justin's PTSD is triggered after Darren's bashing and he gets swept away in his own uncontrolled rage; the scene of Brian acknowledging his own impotence to Daphne shows a side of him we've rarely seen. Then he clearly gets into a state of almost pure fear when he has cancer, as well as when the fragile emotional stability he's built around Justin's time in LA gets shattered. He again reacts to fear with fatalism and exaggerrated pessimism, by going in one moment from confident, happy lover to deciding Justin's never coming back -- total black and white thinking characteristic of fatalists.
What do you think? Is fatalism, motivated by fear, Brian's real fatal weakness?