How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze . . .

I'm off today so I just watched the movie on Netflix.

According to the movie, Bernie always had a problem spending money. However, he always gave what he bought to other people. Bernie's first thought at a career was an evangelist. He is in a very small town, effeminate and loves the widows, but does not socialize with any women his own age. He is very fond of Jesus and hymns.

In his sales role at the funeral home, I do see him as being very adept at playing on fears and grief to upsell. He is a people person in a very people pleasing kind of way. He is very creative and likes the arts and fine food. He loves to help people with himself always in the role of teacher or comforter. I never saw Bernie really on the receiving end of an interaction, except at the end where he was visited in jail.

After being written into the will, Bernie is slowly isolated from all the friends and activities he loves. It was Marge that made him learn to shoot a gun in order to kill an armadillo in her yard. She berates him when he cannot shoot it. The scene where he kills her is not premeditated. he just sort of dissociates and snaps- visualizing a lot of the things that bother him about her.

He shoots her IN THE BACK.

Now, in no way at all can I deny this woman was a nasty, mean, selfish, controlling person. She was. But, you know, if it were not for all the money involved, he may have well chosen to return to his own life long before this happened. I really cannot take the money out of the equation as some type of motivation that put him in this spot no matter even if it was not premeditated.

He spends over 600k in the nine months following her death on the townspeople- he did not really buy anything for himself. In the end it is all repoed by her estate. The whole town loves him. Even after they find out he did it, they still love him. I cannot help but see some shades of spellbinding. Perhaps Bernie was after love and acceptance as his payoff? He does seem to show remorse.
 
Watching the movie I was having difficulties in judging the character of Bernie. I felt he was portrayed as to good to be true, with small commentary hints that he may have had an untold agenda; he only payed attention to older ladies, the younger ones didn't get the time of day and the unsolicited kindness towards Marge (as if he was homing in on the 'prize-widow'). This may be due to the movies rendition of the story but also a thought that there must be an agenda to such meekness. As Daenery's mentions I also got that feel of a 'spellbinder' but perhaps in reality a benign or even positive of the sort.
 
Laura said:
Haven't seen the movie, but planning on it. The article is so good I wanted to share it:

How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/how-my-aunt-marge-ended-up-in-the-deep-freeze.html
Click to expand...

Marge, red hair an all, gives me the creeps. She could be a sister to my paternal grandmother, who was every bit as mean, nasty, and evil as Marge was reputed to be.

Loved the article! I thought it was well written, and spelled out what it can be like to deal with someone that twisted. Reading what the author went through with Marge was so close to some of what my grandmother put me and the rest of the family through that it, again, gave me the creeps.

It's as if people like Marge and the Grand-monster fell off an assembly line somewhere. :shock:

I doubt very much I'll see the movie, having lived with a version of the same beastie. :halo:

As far as Bernie? He was a very well meaning idiot, with a clear impulse issue. I don't think he would have shot her if an option not to ever presented itself. Older women were non-threatening to him as a person, and a gay man. It's a shame.
 
Laura said:
Haven't seen the movie, but planning on it. The article is so good I wanted to share it:

How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/how-my-aunt-marge-ended-up-in-the-deep-freeze.html
Click to expand...

Wow. I only made it through the first three pages.

Based on just this much description of "Aunt Marge":

[quote author=linked article]
...an ornery wealthy widow

...with pursed lips and accusing eyes. ...whenever Aunt Marge disapproved of something, which seemed to be most of the time. It usually meant she was going to tell you, in no uncertain terms, why you weren’t good enough or smart enough or otherwise worthy of her time. She used it on salesclerks, on waiters, on farmhands, housekeepers and cooks. She used it on my parents. She used it on me. I really hated that face.

Aunt Marge once threatened to put me in a mental institution because I wouldn’t cut my hair; how she chased me around her yard with garden shears because I wouldn’t clean out a wasp’s nest with my bare hands; how, when I was 14, she locked me in her house for two days and wouldn’t let me call home. Finally, when Aunt Marge went to the grocery store, the maid, sympathetic to my plight, unlocked the bedroom door so I could get to the phone and beg my mother to come rescue me. She did. That was the last time I went to Aunt Marge’s house.

There were darker stories that even I didn’t know until the last few years. Aunt Marge, who loved to sew and shop and didn’t have a daughter of her own, tried to get custody of my sister, Carrie, by having our parents declared unfit.

...most people in Carthage did their best to avoid Aunt Marge, for fear of incurring her wrath.

Marge seemed to lord her wealth and status over everyone she encountered. As one character says in the film, “Marjorie Nugent’s nose was so high, she’d drown in a rainstorm.”

“She was so demanding,” my mother said. “If you did something she didn’t think was up to her standards, she’d tear it up and make you do it again.”

Sometimes I think she was the devil on earth.”[/quote]

I agree that...

[quote author=linked article]
...there was something about Aunt Marge’s ending up in a freezer that seemed appropriate. She’d always been kind of coldhearted. It was not an unfitting end.[/quote]
 
The movie is not bad at all, a very interesting script and very good actor. I liked it. I liked the black humor and this subtle critic of the American way of life: also how appearances are most important than anything at all. The mask, I mean. So you have a nice guy who spends alot of money, give gifts, is gentle, very implicated in the small community and people don't know him, what he is really inside and we as spectators either don't know who he really is because we know him just by the others that just see the mask. But he is a murdered. He killed. Or not? So he deserves, by me, to go to prison. Maybe a life sentence is very much but.

So a good movie that asks interesting questions: is he innocent or not? Is it good to kill a nasty old lady? just to ask these questions is very black humor. He is not innocent and nasty ladies, even if they are very nasty, does not deserve to be assassinated. That's my point of vue.

I loved also in the movie two things: the Texan accent, that is very handsome. And the character of the sheriff, the young man who accuse him and the only one person in the movie who I think see Bernie for what Bernie is: a gentle man but a man that killed a woman.
 
Here's an interview with Bernie which gives some insight in his side of the story:
_http://www.kltv.com/story/18446118/i-just-snapped-bernie-tiede-speaks-out-from-prison-about-the-movie-based-on-his-life
 
domi said:
Here's an interview with Bernie which gives some insight in his side of the story:
_http://www.kltv.com/story/18446118/i-just-snapped-bernie-tiede-speaks-out-from-prison-about-the-movie-based-on-his-life
Click to expand...

I read the article and I still don't know who is Bernie. And why they have made a movie about him? To tell us that every normal person can kill? Is that so? That many people that we admire can be killers?

Personally I think that Bernie is a good comedian. I don't think he is a psychopath. My husband saw the movie also and think that the jury would have been more right to absolve him. So I think that good comedians make you think that they are innocent, after all. :rolleyes:
 
loreta said:
I read the article and I still don't know who is Bernie. And why they have made a movie about him? To tell us that every normal person can kill? Is that so? That many people that we admire can be killers?

Personally I think that Bernie is a good comedian. I don't think he is a psychopath. My husband saw the movie also and think that the jury would have been more right to absolve him. So I think that good comedians make you think that they are innocent, after all. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It's not so simple, Loreta, though obviously, Bernie himself is rather low in IQ.

I would strongly urge everyone who can to watch this movie:

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Small-Stories-Collection-Movie/dp/B000784WYU
 
domi
Here's an interview with Bernie which gives some insight in his side of the story:
_http://www.kltv.com/story/18446118/i-just-snapped-bernie-tiede-speaks-out-from-prison-about-the-movie-based-on-his-life
Click to expand...

In this interview Bernie states:
"I just hope that people will realize that anybody has that capability of doing that and that's what I think the movie shows. I don't spend up nights thinking of how to get rid of folks. I am just like you, and it just [was] a one time freakish thing that just happened. It just happened to me"

I think this is what is disturbing to many people--that the premise of the movie is that with the right provocation anyone can be pushed to the point of murder. While I agree most anyone will defend themselves and their loved ones in an actual attack, and there are some abuse cases where the victims of long standing physical, mental, and emotional abuse, who cannot leave their relationships for fear of murder and retaliation, whose premeditated murder of their abusers appears justifiable, but I don't know if I think this case sounds like it meets this criteria. I will watch it and the other movie Laura recommended and see.

Back in the 60s and 70s, a family friend of my parents, who worked in the prison system said that the most trusted inmates were the murderers. Most of the people in prison for murder (at that time) were people who killed once in a fit of passion--someone they were intimate and emotionally attached to. These murderers were generally more pleasant and safer to work around, because they did not have the "typical criminal mind" and were modal citizens in most every way. They were only ever a threat one time to the person who "pushed their buttons" beyond reason.

But I still don't think that ALL people can be goaded to commit violence under the right circumstances.
Like my Ex3 (who actually turned out to have a violent criminal record--"it takes one to know one") said once:
"Some dogs never bite."
shellycheval
 
Laura said:
I would strongly urge everyone who can to watch this movie:

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Small-Stories-Collection-Movie/dp/B000784WYU
Click to expand...


Oh, my. This is a very powerful movie. There is a hypnotic regression scene that brought tears to my eyes. This movie really shows how programming and repressed anger can affect someone. Bravo- well done.


For what it is worth- it is on youtube, if that is ok to post here so others can watch. Starts here in three parts -_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNeiUR8M1iU
 
Daenerys said:
Laura said:
I would strongly urge everyone who can to watch this movie:

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Small-Stories-Collection-Movie/dp/B000784WYU
Click to expand...


Oh, my. This is a very powerful movie. There is a hypnotic regression scene that brought tears to my eyes. This movie really shows how programming and repressed anger can affect someone. Bravo- well done.


For what it is worth- it is on youtube, if that is ok to post here so others can watch. Starts here in three parts -_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNeiUR8M1iU
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Daenerys!

FWIW I started watching the movie about a month ago on Netflix but couldn't get through the first twenty minutes of it. Something just seemed off, like I needed to know more details before I went any deeper into it.

Time passed and now, after reading this thread and the article, I revisited it and I was absolutely floored. There are so many lessons available in this film. For me a big one is that of "judging" or thinking that you can change someone. Obviously it just led Bernie into a trap, first into an eencie weencie petty tyrant's prison, and then into a full blown petty tyrant prison.

With all the evidence available right now, I sympathize with the guy quite a bit since it seems like he went out of his way to make life better for himself and others. In other words he had the gentleness of a dove but not the wisdom of a serpent. As one person in the movie said "Marge was just more evil than Bernie was nice." I think that really sums up the interaction between STS and STO: the STS offered total enslavement and Bernie unknowingly acquiesced (including the pot of gold behind the door!) OSIT.

Thank you for these wonderful movie ideas.
 
Hesper said:
FWIW I started watching the movie about a month ago on Netflix but couldn't get through the first twenty minutes of it. Something just seemed off, like I needed to know more details before I went any deeper into it. Time passed and now, after reading this thread and the article, I revisited it and I was absolutely floored. There are so many lessons available in this film. For me a big one is that of "judging" or thinking that you can change someone. Obviously it just led Bernie into a trap, first into an eencie weencie petty tyrant's prison, and then into a full blown petty tyrant prison. With all the evidence available right now, I sympathize with the guy quite a bit since it seems like he went out of his way to make life better for himself and others. In other words he had the gentleness of a dove but not the wisdom of a serpent. As one person in the movie said "Marge was just more evil than Bernie was nice." I think that really sums up the interaction between STS and STO: the STS offered total enslavement and Bernie unknowingly acquiesced (including the pot of gold behind the door!) OSIT.
Click to expand...



I have found myself thinking about Bernie quite a bit in the last week or so. Bernie was not from that town. He applied for and got the job over the phone- he was from Louisiana. So he really won over a small town that probably usually do not bond that well with outsiders, especially ones that may be "gay" given the more red neck, red state, religious climate there.


I think a lot of what came out in Bernie - the evangelic inclination, the catering to older widows, the theatre- was perhaps what G would call the wrong use of sex. The sexual energy was being directed to the other centers. Hence the "flavor' of spellbinding I picked up on several times may have come from there. This, I think is because he could not be who he really was and be accepted. It does not seem he was ever able to really embrace his sexuality and accept himself. We do not know any details about his upbringing, but one would have to assume that in Louisianna, it was not much different and he may have had problems at home too as to his sexual orientation. Older women were very safe. Women his age- no, as they may want a relationship, and men , no because of perhaps the threat of attraction. It would seem he projected a mask full time. He does seem a very sweet soul deep down though.


After watching this last movie that Laura recommended, it is not hard to see how he could have snapped and dissociated at all. It is easy to see how he had tons of repressed anger, emotion, and programming.
 
Like I said, I think Bernie was just TOO nice (and repressed) and his IQ wasn't that high.
 
I will look the movie that Laura proposes. Me too I thought about Bernie this week. I said to myself that he is a very gentle person that brings around him joy and union and now surely he does this in prison too. I think the style of the movie is not adequate, maybe, for this story. The style is with a sort of black humor, almost sometimes a comedy and what happened is a real drama. A drama for Bernie and a drama for the lady, because the lady was a very somber person but in the movie everything is saw with irony, comedy. The movie also don't analyse with profundity Bernie. A serious movie surely would have give more insight about Bernie. Bernie in the movie is see from the exterior.
 
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