On the abolition of the past.
Oct. 15th, 2015 01:39 amAs we know, Phil seems to live for the day when Elly will politely admit that nothing that happened to them as children mattered much so could she please stop talking about feeling like his god-damned servant and never being allowed to catch up to him because she's a woman and so on and so forth. This is because his tendency to want to abolish the past is a sort of dog whistle. What he actually means is that he, a beneficiary of white male privilege, does not want any time soon to examine the past and see himself as an oppressor when he was merely complicit in benefiting from a convention in which he gained a whole lot of unearned stuff because he had the right skin color and genitalia. People resent and resist the idea of being a henchman in a scheme to arbitrarily defraud another largish group based on insecurity and fragility so he'd very much like the past to go away so he doesn't see the jeering oaf delighting in her misery she does.
This tells us that the Michael of the present day also wants parts of his childhood to vanish when said parts involve him having to apologize for being a douchecanoe to Elly and Liz. He likes Deanna's past where he was The Best Kid Ever Doing Only Good In The World so being reminded that he was a theatrical oaf whimpering that nooooooobody loved him when he had to pitch in is as welcome as being reminded that it took him until he was in university before he stopped throwing temper tantrums and that he could be relied on to not see that Liz had feelings too because his feelings were real and hers weren't because if they were, he's a bad person who thinks bad and does bad things. Mike would rather not look in the mirror and see the sullen, whiny, mush-headed bucket of vomit we do so the past that says he is has to vanish, thanks loads.
This tells us that the Michael of the present day also wants parts of his childhood to vanish when said parts involve him having to apologize for being a douchecanoe to Elly and Liz. He likes Deanna's past where he was The Best Kid Ever Doing Only Good In The World so being reminded that he was a theatrical oaf whimpering that nooooooobody loved him when he had to pitch in is as welcome as being reminded that it took him until he was in university before he stopped throwing temper tantrums and that he could be relied on to not see that Liz had feelings too because his feelings were real and hers weren't because if they were, he's a bad person who thinks bad and does bad things. Mike would rather not look in the mirror and see the sullen, whiny, mush-headed bucket of vomit we do so the past that says he is has to vanish, thanks loads.