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The Butterfly Effect: Confronting The Failures Of Your Childhood
#1

The Butterfly Effect: Confronting The Failures Of Your Childhood

NOTE: If you are familiar with the movie and don't want a long read (1200 words) about the plot, go ahead & skip down. It has been awhile since a did a long post, so I took some liberties with length. This movie really spoke to me [Image: angel.gif]

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The Butterfly Effect was a movie released in 2004, starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. It was considered a poor movie by critics, but did well at the box office. I recall see posters for it that summer in high school, but never watched the movie until about 20 minutes ago.

The plot -- like all Butterfly Effect movies -- is about time travel. In the movie, we see a college student Evan Teborn -- played by Kutcher -- realize he has the ability to travel back in time and redo events in his life. He realizes this as a fuck buddy asks him to read parts of his childhood notebooks back to him. He kept these notebooks as a way of processing his childhood stress, as he was prone to memory blackouts when stressful situations arise. He realizes that pieces of his past -- writings, photos, movies taken of him -- allow him to insert himself into the past, briefly, and alter the past to prevent certain misfortunes befalling himself and his close friends.

A lengthy portion of the movie early on shows his childhood and a handful of traumatic events that altered his future. He was friends with fat boy named Lenny and a sister/brother duo of Tommy and Kayleigh Miller. His traumatic events are as follows: he was forced to sodomize his childhood friend, Kayleigh Miller (played by Amy Smart), while her father videotaped the acts. Kayleigh's anti-social brother burned Evan's dog in a bag when Teborn was watching. Further, during a prank pulled by the gang involved a stick of dynamite literally blows up in the face of a mother and her child. Finally, when visiting his mentally insane father in prison, Evan was almost killed by his father because "he has the disease, as well." His father is killed by guards right in front of his eyes.

While he realizes he has the ability to time travel, he isn't fully aware of the ramifications. He goes back to his childhood town and finds that Lenny is a seriously mentally ill and still lives in his childhood bedroom and assembles model planes. Evan realizes that the events of their childhood has crippled Lenny psychologically. After this fiasco, he goes to the local diner, where Kayleigh workers as a waitress. Evan pesters her about what really happened in her Dad's basement as he doesn't remember the sexual abuse. Kayleigh becomes extremely distraught and commits suicide that night.

In light of this news, Evan endeavors to travel back in time to prevent the abuse. He is back in his seven year-old self's body, but with his adult mind. He scares the shit out of Kayleigh's father and tells her that if he ever lays a hand on her, he will out him to child services. Evan awakes, only to find his life has totally changed.

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He wakes up next to Kayleigh in a sorority house and they have in love, plan on getting married and, apparently, rich. Evan tries to adjust to this life but Kayleigh eventually says that she knows something his off because he isn't acting anything like the Evan she knows. However, we see the consequence of Evan's temporal intervention: Kayleigh's father focused all his abuse on Tommy. Tommy had just recently gotten out of prison and comes, looking for Evan. In the fight, Evan overreacts and murders Tommy.

While it looks like a pretty good case of self-defense, Tommy was armed and stomped the shit out of Evan with a lead pipe, the increasingly obsessed Evan vows to get his old books and travel back in time and fix everything. A needlessly long time in jail results in him getting his books back and traveling back again, this time to prevent his dog getting killed by Tommy. Originally, the problem was that the gang couldn't get his dog out of the bag the dog was tied up in. So, Evan grabs a piece of metal and hands it to Lenny, telling this is his big moment and to use it to free his dog. Well, the dog gets freed by Lenny stabs Tommy in the bag, killing Tommy.

Zooming back to reality, Evan mind is deteriorating. He wakes up, his body convulsing and bleeds profusely from his nose. At the hospital, the doctor notes his brain shows serious signs of hemorrhaging and it appears that he has lived 40 years in a matter of days. Evan finds Lenny in the psych ward, with Lenny looking him dead in the eye and telling this was all his fault, as he wouldn't have killed Tommy if you hadn't told me this was my time to be a hero.

Evan finds his books again and travels back in time to only day he met and his father and his father tried to kill him. We see why his father tried to kill him and Evan blacked out. He knows his father has the gift, so Evan asks him how to make everything perfect. His father he has been time-jumping like him and told him you can't change the past without destroying who people are. Evan rebuffs him and tells his father he will send him a postcard when he cures the ills of the past.

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In this new reality, Kayleigh is a two-cent crack whore. A heated confrontation leads Evan to go back to the day that they planted dynamite at that woman's house and killer her and her baby. A youthful Evan rushes out to warn the woman, but Tommy body checks the two and Evan is front of the mailbox they planted it in. He wakes up, thinking he had done right, as his college roommate is Lenny and everybody appears happy. However, he realizes he lost all of his limbs. Tommy was regarded as the hero and found Jesus (common psychology: paper over anti-social energy with obsessive-compulsive disorder). He tries to commit suicide as he realizes that Kayleigh is with Lenny. Kayleigh even admits she had a crush on Evan before he lost of his limbs.

See the problem coming? He has no limbs so he didn't write anything in this world after the dynamite incident. Since he never gotten better, his mother began to chain smoke and is near death in this world. Evan resolves to solve of all this by going back and blowing the dynamite up so it never kills the lady. It was in Kayleigh's father's basement, so he goes back to the pedophile incident again and foolishly lights the dynamite, only to have Kayleigh pick it up and kill herself.

In this final new world, Evan was sentenced to a mental institution, as the evidence of Kayleigh's Dad's sexual deviance was destroyed and he was considered the murderer of Kayleigh. His doctor tells him he is insane and has created worlds where he was in love with Kaylaigh, she loves Lenny or she is a crack whore to never confront his guilt over killing her. Once again, in this world he never wrote journals because the doctors simply thought was not curable. However, the doctor notes Evan's own father said the same things as Evan, but over family photos. Evan realizes all he needs is simply a piece of his past.

There are two different endings on my DVD. The director's cut is just outright sad, as Evan finds footage of his birth and travels back to kill himself while he was still in the womb. He realizes he is the cause of all of his friend's misfortune, so he ends his life and that results in all of his friends living full, happy lives. The theatrical release is much better. He finds a childhood video at a birthday party for him where he meets Kayleigh. His younger self, after being kissed by a smitten Kayleigh, tells her he fucking hates herself and will kill everybody in his family if she ever talks to him again. It isn't a false statement.

Since Kayleigh's mother eventually leaves her abusive/pedophile father, this incident causes her to desperately want to leave her father and live with her mother, which is always correlated to her being a healthy adult as she never gets abused in any form.

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Evan awakes in the final world, with yet another massive nosebleed and Lenny asks him if he is alright. Evan asks Lenny if Kayleigh is fine. Lenny replies: "Who is that?" Evan knows that he needed to sacrifice his relationship with Kayleigh if she was to have a happy life, as any and all involvement with him results in her death, Tommy's death and general personal depression. The sappy ending has them bumping into each on a busy street, Evan still remembering everything and Kayleigh giving him a queer look as if she knows she should know him, but does not. Reminds me of Haruki Murakami's excellent short story: "On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning"

Frankly, I might have some sort of hamster over these Butterfly Effect movies, as one of my most popular posts on the forum was about the Butterfly Effect 3.

Personally, this movie definitely spoke to me. I think most of the reason -- if not all -- is the intoxicating idea that we can change our past without changing ourselves and that will lead to effortless happiness. That isn't how the world works.

The most interesting scene in the movie is when Evan is a child and meets his father. His father tells him you can't play God and you *can't* change somebody's past without destroying who they are. Evan's naivete is refreshing and admirable, but his good intentions only hurt those around him. His father notes that he so desperately wanted this disease to die with him, as it fells his own father and he is distraught because it has become his son. His anguish leads him to try to kill his son before he permanently hurts those around him.

Whether this is intentional or not, this is great allegory for personality disorders. Evan is literally driving himself up a wall and-- all the while -- hurting those around him. Personality disorders are generational gifts that often skip generations. I have serious issues with alcohol, yet nobody in above generation directly does. I have a bunch of obsessives and narcissists Looking back to my grandfather's on both sides, both were alcoholics. It skips a generation and has my own father as completely averse to alcohol, himself never so much as tasted booze. Further, considering issues like narcissism and paranoia, they pass generation to generation, in many forms. Alcoholism is a form of narcissism, as is codependency, compensatory narcissism and outright clinical narcissism. Personality disorders are literal adaptations to parental failures and wider social issues.






Considering the other aspect of this movie, personality disorders hurt those around the disordered individual. Nobody strolls into a shrink's office and says, "I am worried that my actions are hurting those around me." Nobody observes, "I only feel shame, not guilt and I am often consumed with rage and anxiety and I truly worried how that affects those I care about." If that happened, a person would be so close to true change. But. That doesn't happen.

If I had the powers that Evan had, you wouldn't know me because I would be in a mental institution. I would have fixed some things, made my mental house to appear in order and have my supposedly fantastic relationship with a hot blond like Amy Smart, then only have it crumble, but only slightly. I know I would have obsessively pursued changing the past, but only to other's detriment as I tweaked and changed the past in ways that only benefited me. I doubt there would be a happy ending, as given my personality issues, I would have opted for simply cancelling out my existence. None of this is healthy, yeah got the memo 26 years ago.

I go there in my dreams. I have countless dreams where I simply don't just try to correct personal bad acts, but to stand up to bad actors in my past. Just like Evan, I end up digging up memories that I repressed simply to exist. I have a particularly nasty one where my mother throws to the ground and throttles me as she blames men/the patriarchy for the reason she didn't get her promotion at her job. I could not have been more than four or five. "The fuck is wrong with you goddamn fucking men," is a phrase that reverberates inside my head.

For me, it is simply a defense against change. While it is a step forward by recognizing what happened as a youth, it doesn't change anything because the thought processes try to reprocess the experience as never happening - a.k.a. "fixing" them by traveling to the past and altering what happened. You simply can't do that. You can't in Evan's world in which he hurts himself and others by altering the past and you can't in our's, in which you cannot simply historically revise your own past.

Only by confronting it head on and coming to grips with it can you ever change. People simply can't just alter the past and hope to come out clean on the other side. This is a common psychological construct, as many people pretend the childhood abuse didn't happen. They invent fictions in their head about what happened, while ignored reality. Evan had a chance to alter his past, but worsens his situation the more he tools with it.






His final choice, to simply ignore Kayleigh, is fair enough, but simply ignores reality. In real life, Kayleigh would have serious issues -- as would Evan -- but those would be diminished by them leaving the side of the offending parent.

It is a dream -- for some -- that if the offending parent or parents simply did not exist then a person's problems would go away. It doesn't.

A person cannot simply ignore what has tormented them in the past. A happy ending is nothing without true, real change. Evan's character struck me as naive but also hopeful. If I had his powers, I would do the same. You simply can't wish away the ills of the past without recognizing their effect on you. Evan shows this greatly. He wishes away the sins of the past, while still carrying the burdens those sins gifted him. His complexes lead him to murder Kayleigh's brother precisely because he saw him as he was in another life, not as he was in the present life.

Personality disorders are weird things. You carry the same complexes that colored your relationships with your parents, yet you don't interact with them in the same way, ever again - once you leave home. Still, the habits are right there.

With all that being said, the other scene that really grabbed me was when Evan first travels and wakes up in bed with Kayleigh. He sees what their relationship could be at its best -- even then, it ends in murder. Still, it reminds a night very long ago, in which I ingested some bad drugs. I went out of my mind. When I finally came to in the ER, I had seen it all. I couldn't look away. I saw my very bottled-up rage issues, my paranoia and all the like once the psychological defenses are stripped away.

A voice told me that this would be the best day of my life, simply because I can't avoid my issues anymore nor deny what is going on. I had visions of a life with women I have loved, with them rolling over onto me, completely in love with me. That hasn't happened, but the awareness is there.

What is best doesn't often feel good. But getting through it does.

When Evan's father tells him that playing God is wrong, he is right. Precisely because personal change is what is needed, not historical revisionism. The fact that a child is playing the role for this emphasizes the immaturity that Evan devolves into.

That being said, both endings have happy endings. Either Evan's infanticide or his complete ignoring of Kayleigh, both strains of stories result in happy endings for all parties.

Always build towards an ending, otherwise you have nothing else.

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#2

The Butterfly Effect: Confronting The Failures Of Your Childhood

There are alternative endings for this movie.




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#3

The Butterfly Effect: Confronting The Failures Of Your Childhood

Great post man.

I definitely agree that you can't change what has happened and who it as made you, but once you're conscious of it you can change who you will be.
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