My roommate and I just watched this movie, and got in a short discussion about the charachters.
He thinks Big Boy is autistic, I think he is just immature.
However, I think that Barbara is a perfect example of Histrionic Personality Disorder (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder). So many of the reviews call her a bitch, but I think she actually could be helped now a days with therapy and medication.
Any other opinions?
If Barbara Darling has "histrionic personality disorder," then a good many of today's entertainment stars could be said to have a clinical mental disorder. Frankly, I think she's just a bitch.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
This is too funny. There is no mental disorder happening in this movie. Let me explain. This movie was made at a time when boys and girls were brought up with certain morals and rules unlike teens today who were brought up on a "do what you feel" attitude. Back then, young men had sexual thoughts about women but had respect enough for them not to act in a lewd way towards them, unlike today. This is what causes Bernard's akwardness towards women. He's naive, innocent,and unexperienced, not autistic. He's a normal boy that's growing up in an adult world, nothing more to it than that.
Barbara on the other hand has issues from when she was a girl and now that she's grown up, uses men as toys, so to speak. She is also full of herself. A diva if you will. Tom C.
I'm afraid, sir/madame, that you are full of crap, so much so that it's almost funny. Your neocon bullroar 'everything was better back in the past' attitude towards sexuality show how stuck in the past you are, and also how sexually repressed you are.
I will agree with you on Bernard, but will say this about Barbara; she's a misandrist (the equivalent of misogynist, or man hater) who thinks that males are crappy people. In this, though, she's no different than most males.
I thought Barbara was raped by the doctor twice (she took his fake leg). And she is dealing with it the best way she can, avoidance. Yes, she hated men, but you can see where it could have started.
If we can save humanity, we become the caretakers of the world
Dream7939 is correct. Solex's response is juvenile.
shareWhat the hell? Barbara was RAPED, twice, by a man in a position of authority... and all the other men in her life just laughed about it. "CAUGHT"? WTF? I wanted to scream at the screen: 'She wasn't "caught", you idiot, she was raped!'
There were lots of mental disorders happening in this movie, from an overwhelming mother who couldn't let go (she couldn't even let him name his own dog, she was such a mental slave to her idea of 'propriety'), to his father who thought he had the right to hit on any skirt that passed his way while demeaning and degrading his son, to the landlady who thought it was her right and responsibility to hound a poor 19yo kid, steal his mail, report back on his activities to his mother, etc.
What moral code has it so that a man, finding himself trapped in a time vault for 5 minutes with a woman, takes the opportunity to try to force himself on her?
What moral rule has it that a woman can call another woman a slut/hussy/etc for having "pouty lips" and then demand that her adult child stay away from her?
What moral code allows a psychologist to learn that his patient was repeatedly raped... and then mock the crime by saying she was "caught", with a leering expression on his face?
Horrible times and, assuming that this movie captured the attitudes of their parents, the boomers were right to fight against their oppressive idiocy brought about by nothing more than their bizarre notions of what is proper and what is not.