MovieChat Forums > Michael (2012) Discussion > How did he get the boy in the first plac...

How did he get the boy in the first place?


I don't know if there were any clues I missed as to how he got the boy in the first place. Unless he pulled a similar stunt like the one he tried at the race track with the other kid.
and I got confused at the scene when he was with his sister exchanging presents. He mentioned that he got Michael Harry Potter 5, and the sister said that it was fine. I don't get it... was the sister's son named Michael as well? and did he get two copies since he gave it to the boy as a present?

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I think the clue comes when he tells the boy that his parents no longer miss him - they have forgotten all about him. I take this to imply that the boy was abducted in a similar way to his race-track attempt.

The potentially confusing thing about this movie is that we assume the boy's name to be Michael, when in fact it is the man who is called Michael. It then makes more sense that Michael's nephew is also called Michael. According to IMDB the boy's name is Wolfgang, but I didn't pick that up from the movie.

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Michael is someone who isn't aware of the outside world. His life revolves around his work and his lover who remains locked up in his basement. The boy wanted Harry Potter 5 and he counted on his awareness (he's a pretty smart kid who knows about the recession and current affairs) to pick a present for his nephew.

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His "lover"? What part of Michael's actions implied a loving relationship? This was eerily like watching a poorly-matched married couple where silence spoke louder than words ever could. Indeed, in many parts of the film, I wondered if this wasn't a social satire about marriage between people with a socioeconomic power differential on par with a pederastic relationship.

Women in marriages with men who do not respect them, out-earn them, and control them in a multitude of ways are very much victims, like Wolfgang. It wasn't more than about 30-40 years ago when most married women lived lives very much like Wolfgang, unable to get credit, rent their own residence, or make important life decisions for themselves, needing their husband or father to approve.

As I mentioned in another thread, this man was not a "pedophile", he was an inhuman monster. He contemplated murdering the boy, by neglect at the very least, when he dug that grave in the woods. He showed that he understood the moral wrong he was doing in abducting Wolfgang when he at first turned off, then briefly turned on the TV with the woman talking about the pain of uncertainty with a child's abduction.

World-over, psychologists are recognizing paraphilias such as pedophilia as "normal" variances in human sexual preference. By "normal" they mean they are not illnesses in need of (or capable of) cure, but "chronophilias" in which the age of the people to whom they are mainly or exclusively attracted is significantly different from their own age or ages typical for the average person. This is to say no matter what laws or punishments (or lack thereof) a society dishes out to these people, there will always be the same proportion of them in any given human population. This is not a disease that can be cured or a war that can be won.

We surely can't pass laws to make sex with little kids legal for pedophiles, but we can pass laws that protect their identities and instruct mental health and behavioral therapists to treat them as people with a behavioral problem that must be treated, not as criminals that must be reported. Pedophiles who act on their desires, having sex with children, are guilty of a crime, but most never do.

People with "gerontophilia" are attracted to the elderly. Are they "sickos"? Do elderly people need protection from them, or education about them? I'd say elderly people are as much at risk for rape or being locked in a basement from gerontophiles as children are from pedophiles, that's my experience.

The science behind sexology has always been criticized because of the issues of creating "control groups" and the perceived unreliability of respondents' answers to highly personal questions about sex. I think these criticisms are chiefly due to the neurotic hang-ups society has about sex and the inability of impartiality on the part of the critics.

We underestimate the harm done to society by ignoring the very real harms that come from socially imbalanced relationships in favor of the hysteria surrounding pedophilia, which leads to "monster movies" like "Michael" and the movie-of-the-week style of narratives that paint all pedophiles as irredeemable social misfits who troll go-cart facilities and public parks, or, in short, predators.

Most heterosexual adults can relate to the experience of meeting or seeing someone to whom they are attracted and finding it hard not to "arrange things" so that they encounter that person more frequently. Gay men, who used to suffer the stigmas of institutionalized homophobia with the same activities, found them labeled in unflattering ways. For them, the words "cruising" or "stalking" seems garish and aggressive, but now, they're okay with words like "courting" or "flirting". Why do people with paraphilias deserve their activites, very similar or exactly the same as others, to be called "predatory"? Simple, they don't. It's part of the campaign of exaggeration and hysteria that makes it more likely that things like what Michael did will happen. Michael WAS a predator, and there are REAL predators in the world, but they are not the norm among pedophiles, any more than they are the norm among adult-attracted homophiles, or adult-attracted heterophiles.

Only when society recognizes people with paraphilias as human beings with rights and dignity and offers them the help they need to control their urges (especially where children are involved) will extreme situations like this be fewer and farther between than they ALREADY ARE. Politicians, law enforcement officials, and understandably paranoid parents contribute to the MYTHS about all, most, or even a significant number of pedophiles being like Michael. That's a lie. It's one that is actually causing great harm to society in numerous hidden ways.

Before my friends and I came out as gay, our straight friends and parents (most of them) used to drop hints to us, like saying "You know, I'm okay with gay people. They're just regular people who happen to love people of the same sex." That helped us to feel it was safe to come out. Older friends told us that for them, it was impossible, that they had to "sneak around" just to hold hands or just "be around" other gay people. Sneaking around could have lead to more covert "strategies", even things like what Michael did, but in the case of gay men, it led to bath houses, truck stop bathroom sex and "glory holes".

For pedophiles, it's probably never going to be possible to "pair-up" with the children they are attracted to and go to movies and restaurants, sitting close and snuggling, etc. Though in many countries the age of consent is lowering to around 14-15, the forces at work to end human trafficking are also gaining momentum. This is good, in both instances, and will probably help lower non-consensual sex as well as sex trafficking. Teens are better educated about sex and trafficking.

The question is then, what to do about, or FOR pedophiles, whose sexual attraction focuses on people no country sees as capable of making informed decisions about sex and romantic relationships? One thing is obvious, hunting them down and treating them like terrorists is not going to lessen their numbers, only make certain people feel like they've done something good for kids. But if, as many argue, the treatment of pedophiles as all being like Michael only makes things potentially worse for kids, why should these practices continue just to make a few people feel better about themselves?

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The sister's son is named Daniel, not Michael.

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You are correct.

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