Film: “Extracurricular” (2018)

The pop-cultural bacteria was already in the Trump-era water.

Recollecting the resentment of the outgroup-loser guy reminded me of a couple of incidents from long ago. Free-play stuff….two dozen high school seniors at a pool party. Hundred freshmen and sophomores in a gigantic snowball fight when classes were called off for the next day. Other examples. There’d be an outgroup-loser guy, until that point not particularly noticeable as…anything, actually. Ferociously attacking women. Dunking them in the pool, plastering the face with handsful of snow. With an air of frantic aggression. Had to be stopped by other guys.
Could have joined in with other activities.
Chose not to.
Mentioned this to my father decades ago. He said he recalled the same thing from when he was in high school. And he was class of 39.

I’m sure there’s a spectrum here, as with so many other issues.

The novel takes place in ‘Bouville’ literally, ‘Mud town’) a town similar to Le Havre. It comprises the thoughts and subjective experiences—in a personal diary format—of Antoine Roquentin, a melancholy and socially isolated intellectual who is residing in Bouville ostensibly for the purpose of completing a biography on a historical figure. Roquentin’s growing alienation and disillusionment coincide with an increasingly intense experience of revulsion, which he calls “the nausea”, in which the people and things around him seem to lose all their familiar and recognizable qualities. During the winter of 1932 a “sweetish sickness,” which he calls “the nausea”, increasingly impinges on almost everything he does or enjoys. He attempts to find solace in the presence of others, but exhibits signs of boredom and lack of interest when interacting with them. Because of his aloofness to the world and the people around him, he eventually starts to doubt his own existence.
Unemployed, living in deprived conditions, lacking human contact, being trapped in fantasies about the 18th century secret agent he is writing a book about, he establishes Sartre’s oeuvre as a follow-up to Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” in search of a precise description of schizophrenia.

However, Roquentin’s predicament is not simply depression or mental illness, although his experience has pushed him to that point. Sartre presents Roquentin’s difficulties as arising from man’s inherent existential condition. His seemingly special situation (reclusiveness), which goes beyond the mere indication of his very real depression, is supposed to induce in him (and in the reader) a state that makes one more receptive to noticing an existential situation that everyone experiences, but may not be sensitive enough to let become consciously noticeable. Roquentin undergoes a strange metaphysical experience that estranges him from the world. His problems are not merely a result of personal insanity, which would be deprived of larger significance. Rather he is a victim of larger ideological, social, and existential forces that have brought him to the brink of insanity.

“But nothing about this guy reads…”
I don’t know about that. “This guy” seems totally off the wall—“I’m looking forward to going back to Idaho to stand trial and clear my name” (yeah, right)—perhaps even nutty enough to believe that these murders were some kind of class project.
Extra credit…?
(Speaking of credit, the local police deserve a lot of it, for hanging in there, divulging nothing and responding patiently while taking a whole lot of flak for making it seem that they were the 21st-Century variation of rural, hokey, feckless Keystone Cops.)

That day was defined and to be celebrated as “World Kindness Day”: “Make the world a better place by promoting good deeds and being kind whenever possible. Carry it out as a public act.
Bring a positive power into society, and spread it around like an infectious cold.”

In fact, as Dr. Church and as Dr. Singer regretfully admitted, brains are not the chief essential in human conduct. There is no question about it. The emotions are the urge that make us live; the urge that makes us work or play, or move along the pathways of life. They are the instinctive things. In fact, intellect is a late development of life. Long before it was evolved, the emotional life kept the organism in existence until death. Whatever our action is, it comes from the emotions, and nobody is balanced without them. The intellect does not count so much” (Clarence Darrow)

Well,” I said to myself, “it’s over. There’s no turning back now. How on earth could I ever have got involved in this thing? It was horrible–more horrible even than I figured it was going to be. But that’s behind me now. Somehow I never believed that it would happen–that we’d actually go through with it. “But it’s done. “And now, at least, there aren’t any decisions to make. I’ll be able to put all my thought on not making any slips–on staying one jump ahead of the police. But that’s nonsense! Nobody’s ever going to suspect me. “I wish it weren’t over with–that there were still time to change my mind. But what’s the use of wishing things that are impossible? The thing I’ve got to do now is be careful to do all the ordinary, normal things just as I’ve always done them. I’ll stop at a drugstore and call Connie to confirm our date for tomorrow night.” ( Nathan Leopold, “Life Plus Ninety-Nine Years”)

Upon the release of the film version in 1959, Leopold sued 20th Century Fox and the producers for bringing “unwanted attention” upon his life after he had been released from prison in 1958.

Graham, of course, was not a graduate student in criminology and not particularly clever otherwise, so his was far from a perfect crime, but he certainly got the “speedy execution” that Leopold wished for. Interestingly, Graham was no incel; he had gotten married in 1953 and was already the father of two children when he blew up his mother’s plane. After his execution, his widow had her and her children’s last name legally changed to spare them the “humiliation and shame” attached to their father’s crime. She died in 1992.