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This year, Netflix released a film adaptation of Gerard Way’s comic book of the same name. The result was a nutritious cocktail in which action and trauma of the past are mixed in equal parts. If the spectacular component hardly needs comments, the children’s psychotraumas of the heroes are worth talking about them separately.
REGINALD HARGREVES’ HOUSE FOR ORDER CHILDREN
On October 1, 1989, 43 unusual babies were born around the world. Unusual, if only because the day before their mothers were not pregnant. Eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreaves managed to find and adopt seven kids.
Children differed from their peers not only in the circumstances of their birth, each at an early age demonstrated outstanding abilities. Hargreaves called his new venture – either a family, or a barracks, or a high-security boarding school – the Umbrella Academy and began to raise superheroes who could one day save the world from the apocalypse.
Years passed, the pupils trained, cleared the city of intruders, got into the pages of tabloids and comics, and then fled. When your father raises you from a universal soldier, and emotional closeness shines only with a robot mom and an elderly butler, a chimpanzee, you want to grow up quickly and get out of the house to the police academy, to Hollywood, to the moon, to another era.
It is not surprising that in the era of showdown with toxic parents, the heroes turned out to be so
But Hargreaves suddenly dies, his children, whom he did not name, meet again in the old mansion to understand the circumstances of his death and show each other a collection of emotional wounds. For the viewer, a fascinating attraction “collect a psychological portrait of a character from flashbacks” begins, complemented by jumps in time, dynamic fights and detective intrigue.
Each generation has its own superheroes, those with the evil they oppose. It is not surprising that in the era of a general showdown with emotionally cold parents, the heroes turned out to be talented, but traumatized scammers, doomed to loneliness, daffodils, strangers, thirsty for love.
As for evil, from the abstract and faceless, as the plot develops, it turns into quite concrete, with which the characters are connected by family ties and common childhood psychotraumas.
STUDENTS AND THEIR INJURIES
1. Trauma of abandonment
Due to the circumstances of the birth and the events that followed, Hargreaves’ adopted children experience the trauma of abandonment. Children are doomed to it, who at an early age (up to a year) were separated from their mother completely or for a long time, for example, by sending them to a hospital or sending them to a nursery. The lack of constant contact with the closest person causes you to experience severe anxiety and fear. As the child matures, trauma becomes fertile ground for addictions and psychosomatic disorders.
Ben’s death once shocked the family, turning the cracks in the relationship into an abyss
It is most pronounced in Number Four, Klaus, an eccentric, mannered, nervous, almost never drying out party-goer. His superpower is the ability to communicate with the dead, for a person who has been haunted by the dead since childhood, he is still holding up well.
One of the departed people who accompany Klaus is Brother Ben, Number Six. He died many years ago, but at the right moment turns on Patrick Swayze and saves the brothers. His Death once shocked the whole family, turning the cracks in the relationship into an unbridgeable abyss. He died as a teenager, but looks much like the rest of the siblings.
2. The trauma of rejection
Again, due to the general circumstances of childhood, all seven heroes were deprived of maternal warmth even at an older age: the father was present in their lives physically, but absent emotionally, and the care of the children was entrusted to visiting nannies.
The situation was somewhat corrected by the empathic “mom-robot” Grace, which Hargreaves created after Vanya exterminated the previous Marypoppins. Grace had all the traits of an ideal mother, was programmed to love children and take care of them, but she appeared in the life of the pupils too late, in any case, they are not very good at expressing their feelings and being in close relationships.
The third used superpowers on a three-year-old in a crisis, and which parent would have acted differently?
Personal life does not go well with any of the heroes, including Number Three, Allison, an actress whose ex-husband sued custody of her daughter. Allison controls people, programming them to the desired actions with the phrase “I heard a rumor that you …”. Hearing the “rumor”, the bandits shoot at each other, the daughter obediently goes to bed (the Third used superpower on a three-year-old in a crisis – and which parent would have done otherwise?), And the producers give those roles that she otherwise would not have received.
“Gracefully” the only nameless child comes out of the situation – Number Five. He can move through time and space. Once, as a teenager, he fled into the future and got stuck there for 45 years, unsuccessfully: ruins turned out to be in the place of the familiar world, the Fifth survived in the post-apocalyptic space along with his beloved mannequin. Technically, at the time the viewer is introduced to him, he is a 58-year-old man trapped in the body of a 13-year-old boy.
3. The trauma of deprivation
To a greater extent, she fell to the share Numbers Seven, girls with a strange name for Russian hearing Vanya, the “fifth Beatle” in the family. From childhood, a strict father convinced the girl that she did not have any abilities and could only play the violin. This means that she should not spend a lot of time with talented siblings, participate in joint training and missions (thus she lost an important component of her childhood – communication with her peers).
When a child’s needs are ignored, he grows up “deaf” to his desires and out of contact with his own body. So, the adult Vanya considers himself mediocre and does not feel the power lurking deep inside. She writes a book about what it was like to grow up untalented in the superfamily known throughout the country, which consolidates her status as an outcast. This character is not as simple as it seems.
4. Trauma of betrayal
Nearly all of the Hargreaves children become disillusioned with their father as they grow older. The exception is Number one, Luther, the most devoted son. He does not leave the Academy even when his siblings run away. During one mission, Luther is seriously injured, and Hargreaves injects him with a serum to save him from death. Now the First’s gigantic arms and torso are covered in thick hair, but he is still grateful to his father for saving him.
However, one day it is his turn to be disappointed. Naive, executive, on the instructions of his father, Luther without further questions goes to the moon and mediocrely spends four years there, as it turns out, in vain. This drop overflows the giant’s patience.
5. Narcissistic injuries
Due to his characteristics, revealed in the comics, but not covered by the first season of the series, Reginald Hargreaves could not give the children the warmth they needed. To earn positive feedback from him, students had to meet standards, follow a set of rules.
The narcissistic trauma suffered in childhood leads to the fact that in adulthood a person feels inferior, constantly competes with others, and does not tolerate criticism. This injury is most pronounced in Number Two, Diego. Despite his thirties, he is still a difficult teenager: short-tempered, impulsive, unable to come to terms with Luther’s primacy. For his explosive nature and inability to obey the rules, he once flew out of the police academy and now fights crime on his own.
Deprived in childhood of care, warmth and examples of healthy relationships between people, students of the Academy grow up in outwardly strong, but emotionally fragile and lonely and unhappy adults who have to deal with trauma. Luckily, there’s almost always a chance in life to make things right, whether you’re a superhero or not.