heartiswild:

@heavyliesthehead

i totally get your post about gillian, even though my opinion is completely opposite. just wanted to add that in the director’s commentary, the director says that jimmy wanted gillian just as badly as gillian wanted jimmy. nobody was forced into anything. and criticizing her…

Well, here’s the thing - I don’t “hate” Gillian or even necessarily think that she is evil per ser. I understand that Gillian was victimized when she was a child, and that has understandably and irrevocably shaped her life. What happened to Gillian was in no way shape or form her fault.

HOWEVER I want to point out that the idea that Jimmy “wants her just as much as she wants him” is all sorts of problematic because Gillian raised Jimmy to look at her that way. From the time that he was a tiny child to the time when he is a grown-up trying to form his own relationships independent of her, Gillian has quite literally poisoned his mind and done her damndest to make sure that he is dependent on her. Now, you can reason that she does this because Jimmy is the only person who has been “hers” and/or not abandoned her in her entire life and she wants to keep it that way BUT THAT IS NOT JUSTIFICATION FOR SEXUALLY ABUSING YOUR OWN CHILD. I don’t for one second believe this was the first instance of something like this happening between the two of them (Hello, “when he was a baby I used to kiss his little winky”). 

The fact of the matter is that just because Jimmy seems or thinks that he’s “into it” in the moment doesn’t mean that Gillian was in the right or that Jimmy mentally and emotionally consented to what they were doing. Gillian is still his mother, and Gillian still should have stopped the situation. Instead, because of her own selfish and twisted desires to keep Jimmy as “hers” she took advantage of her own child and did to him exactly what the Commodore did to her.