ELI
Everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What my book supposes is… Maybe he didn’t.
Good con artists aren’t just good liars, they’re good storytellers. They build a narrative to keep you enthralled and feeling like you’re in control. Their own truth, what they hold onto through the lies, is in the score. That is the only thing real about them is how much they want what you have. As soon as they have it, they want that prize from another person. There isn’t ever going to be one final job for them, there isn’t one last hurrah, there’s always something else on the horizon. They’re buying time by stringing someone along. It’s the same with a griever who’s bargaining.
A person who finds they’re at an impasse builds themselves a narrative out, toward their end goal. Like with denial, a person in grief who reaches bargaining, or who begins at bargaining, is in their own world. Their new world isn’t to block out everything from getting in the way it is with denial, but to manipulate the world as it is into the new world they want it to be, which in many cases is the world they had before. Bargaining can also evoke a type of nostalgia.
Mr. Fox (George Clooney, Fantastic Mr. Fox), Foxy to his friends, used to really be someone. He used to be the best thief in his small community of woodland animals. He used to have freedom before he became tied down. As much as he loves his wife, and is trying to understand his son, there’s something missing. He’s in mourning for who he used to be. So, he tries a little of the old magic.
Foxy finds himself at the apex of the greatest set of scores of his career. He justifies his actions with lies because it just feels so good to be a thief again. It’s so good that he can’t see how his actions are tearing his life asunder as the men he’s stealing from go to great lengths to try and catch him. Even as he sees the destitution he’s forced into, he still attempts to bargain for more time, for one more score, for just a little taste of the magic of his past. He’s willing to give up everything for that taste, until he finally sees the people right in front of him and he has to do a bargaining of a different kind with Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep).
This is where Foxy is separate from other con artists. For him, the deal he struck with Felicity was out of love. While he’s lied and stolen against her wishes, it’s Felicity’s rationality that brings Foxy back from the clouds. As much as he tries justification with her, it’s the pessimist inside Felicity, that lightning she always paints, that holds her ground against him. The last bargain Foxy strikes is getting to stay with Felicity.
It’s the same with the biggest bargainer of them all, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman, The Royal Tenenbaums). Unlike Foxy, Royal fails to see the hurt he’s caused because he’s too self absorbed. He traded lies in his former career as a lawyer and in every interaction he has with people. Royal is the kind of con artist that’s greedy for attention more than for wealth. He’s a narcissist who cons people with things they want to hear in order for them to like him. With his children, though, he made a mistake. He chose a favorite.
When Royal chose Richie (Luke Wilson) over Chas (Ben Stiller) and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) he exposed his lies to the two of them. If Royal were to tell it himself, he would say he needed to toughen the two of them up, that he needed to build them into the geniuses he knew they could become by challenging their perception of his affection for them. Yet, in that bargain he lost them, seemingly forever. It’s as Royal loses the last comfort of his old life that he grieves for the life he could have had if he had gotten out of his own way. That’s when he begins to bargain for it back with his ego driven nostalgia of the beatific past he’s told himself existed.
He weasels his way back into the family in the most blatant lie a person tells for attention. He tells people he’s dying. It’s a way for him to regain their love through sympathy. It blows up in his face, of course, because he can’t win what he didn’t have with Chas and Margot. They see right through him because, in a way, he knows he deserves this ostracization. That’s just his greatest bargaining move of all, though. He’s set up this obvious ploy, this ruse that he barely hides in order to be caught by Henry (Danny Glover). In a way he plays both sides in order to get back on the inside. He anticipates every angle and changes tack as the pieces slide into place. At least that’s what he wants us to think because what he wants us to think is all we’ll ever really know or understand of Royal Tenenbaum.
Sam Shakusky and Suzy Bishop (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, Moonrise Kingdom) feel that no one outside of the two of them will ever understand their grief. They have seen the people in front of them for a long time and have realized, those people are doing it wrong. The two young people have been unseen, unheard, pushed, and pulled. They’ve had it with hypocritical adults and their arbitrary rules. They mourn for a time they don’t believe ever happened. A time when it felt like they were truly cared for and loved. Their only way forward is to buy some time with the only other person who understands.
In spite of their ostensible immaturity, Sam and Suzy know that their love for one another comes from a genuine knowledge of a kindred spirit. Their time spent playing house isn’t just fun and games, but to prove that they know how to do this better than their parents and all adults. They have a nostalgia for the life they haven’t experienced yet because they know if they’re caught, they will never experience it with each other. Adults tear down, separate, belittle, and scoff at what they don’t understand.
These adults don’t know how far Suzy and Sam are willing to go. They couldn’t possibly fathom the lengths of these teens’ bargaining tactics. The two of them turn to the classic literary lovebird trope and walk out onto a roof in a hurricane, intimating that if their love isn’t acknowledged, this will be the end of it. Because of their age, because of the obstinance of adults, it’s only logical that this step be taken. They’re secretly hoping logic will prevail, that these adults aren’t as far gone as they assume they are. Luckily for these two, the adults aren’t and get them off the ledge.
Sam and Suzy want time. Royal wants the family he neglected. Foxy seeks a return to the notoriety and glamor that comes with being his small world’s best thief. Bargaining and denial are so intertwined when one is in grief. Yet, the clever person, or fox, knows that the difference is that the person bargaining thinks they are in control even as they give themselves to the powers of fate. The bargainer makes the attempt, they try to force the hand and sometimes live to shrug, smirk, and try again. In spite of the drastic measures they take to escape their grief, the bargainer gets little except for the perspective on how their coping affects those they love. They can’t bargain for love, though, they have to earn it by doing the hardest thing a con artist has to do. They have to tell the truth.
