Anyone notice this part in the Brooklyn Museum of Art?

When he is telling Nunu (his grandmother) about Seth and Apep? Joshua is fascinated by the mythological Seth, who is chaos but also balances things out, but he seems afraid of Apep, who Joshua describes as being completely evil. He says something to the effect that Apep eats his own screams and if you are swallowed by him you will cease to exist for eternity and nobody will come looking for you because they won't know you're missing (something like that). The grandmother says something like "That's why Moses came and stopped all this foolishness". And Joshua looks disappointed then.

This scene really hit me though. I almost felt like Joshua was trying to reach out to his grandmother in some way (after all, he earlier asked to be born again, like she wanted and his parents didn't allow it- watch the scene where he is at the prayer group and the preacher is talking about not having to go through the fight (or whatever) alone... his face almost looks hopeful. It's as if he is battling his own morality at that point, and his parents laugh, literally in his face. When he is reading the Bible at the kitchen table later his father mockingly asks if he is into Jesus (something to that effect), Joshua nods and his father says, sounding a bit peeved "Go to bed."

Anyway, I think he tried to reach Nunu (the grandmother) before, through religion and was reaching out for help for at least the first half of the movie. For all Joshua knew his father would have found and seen the video tape he made telling Lily she'd never be loved much sooner...

So back to the museum, he describes Apep and he has a look on his face that seems fearful when he describes Apep as being complete evil and how one could be consumed by Apep and nobody else would notice. I believe Apep, in that scene, was a metaphor for his own sociopathic traits and that he was reaching out for help. I think he was ambivalent so he didn't come right out and ask for help directly, but he basically was saying "I don't feel or think like you, I am inside Apep, I have ceased existing." (meaning morally, emotionally, ethically, etc). And his grandmother, of course, didn't get it.

Also, of importance, the scene where he wants to donate all his toys to the good will and his uncle says something like "destroying the evidence, huh?" when he walks past with his toys in a giant black plastic garbage bag. On some level it's like the toys represent the illusion of innocence and childhood, and Joshua wants to get rid of them because he knows he is neither innocent nor "child-like"- the toys in that case are almost "evidence" of his prior deviousness, of living a life behind a mask and acting like a "normal" little boy.

He does keep his stuffed panda bear, Pandy, an object he probably feels represents his lost innocence. He then cuts Pandy open and pulls the stuffing out while talking about how the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead and how mummifying the dead guaranteed them (the dead) a good spot in the afterlife- in this scene, symbolically, it's as if Joshua is saying "my innocence and conscience is dead, so I will mummify it, and hope that it lives on eternally in some form."

Also notice how the only scene where he seems to show any genuine emotion (not disgust, boredom or sadistic pleasure but genuine, childlike pleasure) is when his father brings him home the book on ancient Egyptians? It's almost as if, for a moment, he allowed himself to believe that his father understood just how important the symbolism of ancient Egypt was to him. But of course his father didn't get it and just thought he was into ancient Egypt as a general hobby.

Anyway, just some observations. I love the thread "Joshua explained".




"I Want To Believe." - Mulder