May

Cooking up the most pleonastic review for this movie, the doll is coming out of the box for this one…  My favorite exchange of dialogue in a movie ever is down below, to me this and then the office scene where May’s coworker Polly is messing with her is what this movie is about. This dialogue is between May and the person May liked Adam. “How you doing, May?” “Great, actually… Making new friends. Right and left.” (lie) “Lovely.” (Shows Adam her cat, Lupe) “Lupe, this is Adam.” “It's cute.” “…How are you doing?” “…Aw, man, this thing is broke… I'm gonna have to go down to the Fluff and Fold.” “Call me sometime?” “Yeah… sure… I'll see you around, May.” And she goes and checks and… the laundry machine wasn’t broken 😕 fuck you, Adam. She’s the laundry machine. The joke is that she can’t small talk, she cries, the scene ends. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with her and she’s just tired. Soooo tired of dealing with being treated like a broken laundry machine all the time, being treated like a lesser human, like an animal with no freedoms or privacies. Maybe the laundry machine works and is in reality perfect and is just going through a lot and has been for a long time. Honestly I think May was better off on her own even though it was lonely, she needed to find someone who loved her mind soul and body like she wanted and not just 1/3rd of the equation, not someone who just wanted to get into her pants, someone who sees her for her and loves her and not the idealization of her conforming to their wishes, not a “oh ill love you if you do this” “oh ill love you if you do that” “oh ill love you but you’ll be my side piece” “oh ill love you if you’ll have kids” “oh ill love you if you aren’t weird or quiet and can small talk” bullshit like that, someone who wanted HER and what she wanted, and what she wanted was a knight in shining armor who was serious about her and willing to reach out and take her away. Someone who wanted her or nobody else, really her. That’s what everyone in this life of ours deserves if they’d like, and with society nowadays it seems impossible to find 🤷‍♀️. Fuck ass Adam is certainly no knight in shining armor.  I love the part where May goes on one of her classic May tangents that she’s ashamed of to evil Adam about that scary stuff she suffered through at her veterinarian job and at the end of the tangent she says “I had to sew that one up” like yeah girl you had to sew up that tangent and keep “the doll in the box” (this metaphor will make sense later) , because they’re gonna think your laundry machine is broken… but it’s not she’s just a regular laundry machine if anything because she’s aware she is going on a tangent in that scene, and she’s aware she can’t small talk so she doesn’t even bother talking much at all unless someone tries to talk with her, and who give a gaf about small talk anyways? Just because she talks different doesn’t mean she deserves to be treated like less than a human. Whole message of the movie which none of the supporting cast follow, a message people don’t get in real life. Laundry machines are great 🫶 especially ones that actually work  I have to skip a couple parts of this movie that are just too off putting for me and I usually skip because I’m squeamish to horror movie stuff, but beyond that I understand what those scary scenes symbolized and what this movie wishes to convey perfectly in my heart. It’s necessary because May’s life is pretty scary like a constant horror movie that just won’t end. I see the scene where she bites Adam and Adam draws away from her as a metaphor for her perceived obsession with him making him withdrawal from her, similar to what the movie Bones and All does using acts of cannibalism as a metaphor for obsession, ofc Adam never entirely withdrawals which is funny, and it’s because May is lowkey the goat and she is the prize, nobody will withdrawal all the way from her, but by the end of the movie the prize withdraws from everyone. It reminds me of a lyric from this song, “it’s the mechanical bull, the number one, you’ll take a ride from anyone, anyone, who wants a ride, pulls away, from you”. The ending portion is a different May, a May who is on the verge of entirely accepting death. After the doll who is her only friend gets out of the box and the doll (May) breaks, she subsequently starts killing people as a metaphor for her emotional contamination towards the people around her, all of these people she “kills” (Adam, Polly, Polly’s “friend”, the punk dude lowkey don’t remember who else) view her as inferior just because she is just the token laundry machine to the people around her and they all say that they think that in a subliminal way, talking about how the laundry machine is broken, etc, but ofc the point is that they aren’t talking about her, they’re talking about a broken laundry machine that isn’t actually broken, so she can’t even say anything or else she would be making it about herself, even if it is about her in subtext. If she would’ve said “fuck you adam!! it’s not broken”, she would’ve revealed herself as the laundry machine which isn’t broken but chooses not to appear functioning, so I think she chooses not to participate in that nature of conversation. If she is a broken laundry machine to them, why would she want to waste their time? If her being a laundry machine is all that matters to them why even bother? That isn’t genuine at all. I think she kills the connection with everyone by the end, no longer trusting anyone or wanting to burden them, if she’s just the token laundry machine to them they can go find a different laundry machine to torture and constantly try to kill for all she cares. I think Lupe being killed was also a metaphor for that, especially because I think that in her mind her fate was settled early on. Maybe she was scared the more time she spends with Lupe the more Lupe will miss her when she’s gone, which is why she should withdrawal. Maybe I’m just saying that because I don’t think she killed anyone, I don’t think she physically hurt anyone her whole life, and I don’t want to think my favorite fictional character is a cannibalistic people and animal murderer but I digress. I think when the doll got out of the box and was torn apart, that her fate was settled, I think that whenever she was compared to a laundry machine, an inanimate object, just because of how she is neurologically wired, and was effectively dehumanized, that her fate was settled. I think that whenever the people closest to her started treating her like an animal in a zoo her fate was settled. She didn’t really bite Adam or anything though, she doesn’t literally kill anyone. Those parts of the movie aren’t real!! I just don’t buy it, in my eyes it’s strictly horror movie symbolism. I think a horror movie was the best genre for this sort of story, because when you’re life is like May’s every day is a horror movie, that’s the life of the token laundry machine, where you wonder what humiliating horror they have for you next to try and make you insecure and look stupid everywhere you go.  Think you’re getting close to someone? Maybe you even like them, can see yourself being vulnerable around them? Wrong, they think that you’re just easy and that you’re “not playing your cards right”. Fuck you, Adam. Well wait maybe she’s not easy at all, maybe she just actually liked them?? Lowkey Adam probably didn’t even like her in the first place and only viewed her sexually like an object just like everyone else in the movie does, because when you’re the laundry machine, you’re an object, laundry machines aren’t “normal people”, they’re machines living in their own world they say, to them she’s a machine like on the same level as a robot, she is so engulfed in trauma that she has been in a perpetual fight or flight and she chooses flight because she doesn’t want to fight, “and the robot flies away” they say. They didn’t see her for her or actually like her anyways. Bugs in my skin. She’s was too cool for Adam. Think you can trust your friends? Nope, they view you as an object too. When you’re the laundry machine you don’t have privacy or freedom or genuineness with anyone, you can’t even be vulnerable in a place where trust is promised, everyone wants to twist your words and feelings and lie on your name, trying to escalate every perceived flaw that might not even be a flaw, might just be a misunderstanding or miscommunication, into something it’s entirely not. It’s like a zoo amongst a bunch of stupid people who get the animal facts wrong, because there are so many rumors rumors and rumors and lies and lies and lies about the species of animal. When you’re like May everyone is always talking behind your back about everyone’s mutual obsession, the broken laundry machine that’s not broken, no but don’t worry they weren’t talking about you they were talking about the laundry machine your privacy is totally your own. Being the laundry machine already means you don’t have much credibility, due to the inauthentic reputation of the laundry machine, and especially because May is known to be an occasional storytelling liar. I feel like that there ruined her credibility as the laundry machine. Maybe im referring to a different laundry machine I know. She is often seen telling lies to sound cool and maybe even lies for sympathy and attention she lacked growing up in a troubled environment or something, they’re all small white lies like saying her day was good and that she’s making new friends, etc, but I wonder if she used to lie even more maybe perhaps meticulous and larger lies for sympathy during her youth. I don’t know maybe I got some of the lying part from a different movie. But yeah I’d kill the connection too, if they don’t like you for you or only like how you look leave!! And if they only care about trying to get the laundry machine to not seem broken, definitely leave!! Maybe May reminisces about the days when she didn’t even know what a laundry machine was, when she thought it just meant being self centered, when reality felt real and she wasn’t blinded and traumatized by something that isn’t there, when she was blissfully unaware and it was perfect, or so it seemed. We don’t see May’s adolescence much but we get the gist from the opening that it was very lonely. I don’t think May ever hurt another soul or was intentionally mean to anyone, it’s not in her character, I think that May would rather die than hurt another person like life has done to her. And she does, after she “kills” everyone (leaves everyone). The only person she hurts physically and mentally is herself, and unintentionally the people around her watching the hurt, which is probably why she left everyone before she died. I think once Polly essentially cheats on her and then shortly after her only friend the doll breaks apart that she knew that death was coming for her she didn’t want anyone to see the hurt any longer in the meantime, maybe she left them so that she could be free to hurt by herself and hurt herself like she does in the movie, just without having to hide it, without hurting anyone. I think that when the doll got out of the box and was torn apart without its box to keep it safe and died, that May was also torn apart and she died with her.  Throughout the film obviously you can see that she is more than aware of her subliminal inferiority and she has been for a lot of her life, so aware that her awareness is suffocating her, alienating her, making her feel like she’s from a different planet. Maybe she knows how to end it… Off topic but also not fuck the police for not arresting all of those ppl for fucking with her all the time she didn’t do anything wrong.  Love the part where fuck ass polygamy Polly is imitating May sucking on her finger (one of her compulsions) trying to get her to look at her as she walks past her in the office like she’s some robot, like she’s not a real person, like she’s just some monster or like a mutant (#x-men allegory) or something. To me, this and then the laundry machine scene are the two scenes in a movie that resonate with me the most. “Look at me, stare at me you god damn laundry machine”. The metaphor I prefer is that it’s like being an animal, like maybe a dog where everyone is using a squeaky toy around her begging for her precious attention. Even more accurately, it’s like being in the zoo, but you’re trapped inside of it, and they’re all calling you the wrong animal. That’s how being the laundry machine is, “Look at me, animal, look at me freak, look at me monster, I need your attention because you’re amazing, because of your tired eyes, animal, I wanna use you and then lie on your name and make you more frightened of people because I won’t be happy until you’re alone, animal 🤩” that imitation of her probably really hurt her feelings and it probably makes her feel dehumanized, which is what everything does when you live in a zoo that people act like isn’t there. It’s one of the many things that lead to her characters death  (I mean she literally runs out the door probably because she’s about to cry, she would never admit to that though because she doesn’t have time to cry, she must be strong, the doll stays in the box).  What also pmo is later on Polly does this thing where she starts intentionally mispronouncing medical terms just for May to correct her, probably because May doesn’t have any small talk to say to her, “what’s a scupel?” “Scalpel.” “Oooh, scalpel 🤣” she does this to May a bit until May subliminally tells her she’s not fucking stupid by saying “scupel” whenever Polly gives her a conversational invite to let the doll out of the box and yap whenever Polly was asking her how her day was. “Scupel” keeps the doll in the box, “it was good, how about you?” keeps the doll in the box, even if it is a lie, you have to lie, nobody’s ever gonna love you if you don’t keep the doll in the box because them’s the rules and everyone else keeps the doll in the box, but nobody’s gonna love you anyways because not only are you bad at keeping the doll in the box, but your laundry machine is broken too 💔 and everyone wants the broken laundry machine to show that it works because what good is a laundry machine that won’t work and show itself right? And even if she was a laundry machine, I don’t think she has an ounce of self centeredness in her. I don’t like Polly, I think about the scene whenever May and Polly first get together May asks her “are you serious about me?” and I wish to God that Polly instead said “Hell no!! I’m playing games with you girl you’re nothing to me!! You’re just the laundry machine!!” Instead of lying to her and saying “dead serious”. Especially with that being after her being played with and humiliated by Adam that is so so sad. She just deserved someone who was serious about her idk. I think it’s terrible.  With that one word “scupel”, she was essentially telling Polly that she plays dumb, she isn’t stupid, she’s aware of all of it, the zoo, every single thing, because it’s constant and never ending and it probably extends incomprehensibly far beyond just Polly, it’s probably everywhere always constantly, like being a prisoner to the world, like you’re an animal whose attention they try to capture with a squeaky toy, she doesn’t care or blame her or anyone for it though, because no matter how much it hurts to feel like an alien, like some freak who they say terrible things about but it’s not about you but it also is, just don’t say anything because then you will be what they call you just because you are smart enough to be aware of it, aware of the nature of conversation, just don’t react, don’t feed into it, like an animal in a zoo, deep down she knows that true integrity is to forgive, and to love them anyways no matter how much they hurt her.  But how can you be happy living that way? Like you’re in a zoo, how can you genuinely smile or laugh about something in a way that isn’t fake when all you can think about is “man that was terrible, but it’s always terrible, I would have rather been lit on fire honestly, I wonder what they’re going to do next, I wonder how I’m going to be mocked and become more insecure and scared and paranoid, I wonder how far of a corner I’ll they’ll find I have retreated in by the time it’s over, I should probably not go out tonight because I’m too tired to deal with it and I know I’m going to regret it, even if I want to go out, but I’m just not strong enough tonight, I don’t think ill be strong enough tomorrow” and all she wanted was to maybe have solitude somewhere, with someone who could hold her and tell her “it’s alright and that yeah it’s all in your head but that’s the point they’re making, and it sucks, it sucks so bad but you can’t talk about it or it’ll get worse, because everyone twists your words and lies about you, but I won’t.” she needed someone who would love her even though she is essentially cursed. She couldn’t even have that. I feel like if May was around for the dating apps era, she is the type of person who people wouldn’t even be serious about on dating apps, they certainly aren’t serious about her in real life, she’s just an object to everyone, a concept. A robot. A broken laundry machine.  In my opinion, she has nothing but love in her heart even for the people who make fun of her and act like shes dumb and lie about her and manipulate her, maybe they weren’t serious about her, but she was serious about them and she died for them, that’s how serious she was about everyone. Even with the zoo, she loves everyone pretty much unconditionally anyways and time and time again gives them chances to change, she would die for them. And she does, because she didn’t kill them. All she ever wanted was to not be treated like an animal and to not be lonely for once and to have friends and maybe a baddie who loved her for her 100%, not just one part of her. 3/3. Mind soul and body. That’s what makes May amazing. What sucks about this whole thing is due to the nature of May, nobody around her wanted to simply be a friend to her, just a friend and nothing more, there was no solitude anywhere. Terrible. But the zoo doesn’t make her hate the people outside the zoo who all misinterpret her, it only makes her hate the doll even more for allowing herself to be misunderstood, in a way it prepares her to let the doll go and die, and the glass just breaks more and more, the glass breaking certainly isn’t an unusual thing, it had been breaking since forever, all glass eventually breaks, but at a certain point the glass breaks entirely and the doll is torn apart and dies just like what happens to May. Because that doll is her. She has to keep herself in the box or else they’ll tear her apart for her tangents and everything they deem imperfect or different about her that they wish to exaggerate, they’ll tear her apart for the lies she told when she was younger, for the rumors that she bit someone or that she’s a murder but she’s really not, those parts of the movie are purely symbolic, but the truth is she was being torn apart for a really long time, I wouldn’t be surprised if she can hardly even remember what a normal day used to feel like before the less than satisfactory normal began, before the zoo began. What if even if it were to be “over”, she can’t go back to a normal, like Frodo carrying the ring of power, what if it just scarred her too much and she will never be happy again? I’m sure she had probably thought of that, and obviously she knew the answer, and she found peace in a different sort of “over”.  May doesn’t make the first move on Adam or really even Polly at all, because they should make the first move on her, and also likely because she is trapped in a zoo, that creates this mindset that in a way perpetually strips her of her individuality, furthering a constant cycle of intentional isolation out of the fear of being a burden on the people she loves around her, because to her sometimes it seems like it’s a job for people to be around her because they say that it is, but it’s just because the laundry machine is broken. “Would I be a laundry machine if I made the first move? Or is that just me caring about myself? What if they’re just messing with me because I’m a laundry machine and it’s all in my head which is the point? I really hope they aren’t messing with me, that would be just as embarrassing as everything else has been.” Making her isolate more and more, until she dies alone and scared of people. I can see May being the kind of person who is so scared they don’t even want to go do most “normal” things, like shopping, going out to eat, honestly anywhere in public at a certain point, idk why maybe that’s from a different movie.  I think back to the scene where May asks Polly if she is serious about her, after being abounded by Adam and various other people and after having nobody left, and Polygamy Polly tells her she is. Would May have warned herself if she could go back in time? Would she have maybe made it so that she had never met Adam? I don’t think she would. I think of how alone she felt when she saw that Polly was being polygamous, how betrayed she must have felt after the one person who seemed like she was there for her had lied to her and betrayed her trust, and above all else made her look like a fool. She was so lonely she was talking to inanimate objects, talking to herself, because nobody wanted to hear her voice, to hear her tangents, because they didn’t believe in her. I hope the ending scene is real, I hope that somehow, after she screamed and begged her only friend left, a friend she had created to “see me”, a friend that wasn’t even alive, and then she stabbed herself in the eye, that somehow reality and the universe bent its truth so that she could be held by hands she thought were perfect before she died. That would be nice. Of course I don’t believe that’s actually what happens, I don’t think she actually hurt anyone, killed anyone, or made a friend out of the body parts of the people she killed, I think in reality she died alone and completely by herself like she was the whole time. I think she was asking for someone to really see her like she was during the whole movie in her final moments, like a prayer, a scream into the lonesome air of which she dwelled, a beg for genuine companionship like she craved, and when nobody saw her, nobody came to save her, she stabbed herself in one of her eyes that she was so ashamed of and died. She wanted someone to hold her while she slept, to shelter her from the war against her, the war that isn’t actually real but it is and it’s in her head, someone to see her and hold her face and love her, she just wanted safety. Harsh reality I know, it probably makes it more heartbreaking knowing she didn’t do those evil things, because they killed her, everyone killed her. “Oh this person is extremely socially awkward and anxious and has a problem with eye contact and lying?? Let’s kill her right now!! 🤩”. Even though they killed her, I know that she forgives them, because she loved them. So much. She was willing to sacrifice her life for them pretty much, and at the same time free herself from her prison, maybe even help make sure this living horror movie that’s all in her head isn’t inflicted on others or at the least make sure it’s done differently, because the system is evil and it must be stopped. Maybe they were serious about her, maybe they did see her, maybe she wasn’t allowed to know, but maybe deep down she knew, all I know for certain is she was serious about them.