Baby Reindeer and the myth of the 'perfect victim'
In which the terminally online are calling Donny/Richard a 'narcissist'
Note: Spoilers for the Netflix shows ‘Baby Reindeer’ and ‘Russian Doll’ on Netflix and discussion of stalking and sexual violence. Resources for mental health support here, and for stalking via RAINN.
I speed-ran ‘Baby Reindeer’ this week and the end of last week. What a watch. It’s equal turns harrowing and moving, and very realistic and I thought it was excellent though a difficult watch. It does have moments of dark humour and the absurd, but for me, I barely noticed them, though in retrospect they were very much necessary. Jessica Gunning (Martha) and Nava Mau (Teri) lend stand-out performances, particularly Gunning who is amazing, and Richard Gadd (Donny) has done an excellent job as the writer/main character/director.
For anyone who hasn’t already watched it, ‘Baby Reindeer’ (heavily based on a true story) is about a very young man (Donny) in his early 20s who gets stalked by a female patron attending the bar he works at. The stalking is the scaffolding and the main plot but it is far from all that happens, and the story also deals with sexual assault, trauma, gender, sexuality, attachment, family and the systems that enable perpetration. Episode 4 in particular has the most graphic depiction of sexual assault and its sequelae (another perpetrator). For anyone who has trauma relating to these themes, fair warning for watching the series.
One of its main themes is about the myth of the ‘perfect victim’. For all that #MeToo happened, and that male victim-survivors were also given a voice, this dangerous myth has a very long way to go. The dress, age, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, substance use habits, personality, previous behaviour and particularly relationship with the perpetrator are scrutinised, largely by people who have nothing much to offer in terms of insight, and a bizarrely misdirected judgement.
I will acknowledge though, that some of the fascination out there - one I’ve shared - is difficulty really coming to grips with how this stuff happens and why. Why people do horrible things, why some people seem to get hurt more than others, why relationships (romantic, sexual or otherwise) continue between victim and perpetrator.
In Episode 4, Donny becomes withdrawn, folded into himself following his assaults. He feels traumatised when he is touched, but finds himself masturbating compulsively. He drinks, takes drugs, seeks out high risk sexual encounters. In a daze, trying (and failing) to process and understand what has happened to him. What he finds so abhorrent and disgusting about himself, how he let this happen. His intrinsic sense of wrongness. And what about him kept him going back to the working relationship where he was groomed and repeatedly assaulted.
It reminds of this grimy feeling I sometimes feel on my skin. I can only get rid of it when I shower and then it comes back by the next day. It’s particularly bad when I have a nightmare about the past and wake up sweaty, or when I spend too long with someone who gives me the ‘ick’. I remember walking through Melbourne late at night, going drinking on my own, picking up men who seemed awful. I just wanted to understand. How I got hurt, how she got hurt by him, how she also got hurt by that guy… And I was just left with the question ‘why’ and ‘how’.
Throughout ‘Baby Reindeer’, Donny goes back over and over again to his perpetrators. It’s certainly not just Martha. For example, it’s also the misogynistic guys he works with who are ‘just having a laff’. You find yourself at times having these feelings of shame as he doesn’t help himself, but intentionally seeks them out. Martha’s stopped but he feels empty, or misses her. Or just is actually worried what she could be up to now that he isn’t getting endless emails.
He explains this. At first it’s pity, but then it’s empathy, just drawn into how miserable the rest of her life is. Every time he decides to draw a boundary, she cries, or looks completely destroyed. But then there’s that other side. She sees him how he wants to be seen. Idolised, handsome, talented. To be seen at all really. That part is the same with Darrien, he tells him he’s talented, a genius, going places, over and over again. He wants to set a boundary but then he gets pulled back in.
The thing is, I kept up my friendship with the creepy, misogynistic guy that gave me an insight into how psychopaths thought, because at that moment in my life there really was almost no-one who would believe me. I had limited supports, and felt totally isolated trying to cope with the impacts of what I was going through at the time. At times I felt a sick kind of pity for him. Sometimes he gave me money or bought me things or comforted me. Even as he isolated me and became ever more controlling.
Donny’s relationships with Keely and Teri fall apart because of his trauma, because of his shame, because of his retreat inwards, and because of the lies he starts telling, that spiral from the lies he’s told himself about what he’s experiencing. Teri in particular is caring, smart, funny and wise. Donny is ashamed that he’s with a trans woman, that people might find out, that Martha may find out and unmask him. He is not completely isolated but his attachment wounds and experiences isolate him. In the end them leaving is both understandable and inevitable.
A girl I had dated started getting unexplained messages from a many different anonymous numbers. She later described them as foul and unmentionable. She didn’t want to go to the police. She simply wanted nothing to do with me. And I couldn’t help but agree, and decided on some level that connecting with others really just wasn’t for me anymore. It wasn’t worth it.
“Why did it take so long for you to report it” says the police officer to Donny. He doesn’t really have a good answer. He tries to explain, but it’s all jumbled up. He shows them messages but “that doesn’t look particularly threatening to me,” says the police officer.
I went to the police multiple times. A number of crimes over several years and jurisdictions. I had further evidence as well that could lead them to whoever it was. Uniformed police were unfailingly rude and dismissive in person. Detectives, friendlier, but it didn’t seem like they could help me. One of the reports was actually never filed.
Of course these kind of experiences are exceptionally common. Perhaps even the norm. Trauma happens when something overwhelms our resources and we are immobilised. It pins us and our deeper Self retreats and the experience splinters from us, crystallising, one part in the shards of the city of clear glass intellect, one part in the womblike, warm, dark, sweaty world of raw emotion. And those shards are no longer connected. And so we find ourselves in loops in our waking and dreaming lives, attempting to resolve the experience (in this one I fight back, in this one I set a boundary, in this one I recognise them as poisonous).
In ‘Groundhog Day’, Bill Murray’s lesson is evidently to ‘just lighten up and get the girl’ (?) or die trying in his time loop. In ‘Russian Doll’, Nadia’s lesson (which begins in a party with at least 2 guys that look like Bill Murray) is much more profound and subtle, and ultimately it is herself, her experiences and connecting with others she must face.
And so, for Donny it is not easy or straightforward. It’s easy to finger point while he is in this loop, over and over, because you get this uneasy feeling of cringe and shame whenever he does something self-destructive.
But let’s stay with that feeling of disquiet and uncomfortable negative emotions for a second. Where is this feeling of shame coming from? What do we recognise in this, in ourselves or what we have exiled? Is the shame coming from seeing others make mistakes? Our own mistakes? Watching our loved ones do things that frustrate us? The times we’ve turned away from something that seems terrible, because it seems ‘too much’?
It could be something else. I’m going to stop talking now and I’m going to let you sit with the feeling for a couple of minutes, and try to write down what comes up for you, and how it makes you feel…
“When you spend so long swallowing your shame, it is so hard to stop it becoming part of you.” - Episode 2
…It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it, shame. Almost unbearable. A feeling almost like drowning, the world slipping away, becoming ever more distant…
“That’s what abuse does to you, you know? It made me this sticking plaster for all of life’s weirdos. This open wound for them to sniff at.” - Episode 6
…And you want to grab for anything that looks like it could stop you from drowning, anything. You try, but some things you can’t see in the dark, or you half grab on but then they slip away. Others seem like a bright beacon in a dark ocean, and it’s only when you launch away from the other things and latch onto them that you realise they really weren’t what you were hoping for at all.
Which brings me to another point, though: that of the ‘perfect perpetrator’.
Martha isn’t evil. She’s extremely narcissistic - grandiose, belligerent, controlling, abusive, delusional - but there are other parts of her as well. Parts that are abandoned, afraid, rejected, empty, alone, vengeful. Parts that want to care for and care about Donny (in a fucked up and maladaptive way). Parts that can see his trauma, and seek to exploit him. Parts that can (just) see what she’s doing is incredibly destructive, spiteful, mean, and unhinged.
Narcissistic personality disorder is along the borderline personality spectrum. When severe, pathological narcissism is manifested as structural dissociation due to childhood abuse/trauma/neglect, often in the setting of highly punitive parents who give conditional praise for achievement. The parts of themselves don’t communicate well, may split into victim/perpetrator/hero (Karpman’s drama triangle), and many are stuck at a very young age where emotions seem to last a lifetime and nothing else is possible. They don’t have a good sense of self at all. There is a deep core shame and emptiness.
More on narcissistic personality disorder here
Narcissism is constructed on top of that, it’s an attempt to create structure where none exists, in order to protect the child. It’s adaptive in that situation but stops serving its purpose once we move on from that life stage into the wider world. This is why pathological narcissism can be so confusing, because there’s multiple seemingly unconnected, unreliable parts of the person. It’s a trauma response. We see this in the glimpses of what makes Martha tick and why she is the way she is.
That said, everyone exists somewhere on the narcissistic spectrum (and every other spectrum). Manifesting the occasional moment of grandiosity, self-promotion or needing validation are all normal. What’s not healthy is when this part of you is overbearing and takes over at all times, loudly shutting everyone down around you while you impose your needs and invade boundaries.
In addition, stalking and sexual assault have complex roots, and a variety of motivations, typologies/personality structures and dynamics. Not everyone with NPD is overtly abusive and not everyone who perpetrates stalking or sexual assault has NPD.
The truth is that there is no universally unrelentingly horrible person out there. Every perpetrator of abuse has a likeable side, just as every victim-survivor has an unlikeable side.
None of this excuses abuse. It doesn’t matter how unpleasant the victim-survivor is nor how seemingly likeable the perpetrator is. None of this excuses abuse.
I guess that’s why I’m disappointed by the people angrily typing away that the ‘real’ narcissist is Donny/Richard, for telling the story, for enjoying the attention from the people that abused him, for wanting to be seen, and for being gratified when he begins to see success.
It’s really not about being a ‘perfect victim’ or ‘perfect perpetrator’. Such comments fundamentally misunderstand the nature of abuse and that most abusive relationships are confusing and complicated.
Being victimised is very common, and perpetration is also common. We know many people with these experiences and we have to get past the idea that they’re unusual. It’s that most people don’t talk about their experiences, many for the fear of being judged.
I think we’ve been conditioned by black and white narratives on TV and in our day to day conversations. This show is one or a number of attempts to try and right this wrong and show the complexity and truth of what happens.
We owe it to ourselves and the people in our lives to sit with that discomfort and shame, and let that complexity in.
The myth of the perfect victim sort of reminds me of a Hank Green video I watched recently about Tuberculosis (I think?). He briefly discussed the idea that there's a part of human nature that looks for explanations, and we'll take any that make us feel better. So when people get sick and die we might say "that happened to you because you were bad, you did something wrong. And it won't happen to me, because I'm good, and I won't do anything wrong." Because the truth, that what happened was horribly unjust and that there's nothing stopping it from happening to me, that's pretty hard to live with.