Charlie X: More Than We Bargained For
I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that this episode made Sarah and I both very uncomfortable. It’s likely a sign of the evolution of our society that in 1966 a really creepy dude doing really creepy dude things was brushed off as an angry adolescent rather than what we would label it now: incel toxicity. This mindset surely existed in the 60’s, but it wasn’t until the internet managed to connect so many with these malignant and visceral feelings that it became it’s own sub community in our culture, with a name, web pages, and studies devoted to it. The internet provided connection and lent a sort of power to a voice that had no other void to scream it’s frustrations in to. Those resentments were mirrored back from others who shared them and amplified with the validation that they were not alone. They weren’t doing anything wrong, everyone else was to blame. It shifted the focus from internal “What is wrong with me?” to an external “What is wrong with them?”.
To read a little more about incel culture, Vox has a great article you can find here. It’s pretty horrifying when you look into it. The rage, the entitlement, the view that women are subhuman. It’s a lot to digest that a sort of lonely hearts club has become so toxic that there are calls to hunt, rape, and kill women simply for existing.
Throughout portions of the episode, Charlie gave off some real hardcore incel vibes. No, Charlie wasn’t in his room trolling women on the internet that he hated because he couldn’t sleep with them. He wasn’t intentionally following a woman at night, knowing he was scaring her, and getting a thrill off of the power that made him feel. But when he began pursuing a woman who very politely expressed she wasn’t interested in him in “that way” he didn’t accept the gentle let down, respecting it, and moving along. He pursued her harder, convinced he could make her love him. When that didn’t happen, he internalized the rejection and let it fester. I LOVE JANICE SO SHE HAS TO LOVE ME BACK. And when she refused, bluntly this time as he wasn’t respecting her boundaries, he hurt her. He literally “disappeared her” for not loving him back. His baser impulses took over and he funneled his pain into hurting others. He was clearly out of control, but only seemed to target women. At one point there’s a pretty blonde girl that he is walking behind and he turns her into an old, wrinkled hag. He turns a girl into an iguana, then removes the face of another. (There were some men off screen that he froze as we can see by their shadows, but they were with the woman whose face he stole, so I’d argue they weren’t the target of his aggression.)
But that wasn’t the most disturbing part of this episode. Charlie was obviously confused and alone; a kid who had never belonged anywhere at all. He’d never been taught how to be a person, had no connections with other people, let alone have empathy for those around him. There’s actually a very small window for people to develop empathy, and it begins at three and lasts until about age six. Remember that he was three when he ended up alone on that planet when much more powerful beings gave him the power to survive, but also left him isolated? Without the early childhood intervention of healthy adult interaction he grew up with a power that didn’t belong to him and no guides to control or even understand the very human feelings he began to have.
So when Charlie, brand new to human interaction (and doing very poorly with it through no real fault of his own), is tracked down by the very species that “created” him what happens? The frightened, fragile, boy begins to beg. He’s begging to stay with his kind. Begging to get another chance. Raw humanity pours out of him (which may have resulted in some overacting, let’s just be honest) and Kirk, moved with compassion, tells the floating green head that Charlie can stay, that they can help him. But it’s too late for Charlie. The other species gave him a power he never asked for and instead of any of the many things they could have done, they took him back to the loneliness he was trying to claw his way out of, albeit ineptly. He just wanted to be loved. He wanted to get better, and that’s like, the first and most important step to a healthy recovery. The desire to be better is the spark the creates motion forward; it’s the only place you can start in therapy. The desire to be better is the driving force of therapy. But Charlie didn’t get that chance; was punished severely for not inherently knowing how to be a good human. This “superior species” didn’t strip him of his powers and allow him the chance to reintegrate with the human culture he wanted so desperately to be a part of. Instead they stripped him of any hope he could be better or have a better life. They threw Charlie away to die in isolation after they created him.
If there’s one takeaway from this episode, my first thought was that incels have always been around and also fuck them. But the reality is that it goes much deeper than that. I think we saw a show attempt, and fail spectacularly, at a really important lesson of connection, compassion, and recovery. Later series would have handled that situation with far more grace and sympathy. The outcome wouldn’t have been a scarred boy begging to stay with some shitty techno departure at his exit. Later series would have made sure he wasn’t thrown away. And while there’s no way to say if Charlie would have reformed his toxic behaviors or not, he at least deserved the chance to try. He was ready. It’s a shame that society at that point wasn’t.
-Carrie
