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charleslee-valentine · 6 months ago

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I wanna talk about this scene.

A head kiss is *so* significant as a choice. Obviously he can’t kiss her lips unless he wants to have his face superglued to hers, but to waste time getting upstairs to have kissed her at all is sorta what I get caught on. There’s got to be *something* going through his head to make that decision over damage control.

We know the abuse of these women, tying them up in a medical chair, is because of what he went through in his childhood. The duct tape bindings in his high chair, the experimental surgical procedures from his father, the neglect; it’s all mirrored in the leather straps, the chair itself and the identical one up at the house. But we also know Bo, despite probably killing at least Victor, has undying devotion to his mother and her legacy. Trudy slaps her child no older than three across his face without hesitation. What affection might look like or have once looked like in the Sinclair house is curious.

The forehead kiss, in the context of the abuse, can read of both possessiveness and distance. Something like staking a claim, less intimate and affectionate than, say, one on the cheek. A heavily controlled sort of relationship. But back to actual affection.

With the Sinclairs, it’s very skewed what that might be like. When Vincent and Bo interact on screen for the first time, Bo is critically injured and angry. He snaps at his brother, but his remorse is immediate and he uses words as a form of affection. Promises as apologies. Almost like begging, a kind of worship on its own.

Which itself ties into his relationship with their mother too.

Trudy is kept down at the church, having her perpetual funeral service. Bo is seen on screen for the very first time kneeling at her coffin in a probable prayer. But that kind of devotion I think is the Sinclair way of affection. As in religion, which has a recurring symbolism in House of Wax, and as such in the characters lives. Prayer drawing parallels to love isn’t surprising.

Something interesting is that in numerous religions, head kisses can be the passing on of a blessing. Bo forces Carly into the same bindings he suffered in for years, but he grants her a blessing before he leaves her there. It doesn’t seem affectionate at first, if anything it’s just kind of condescending, but knowing how Bo works is what makes it much more interesting.

The question is why?

Bo consoles Vincent after he hurts his feelings by talking about their mother’s blessing and legacy. All of Ambrose is a gift from a woman who treated them horribly, and they accept it. The killings are literally for her. In that way, I think Bo is apologizing. He’s inflicting on this woman something that destroyed his life, and he isn't some zombified, all magical slasher; he’s still very much a human being who feels pain and emotions. A lot more emotions than either of his brothers seem to show on screen, actually.

His role as the leader -or the preacher of this church they’ve built, hence why he finds Carly hiding under the robes in the church- isn’t without remorse. It’s do what’s got to be done. Which started with his parents. Victor says in the cold open, “I’m doing the best I can,” while wrestling a toddler. They call little Bo the monster while they’re actively hurting him. These excuses are pre-programmed into his complex.

In regard to further biblical imagery and the Sinclair parents, is the theater. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? plays nonstop, with the specific scene with Carly being hunted in the theater taking place during Jane’s song. The first two lines of that say, “I’ve written a letter to daddy, His address is Heaven above.” There’s this idea of communicating with a dead parent again, just like Bo speaking out loud to Trudy’s corpse, but now it’s outwardly tying it in with religious beliefs. If Bo is the preacher, he’s simply passing along the holy message instilled in him by his parents above. Bo *is* Baby Jane in that way, but not for the most obvious reason. While yes, he is harsh to his brother, as Baby Jane treated her sister Blanche badly, there’s also the fact that he’s a washed up, desperate, abused child who craves love and validation and normalcy again. Using his communication with the divine up in Heaven above to spread a blessing is a way of getting approval. With a detached kiss to Carly, his crimes are the gospel.

A consistent theme here is not only his relationship with being abused, but also with Vincent. Biblically, conjoined twins are considered a mistake of nature. God creates two human souls, but it is the fault of nature that their bodies combine. However, because of the risks, it is also considered mostly immoral in the church to separate them if one or both will have their lives risked. For the Sinclair twins, their father did this surgery himself, at home, which is obviously wildly illegal and dangerous. That makes him a sinner and an obstacle to a perfect Ambrose, on top of being an abusive asshole. So he’s killed, implied to be shot by Bo directly. That bullet was his punishment as much as the highchair was Bo’s punishment. Vincent may not have gotten the highchair, but he does have the marks on his face to show for what Victor chose. The surgery, the sin of going against the new plan, left Vincent scarred and missing not just tissue but parts of the bones in his face. Having to wear the masks and being disallowed from leaving Ambrose is his punishment for Victor’s moral crime. God took from them both unfairly and I think, despite his devotion, Bo doesn’t quite believe in the faith fully because of that.

Again, he’s human. He has his doubts and fears. His reassurance to Vincent in the form of “Ma would be proud” goes for himself too. And his subsequent “She always said that your talent would make up for what God took away from you.” Vincent doesn’t need convincing though, he needs an apology. That’s what Bo’s speech about Trudy is, is an apology, but that doubles for both him and Vincent. And the head kiss too. Because again, he’s operating on what he’s supposed to do. It’s a routine.

At that point, I think Bo doesn’t get satisfaction from fulfilling God’s (ahem, Trudy’s) plan anymore. Carly, and by extension every other girl who was down in that cellar at one point or another, is a sacrifice to it. She’s duct taped in that chair because someone has to be suffering in order for the Sinclairs to thrive. That’s the way it’s been before. Someone has to be hurting to need God’s grace so badly as to keep up what they’re doing, rather than just forgetting Ambrose. But what makes me think Bo specifically has stopped deriving anything positive from that order, is that he also tells Vincent “We almost finished what Mama started.” Based on the number of empty seats in the theater alone, they could theoretically kill a lot more than just the six kids that night. Why stop there? Because of the sacrificial lamb down in his cellar. I think Bo thinks that his actions will trigger be some fateful event that’ll free them all of Ambrose. Some great flood or some such. And when it doesn’t come for an entire decade after Trudy’s death, I think his desperation is growing more and more over those ten years to where his faith is now slipping. Back around to the head kiss, the silent promises he makes to Carly is to reassure himself that she’ll be special and it’ll end with her.

Choosing Carly specifically, could come from a biblical Madonna-Whore complex. Bo saw the whole group the night before, only two of which were girls obviously. Between them, Paige is pregnant. The Bible states directly that she should be burned for that (as she is out of wedlock.) Ambrose is, to him, a Holy place, but bringing Paige in and keeping her alive, no matter for how short a time, would technically be making the entire land impure. So Carly it was. I do think he has an attraction to her, since whoever has the video camera that night takes special care to record her lips, and then he makes a comment about them after supergluing them. It’s just the fact he could’ve kissed her at any point before the glue came out, and chose not to. Just that little head kiss. Because as much as he’s preached, he has to resist temptation himself or it’s all for naught. Does that mean I think he doesn’t assault any of the women? No, absolutely not. There’s a sex swing in that cellar. It’s just a matter of repenting. The first time we ever see Bo’s face, he’s on his knees in the church. Out of all the empty buildings in Ambrose he chose to go pray at church before the group showed up. He knows what he’s gonna do and knows he shouldn’t. Hence the other meaning of the kiss again, the apologetic side combined with the resistance.

Bo is such a deeply, deeply complex character. He went through so much only to turn around and inflict so much. Going back to their father’s choice to do the surgery on his own, the impacts of having a whole person removed from the back of Bo’s head is so unknown.

From the way they were conjoined, their skulls may have very well been attached. Seeing as Vincent has impacts to the development of his brow bone, cheek bone, lower jaw, and nasal bridge, those bones would have to go somewhere, and the realistic answer is that they would’ve been fused to Bo, or at least the parts of those would’ve been there. All in the back of Bo’s head, directly against his skull. To me, it’s incredibly, incredibly unlikely that no impacts would’ve been made on Bo’s brain development. How much of his violent impulses are even his own, and how much comes from a traumatic brain injury, inflicted by their father himself. Certainly blaming that baby for being a monster, when it’s a consequence of his own behavior, seems about fitting with the rest of the manipulation processes that go on in that family. Which Bo had to learn from somewhere. Trudy was likely his biggest abuser, but I think Bo modeled a lot of himself, unconsciously, after their father. Killing him was just taking on that role, and the religious filtering of it all, is Bo’s way of processing that. The father, the son, and mama’s Holy Spirit.

#house of wax 2005 #how 2005 #house of wax #bo sinclair #vincent sinclair #trudy sinclair #carly jones #analysis #this is a lot of rambling but like. there’s so much in this movie and it gets written off as like ‘crazy hillbilly creeps’ way too often #like yes but also no. guys the curtains aren’t just blue there’s details and nuance please please please #on a very related note #i do view Bo as having religious ocd as well

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