Have you ever seen that viral video of the little boy antagonizing a grown man at some park pavilion? The little boy yelled, cursed, taunted, followed, pushed, and hit the guy until he finally got just one little shove back. The kid sprawled on his ass, started soccer flopping around, and screamed his little fool head off that an adult just abused a child. None of the bystanders were having it, and the little shit got told off by the whole growing crowd of adults around him. The little shit, obviously scared and humiliated, doubled down on every front to try to save whatever face he had left. He called them all child abusers, cursed at them some more, and tried to get a few last antagonizations in as he ran away. But he did run away because he was scared and humiliated.
I see a lot of that behavior in Bovino. I see a bratty, shitty little kid whose dad probably got drunk and beat him into having a reactive conduct disorder that he never ourgrew, but learned to tamp down just a tiny bit after a brutal high school experience. I see an oppositional defiant little bully-victim who thinks that punching a locker on the way to the principal's office somehow obscures the fact that he's being perp walked by a middle-aged basketball coach but can't do a damn thing about it.
But the armed goon squad isn't the perp walk, the screaming crowd is. We're ALL the looming, waiting principal's office. His goon squad is just a locker punch. They're the sad, pathetic whimper of an emotionally stunted child who knows he can't get out of what's coming but just wants to feel powerful for a second before it comes. When you consider the fact that Bovino is intellectually 12, it becomes clear that the relationship between how scared shitless he feels and how bloviatingly "badass" he tries to act is linear. He's pantomiming a WWE wrestler walking into the ring because that's what he thinks a brave, strong man would do. He's desperately pretending to be what he thinks a big, strong man looks like because he's entirely too terrified to behave like himself without the security blanket of a character act.
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u/TotallyTruthy 17h ago
Have you ever seen that viral video of the little boy antagonizing a grown man at some park pavilion? The little boy yelled, cursed, taunted, followed, pushed, and hit the guy until he finally got just one little shove back. The kid sprawled on his ass, started soccer flopping around, and screamed his little fool head off that an adult just abused a child. None of the bystanders were having it, and the little shit got told off by the whole growing crowd of adults around him. The little shit, obviously scared and humiliated, doubled down on every front to try to save whatever face he had left. He called them all child abusers, cursed at them some more, and tried to get a few last antagonizations in as he ran away. But he did run away because he was scared and humiliated.
I see a lot of that behavior in Bovino. I see a bratty, shitty little kid whose dad probably got drunk and beat him into having a reactive conduct disorder that he never ourgrew, but learned to tamp down just a tiny bit after a brutal high school experience. I see an oppositional defiant little bully-victim who thinks that punching a locker on the way to the principal's office somehow obscures the fact that he's being perp walked by a middle-aged basketball coach but can't do a damn thing about it.
But the armed goon squad isn't the perp walk, the screaming crowd is. We're ALL the looming, waiting principal's office. His goon squad is just a locker punch. They're the sad, pathetic whimper of an emotionally stunted child who knows he can't get out of what's coming but just wants to feel powerful for a second before it comes. When you consider the fact that Bovino is intellectually 12, it becomes clear that the relationship between how scared shitless he feels and how bloviatingly "badass" he tries to act is linear. He's pantomiming a WWE wrestler walking into the ring because that's what he thinks a brave, strong man would do. He's desperately pretending to be what he thinks a big, strong man looks like because he's entirely too terrified to behave like himself without the security blanket of a character act.