the perks of being a wallflower is a story about the infinite layers between
a person's ego and a person's soul and in that the self-discovery and
expression of the soul through the connection we have with each other
much of this coming-of-age story is centered around being an outcast in a
world of sameness telling us of uniqueness individuality and that each
of us have the potential to live our best lives if we can just get out of our
own way while the story is based in 1991 it relates very well with most
demographics in the last 40 years maybe - all the mixtapes as much of the
message is universal to our human consciousness today the story was both
written and directed by Stephen Chbosky for both the novel and the screenplay
and while generally here we'll be focusing on the movie for those
interested the book adds many dimensions to the story that we don't see in the
film with that here's your spoiler alert and here we go
the film opens and closes with the infinity tunnel the play switch to the
main characters seems to be a place of pure experience an experience of the
infinite within we see Sam and later Charlie experience this by standing up
in the back of a truck holding their arms out enjoy a surrender to the
expansive and seemingly never-ending tunnel this is where we find Charlie's
legendary line that became the tagline of the movie we are infinite
what's especially amazing and curious about this is that it subtly explores
the lines between danger and conscious expansion in the surrender of the will
of the soul it opens for this expansive iconic experience that few are familiar
with which deepens their connection to themselves feelings of freedom and each
other now both in the book and a core part of the movie is that the narrative
is told through Charlie writing these letters to us essentially providing a
more intimate look at what's going on inside Charlie's mind and heart
throughout the story we peel back the layers of his nature and go deeper into
resonance with his soul but what's more so we can see the various layers of his
personality both ego and soul that are steering the ship of his life and truly
one remarkable aspect of this story in particular is that every character feels
like real people which makes it easy for the
to connect well with anyone as opposed to some of those other Hollywood high
schools where everyone is 30 or constantly breaking into song but
perhaps one of the challenges of going back to high school through this movie
is that in a lot of ways it's really accurate which brings up all kind of
memories for myself personally there's a lot of this story that just feels like
exactly what happened in high school and I mean take this girl for instance a
nice Trapper Keeper Sagat did you already do the term paper
on
look jagoff who hurt you but yet if the story gives us any indication it's that
each of us with our multitude of layers have this incredible Bank of life
experience and all of us have been hurt in some ways though rarely we show it
openly throughout the film we slowly buried deeper into the many layers of
these characters and explore the abuse that was experienced in childhood and
how they were able to overcome it and grow as people so even as we watch for
those with the heart to explore it even the people who are not so nice like the
girl in Charlie's class the teacher who calls a student nothing or Brad and his
friends are all people who are suffering in their own ways but just haven't yet
faced it within themselves perhaps one of the most significant lessons of this
movie here is that hurt people hurt people
so getting to know Charlie we learned that he is a young budding writer making
these journals and describing his life experiences if we go into our ancient
past we find many legendary sages telling us that it is through our words
that we create and steer our lives and reality and what's more so that writing
our words gives them lasting power which is why things like journaling and even
vision boards can be so powerful both in creating new things in life and
developing wisdom and meaningful self-reflection charlie actively
demonstrates this throughout the story by the words that he uses when he's
journaling early on he writes about how his old friends and people he used to
know don't want to connect with him and he says well I'm me so Who am I kidding
putting himself down and reinforcing the belief in himself that he's not worth
very much yet he also writes that he wants to make new friends because he
wants to turn things around and this very intention puts him on the path to
actually making some now the first friend that Charlie makes
is really his teacher Paul Rudd however Charlie's own shame prevents him
from acknowledging this at the start but throughout the story Mr Rudd essentially
becomes Charlie's guiding mentor providing him with wisdom in the form of
books and supporting him in being an intelligent writer we are also
introduced to Patrick Patrick really represents the outspoken voice of those
who are misrepresented in the world and one who will stand up for those who are
outcasts from society when we first meet Patrick he is drawing a beard on himself
pretending to be the shop class teacher and the teacher comes in and calls him
patty cakes so Patrick says look my name is Patrick
so either call me Patrick or call me nothing and the teacher calls him
nothing in the book this plays out a little bit differently but we can gleam
a lesson here nonetheless because of this exchange basically all of the kids
in school refer to Patrick as nothing throughout the entire story however by
the end we see the transmutation of this energy as he puts nothing hates you on
the top of his hat owning and even changing the energy and demonstrating
some wisdom and compassion all the same nothing hates you there's only love get
it well this probably went over most people's heads which might be a pun
because it was on the top of his hat speaking to friendships the final of the
main trio in the story is Sam now the name Sam itself actually translates from
Hebrew meaning God has heard or listened name of God and she plays a significant
role not just in her own story but helping Charlie to open his heart and
supporting him throughout his own self-discovery there's a lesson here too
for all of us in the question of who are we showing up for in our lives the
beautiful thing about Sam is that she really shows up for nearly everyone
there is a subtle allusion to this in that the first time we see her she has
bright stadium lights behind her depicting angelic radiance yet at the
same time Sam herself represents the loss of
innocence for she used to have a reputation of getting drunk with all the
boys and I'm sure you can imagine where that trade ends we can see this in many
areas throughout the movie such as the red and black
that she often wears which falls in stark contrast to the pink wall and
twinkly lights of her bedroom but deeper still with her story of being taken
advantage of by her dad's boss at the age of 11 which twisted her into
becoming the girl with the reputation yet the quality of her soul allowed her
to grow as a person she is not defined by these aspects of herself anymore
moving beyond her past into a higher reality and progressively does so even
to the end getting into Penn State and sharing that things do get better the
tunnel scene which we explored earlier is a scene of soaring flying trust and
freedom all of the things that help Charlie in embodying the same thing by
the end to having made some friends Charlie is initiated into the group by
attending his first party where he experiences his first plant medicine
experience eating a cannabis brownie and opening up to his new friends in a
quirky way where they essentially adopt him into the group welcome to the island
of misfit toys Sam says after Patrick gives Charlie a toast one of the primary
activities of this group is going to and participating in the Rocky Horror
Picture Show now we spoke before about how the tunnel
represents freedom and this is another special place where freedom of
expression reigns supreme and inhibitions go out the window
honestly these scenes just deserve a massive shout out both to Stephen
Chbosky for weeding this into the narrative in a really meaningful way and
also the actors for having such courage to get on stage in front of all these
cameras and an audience of a thousand people and perform the Rocky Horror
Picture Show mad respect now speaking of freedom and big changes
a little while later Charlie also experiences LSD for the first and
probably the last time cinematically it's a really funny segue
between taking the Eucharist at church and doing a tab which shows a direct
correlation to entering the depths of spirituality and all of the ways we can
do this but nobody ever taught Charlie that the best way to practice with
psychedelics is in nature or with meditation so he doesn't have the best
time at one point he had some shoveling snow in a circle on the driveway for a
while and wait a second this house has six garage doors what
this seems a little excessive but okay during the scene Charlie says I saw this
tree but it was a dragon it was a tree
and I'm certain that this was probably unintentional but when you learn about
in Drasil the Norse edition of The Tree of Life system we find that there is
this dragon called nidhogg in historical Viking society nidhogg was a great and
terrible dragon whose actions intended to pull the cosmos into chaos and who
also chewed the bodies of those who are guilty of terrible crimes this is very
curious to me because it seems to relate to the undercurrent of darkness that
runs throughout the story as both Sam Charlie and even aunt Helen were abused
when they were younger again this connection is probably not
intentional but Charlie seeing the tree become a dragon could be indicative of
uncovering the darkness at the bottom of his own inner psyche see this part of
the story really does begin the inward spiral that leads him into uncovering
the truth of his past and the full transformation is represented by the LSD
trip where at the end he creates a snow angel representing his purification and
rebirth speaking to this undercurrent of trauma and how it shows up for us often
in life is this idea that we accept the love we think we deserve a key point
made throughout as we see so many characters accepting love that deep down
they know is only holding them back from becoming more authentic versions of
themselves whether it's Candis and ponytail Derrick Patrick and his secret
lover Brad and Craig and Mary Elizabeth and Charlie
the film really explores the idea that we often do things that we don't want to
for the wrong reasons Charlie dates Mary Elizabeth and hates
it he has absolutely nothing good to say about it at all and yet he stays in it
why because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings
even though it's not a healthy relationship Charlie can't see past his
own ego or what he's creating by staying in the relationship
what's more so even after the relationship ends Charlie is still
trying to make up with her because he feels bad he feels guilty and in this we
gain a subtle reflection for ourselves and how we weave our own traps of
suffering we can see this expressed during one scene where he has this black
dot on his third eye the symbol of Ash Wednesday from his church and Mary
Elizabeth wipes it off for much of the film she does seem to carry this
representation of the spiritual ego by her tendency to boast about spiritual
concepts but doesn't really behave much like the Buddhists she claims to be the
story asks us to reflect on our own relationships and our own lives in the
same way what are we doing and why are we doing it are our actions in the
highest alignment with our souls however we must also acknowledge that as we go
deeper we see that Charlie's guilt of feeling responsible for his Aunt Helens
death also stems into not being able to tell Mary Elizabeth the truth about how
he feels from this we may discover within ourselves that all of our actions
and feelings are interwoven together far deeper than we know to the surprise of
many people who first watch it or read the book towards the end
Charlie goes through what resembles a dark night of the soul a common thing
during the awakening process where we must face some aspect of our past we
must go through a trauma and the pain in order to emerge on the other side of it
and find healing throughout the film Charlie's pain Wells up within him in a
number of ways such as the fight in the cafeteria
later on when he's taken to the hospital he says something very interesting he
asks the doctor how to make it stop how can he stop seeing everyone's pain that
everyone is in pain all the time yet the one thing he can't see is his
own pain it reminds me of a Bible verse from Matthew 7 first remove the beam out
of your own eye and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your
brother's eye Charlie can't even see his own pain but it's so strongly there that
it manifests itself as if he's seeing everyone else's it's as if his pain
itself has anchored to him this frequency of pain and suffering but
unless he faces the darkness within he won't be able to stop seeing it in
others - as he faces his past and comes to terms with it he begins to let go and
find healing something we all must do on our journey of reconciling our own pasts
here we find another moving lesson as Charlie lets go of his past he also must
let go of his friends as they graduate and move on into new realities yet not
forgetting or losing their friendship just adding some distance and still
maintaining a strong relationship one final aspect of the story we must
explore is this very human moment where Sam and Charlie have a serious talk
Sam reveals something very deep and moving something we can all learn from
she says that she doesn't just want to be someone's crush but that she wants
someone to love her for who she truly is it is a powerful and very heartfelt
moment revealing the deepest part of her character showing the soul from the ego
and for both of these characters expressing what they really want most on
a heart centered level and a natural expression of the soul
as the story comes to a close Charlie discovers that we may accept the love
that we think we deserve but it is our duty to show people that they deserve
more we all deserve to fly through the tunnel
to see the lights and everything that makes you wonder with those who you love
most in the world and realize that deep down in all of our hearts we are
infinite