In class the other day I made a comment that Hugo reminded me of Antonio from Despicable Me 2. I'd like to expand on this comparison and extend it to discussing not only Hugo's actions in general, but also Jason's interactions with him.
Antonio is an antagonist, but fronts as a protagonist. He gets Margo to fall for him, and puts on this indifferent, bad-boy facade. He knows exactly how to manipulate her, similar to how Hugo knows how to manipulate everyone around him. An example of this is when he gets Jason to smoke a cigarette. He knows exactly what to say to get Jason to do it-- even after Jason has already said no. He says that Jason's stammer is probably due to his attitude of reserved attitude-- saying "not today." This hits the nail right on the dead from Jason's perspective. However, I completely disagree. Hugo is just being a little asshole for no good reason, but because he's so confident, everyone believes everything he says.
Jason's problem isn't saying no. Jason's problem is his utter lack of self-confidence. All the "higher ranked" boys in his social sphere, and especially Hugo, have something in common; they have, or act like they have, confidence in their words and actions. This illusion of confidence gives them power over the other boys who are less confident. This being said, if Jason weren't so blinded by his crush on Hugo, and abandoned his qualms about speaking up, he'd strip Hugo down to the little prick he is for everyone else to see. In the garage, when they're playing darts and Hugo reduces his brother to tears, if Jason had confidently stood up to Hugo and put him down for putting down his brother, then he'd take away Hugo's illusion of coolness and make him look stupid. This also goes for when Hugo stole from the store, and when he got the high score on the arcade game and stole from one of the boys. Hugo isn't actually all that he's cracked up to be, he just makes himself seem that way because he asserts himself over everyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment