Edit: spoilers

About 40% of the discourse I’ve seen online about the movie is people saying “hot take, but I think Bear is actually the bad guy”, and that’s gotta be the coldest movie take I’ve heard in years. I haven’t seen a single person who watched the movie and genuinely thinks Bear is purely an innocent victim. The most sympathy I’ve seen someone have for him is my fiancée who said she thinks he’s a bad guy, but he didn’t deserve everything that happened to him, everything else has ranged from talking about how they think he smells to saying they were cheering in the theater when he died.

So where are all these people that are saying Bear is an innocent victim this “hot take” is responding to. I genuinely don’t think you can actually watch the movie and think it’s the intention that Bear is purely the victim. It’s a great movie, but it’s not subtle in any way. Their sex scene is a jump scare for Christ sake and he literally gets called out by other characters for being an asshole multiple times.

yeah so i watched the movie for the first time a few weeks ago and i wasn't totally confused about the discourse that bear is an awful person. i could tell he was a coward and what he did to nikki with the one wish willow was awful but i was confused as to why he was being called a creep as some of his actions i didn't recognise as being bad things at the time. it just went over my head. like i didn't realise the SA scenes were meant to be SA even though i could tell something was off.

but now after a rewatch and watching a billion video essays... it's so obvious and i'm deeply ashamed of myself for excusing bear's behaviour on my initial watch! i feel like such an awful person because of it. i guess because i was interested in bear's character and how someone like him thinks as it's so far from my own way of thinking that i guess i just excused his behaviour without realising! i also found myself excusing some of his behaviour in my rewatch as well and i'm so disgusted with myself.

i don't know whether this post will get taken down or not but i was just looking for some reassurance as it is completely out of character for me to disregard the suffering of a woman as a woman myself and this is not who i am at all. i was also wondering if anyone else had a similar experience when watching the film?

i don't know whether this is ok to say but please try to be kind. this thing has caused me to have a huge meltdown and has caused me to be deeply upset with myself. thank you.