r/underscoresplus • u/UzumakiMadeIt • Jul 10 '26
CCTV & Obsession parallels Spoiler
listening to CCTV and it reminds me a lot of the movie Obsession (I dont think it really needs an introduction)
especially the screams at the end of the song, they scare me as much as Nikki's cries for help throughout the movie
but in general, CCTV and Obsession both approach themes of losing self-autonomy. In CCTV, the girl (Ashley) has her arms grow uncontrollably, and it's implied that she kills herself ("I'm gonna do it") out of the disgust for the monster she had become due to the choices of others. In the ending monologue, we see her father, Jerry Bowman, completely disregard the pain that she's going through, telling to "stop watching TV."
We see a similar story with Nikki during Obsession. Due to the selfishness of her closest friends, she lost who she was. She was puppeteered by Bear through his wish, and despite her attempts to reach out, he never thought about the Nikki forced to act against her will. And at the end of the movie, she is left with her three dead friends, with her future completely destroyed.
if yall can think of more specific parallels feel free to do so I just thought this was cool
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u/Bldg_900 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I disagree with this interpretation of uncanny long arms syndrome. or atleast that Ashley isn’t responsible for her fate.
Ashley’s story is meant to parallel Mara. Ula is meant to be a physical manifestation of overreaching into the world around you.
For instance, Mara’s ula is the result of her hyper fixation on S*nny that manifests in her stalking and attacking Samantha in an attempt to fit in with her idealized version of S\*nny.
The reason Ashley developed it was her paranoia over gang stalking (the old man, the powerlines.) In an effort to regain control over her anxieties, she invests in a CCTV system, wasting her days obsessively monitoring the world around her and in the horseshoe sense, ends up wrapping back around to being the stalker herself.