The Beast in Me, an eight-part psychological thriller (Netflix) starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys as characters who become embroiled in a cat-and-mouse struggle, is definitely worth seeing.
Danes plays a world-celebrated writer, Aggie, whose world is still shattered four years after a car accident, presumably caused by a teenage drunk driver, took the life of her young son.
Now divorced from her wife (Natalie Morales), Aggie has ongoing rage and anxiety issues—as well as career-threatening writer’s block and related financial issues.
Nile Jarvis (Rhys) is a new neighbor, a wealthy real estate developer with a deeply mysterious past. (If it’s spoilers you want, by the way, check out Megan McCluskey‘s article in Time.)
The trailer for The Beast in Me:
One of the main themes of The Beast in Me? “(E)veryone, under the duress of grief and its calcification into a limitless wrath, is capable of heinous acts” (Nandini Balial, rogerebertcom).
Although the “bloodlust” of which Jarvis speaks (above) may or may not be as universal as he’d like to believe, experts on evil do seem to agree that, given certain conditions and circumstances, having “the beast in me” could potentially apply to any of us.
How does this happen? Ralph Lewis, MD, Psychology Today, quotes the research of Roy Baumeister, who identified “four major root causes of evil or reasons that people act in ways that others will perceive as evil”: desire for material gain, threatened egotism (insecurity), idealism, and sadism.
And in another Psychology Today post, Grant Hilary Brenner, MD, DFAPA, names an alternative set of “four interrelated contributing factors: objectifying others, denying relatedness, numbing of one’s own inner experience and emotions, and impaired ability to self-reflect.”
Underlying many of the various discourses involving the nature of evil, furthermore, is the famed work of social psychologist Stanley Milgram. In brief, “The Milgram studies tested how far people would go to obey authority, even when it meant hurting others. The researchers deceived participants into thinking they were shocking learners for giving wrong answers. Most participants continued to shock, despite the learners’ screams and pleas” (Khan Academy). (For a film depiction, see Experimenter.)
Acts are different from one’s essence, though. Uriel Abulof, PhD, Psychology Today: “Importantly, evil acts need not indicate an evil person; one becomes evil by constantly and consciously committing such acts, refusing to change course and make amends.”
Indeed, psychologist Samantha Stein, author of the new Evil at Our Table: Inside the Minds of the Monsters Who Live Among Us, expresses a related and familiar notion (Psychology Today): “Most of the time, when people commit evil acts, the people in their lives are surprised. ‘He seemed like such a normal person,’ they might say, when interviewed by investigators or journalists…”
Believing that “anyone who commits an evil act is simply an evil person” is “deny[ing] people their humanity. This is not only harmful to those who can be rehabilitated and become positive members of society, ultimately it’s harmful to us. It’s harmful because if we are actually going to prevent evil acts in the future, we have to see and understand what makes actual humans commit these acts. And to be able to recognize (and change) the combination of things that can create risk for someone to commit them. Ultimately, to create a world in which we are safe and treat each other well requires the humbleness of knowing we are on the same continuum of humanity as most everyone else.”
