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star-reyes · 18 days ago

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Love Cuts The Strings: Why would Lola love somebody so cruel?

I think everybody here agrees that the most human, tragic, beautiful, and persistent element of Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees is Lola and Sam's friendship. Before we begin any discussion, I want to make it abundantly clear that I'll be referring to them as friends (and will continue to) as well as looking at the different angles we can read their relationship. Do I believe they were good to one another? No, definitely not. Do I think that they did love each other? God, yes. Yes they did. The love you feel for your mother who overcorrects you and the love for a child who selfishly takes for herself.

Lola Albright

We're first introduced to her in the first issue through conversation. She's immediately painted in this sympathetic light, a sickly mother in need of everybody's support. We immediately get this impression of pity and purity. This is standard procedure when you want to set up a victim, and this scene alone achieves establishing two.

The way almost everyone in town talks about her is in this pitiful light. That Nigel is a good child by taking care of her. That Sam knew her for 40 years. She's just liked, but not as a person but a prop for someone else's morality.

Nigel clearly loves his mom. He is emotionally attached and dependent on her despite his own depravity, he couldn't stand the thought of his mother hurting. He'll take just about anyone but her. He wants to make her happy and make his imagined family a reality, and as much as that would make Lola happy, we can infer that she knows it'll never truly be possible.

Sam is a lot more complicated though. We cannot just assume that Sam was forever this evil since childhood. You just don't know a person and know their entire being without having the conscious choice to continue loving them or at least staying with them. When you love someone or become friends with someone for any amount of time, your mind latches on to the parts of them you like, you're endeared to their mannerisms and their patterns or their behavior. Sam isn't praised for being friends with Lola since everybody knows that they have always been and if Lola is such an object of morality, Sam would've just stayed friends to keep that image.

The dinner scene's logs are also telling that she at least cared and loved Lola. I just find the way this is phrased as sort of a self depricating jab. A moment of clarity and self awareness that Lola is sick- not just physically but god, she is sick for letting me in her life.

That even after all this time and all that I'm doing she chooses to stay. What is wrong with her? It's a sort of guilty conscience that's out of character in Sam's other logs. Where most are analytical and deductive, this feels like a reflection. The closest thing in my life you could call a friend. What then? A pawn? No. A crutch? No. A mother? No. A lover? No.

Something so much more complex and somebody who should stay away from me. Yet she understands and loves me for everything I am, and everyone I was, and who I let myself be.

My only friend.

Lola loves horrible people. The two people closest to her heart have committed dehumanizing murders and she's always known. Lola knows that people pity her and don't truly care about her. She makes it known to her family that she's capable of standing on her feet but both of them ignore that plea because they're each other's safety net and there's no other way to go than down.

I also want to point out how genius Lola's character design is. She is meant to be around the same age as Sam (45 or just a bit older than that), but to have her have grey fur makes her look a lot more vulnerable and weak despite her true nature.

I also think that her oversized round glasses add a sense of naïvitae to contrast the artificial age gap her fur implies. Sam and Nigel flock to her to be mothered yet she herself isn't that mature to make the right decisions not just for them but even for herself.

Love is a three way conversation

I've always found it so interesting that every conversation between Sam and Lola always circles back to Nigel. Lola was never a key player in the fates of the town or even the two of them, but their heart and their soul. The dinner scene is meant to celebrate Lola and Sam's friendship then it derails to Nigel inserting himself into the conversation. Then there's the tea scene where Nigel, again, is the target of their conversation this time to subtly nudge Lola into realizing all of this is her son's doing. Finally, their last conversation before the Curare Scene. In Lola's perspective, she's of course the doting, naïve, and pure-hearted mother willing to keep her son's secrets at everyone else's expense. Even if Sam were to outright call Nigel out during the Tea scene, Lola would be ready to defend him with everything she has. In the Goggles scene, she downplays his behavior, threading it back to her love for Sam as if it were just a less severe habit like smoking, drinking, or gambling. Wild. But not too different because I love you two.

And that's her fatal flaw. By allowing herself to become helpless in the conversation, she lets Sam and Nigel get away with everything they do instead of pivoting or correcting either of them (or at least Nigel). Yet she still feels that obligation to be their caregiver and mediator. To mother them but without the slaps and screams. There's no point in disciplining them if that depravity is already in their systems.

Lola could have told Nigel to Stop. She could have course corrected him with his stalking and his objectification of her best friend. It may not have worked but again, Nigel has such a soft spot for his mom that it would be worth at least a shot.

In Nigel's perspective, he views Sam and Lola as his safety net. The people he can come back to because he finds an emotional support in one, and a positive influence on the other. We do not hear anything else about Nigel's father, but Sam seemed to be very present in his childhood to be an inspiration to him or an object of his desire. He wants to emulate what she does and this might be due to him not having a very present or positive masculine figure in his life growing up. His infatuation is somewhere between admiration, love, lust, or envy. Like we can joke about him chasing after Sam who is clearly older but Freud's written all over his skin. There's just something about how Nigel dresses up in Issue 4 that establishes how much he wants to be with and be like Sam. The hairstyle, the clothes, the gestures.

He's just waiting for Sam to reciprocate emotionally the way Lola enables him.

The thing is though, it's right to think its WEIRD that the guy who's hitting on you is the kid you took care of years and years ago. This panel could be read as both Sam infantalizing Nigel because he's below her in the food chain or that he IS a kid she saw and was partially responsible for.

So when that illusion that he can't cage those ideas down or have the life he thinks will make the three of them happy and complete shatters, he freaks out and turns on the other person who did (somewhat) care for him turning their relationship as a family into a knife fight. One innocent life on the line.

Do I think Lola wanted Sam and Nigel to get together? Oh god no. I believe she would have wanted Nigel to stop and pursue somebody else. However, like always, she clings on to the hope of a peaceful resolution. One where they can both just talk it out and get along like how it used to be. That's why she was practically begging Nigel to get out of Woodbrook. That's why she was begging to know what Sam's plan was when she came to visit. They all have to be happy. It all has to end happy.

Capacity For Emotional Connections

Let's talk about the "Lola Interview". This interview hosted by was published a month after the release of Issue 6. This particular question sticks out to me as it is an important factor to consider when writing and analyzing their relationship.

Here's the full interview. I'll be circling back to this one a lot more as I continue making essays like these.

Now for a sentimental question… Did Lola truly mean nothing to Sam or is she just lying to both herself and to us the audience? Is Sam truly a reliable narrator, because most serial killers tend not to be? Horvath: It’s fair to say that she’s definitely not a reliable narrator. She may think she’s relating what she considers to be an objective view point, but it’s very much problematic. And yeah, when it comes to Lola and all the rest, I don’t think Sam has any capacity for emotional connection. She’s just not wired for it. She understands it intellectually, but she’ll never know what that means. I think for Sam, her relationship to Lola (and some select few other folks in Woodbrook) was completely for its social appearance and benefit. The key to Sam being able to hide in plain sight is for everyone to think they know her (which was something that I obviously dove into in a broader sense with other characters throughout the issues). It felt like she’d do just about anything to paint the picture that she was one of the upstanding pillars of the community that they all assume her to be.

This sentiment that Sam never really cared for Lola or even anyone else is a lot more evident when you breeze through a second reading. There's an understanding of her coldness and lack of interest for anyone else's lives beyond surface level. She gets uncomfortable with the concept of a deep down because to her, there are no deep downs. What she presents herself as is who she is and it just so happens that being a murderer is part of that package. However, it's just a bit odd to imagine someone knowing someone for 40 years and not even getting the feeling that you care for them or love them.

Sure, Sam may have started pretending after her first kill at 21, but what about those 16 years before? What about the 24 years building up to the Woodbrook Murders? Can we just assume that she's always been this cold to someone?

To analyze a bit more, there are bits and pieces from the series we can glean from that suggest Sam was abused or had heavy expectations put on her at a young age that drove her to become emotionally distant. Issue 2 suggests that the Strong family experienced some form of prejudice so taking over the shop is an easy way out to be at least useful to the town.

Like Horvath mentions, Sam would do anything to be that pillar of good because she was never given the option to be anyone else.

And any attempt to be honest about lacking any options is talked over so it was better to be a blank slate people could relate to well enough to like, but nobody should ever see the full picture for her own safety.

Lest someone actually sees her for who she is and loves her for who she is.

I do think Sam cared about Lola and did in fact reciprocate that endearment. But it's because of all these conditions that surrounded her and her family that she's forced to not get too close because nobody wants to get close to her. Except for those two.

Love

Let's look at another way we can read Sam and Lola's relationship: familial. This could also be interpreted in two perspectives- a queer reading as well as a mother-daughter reading.

In terms of a queer perspective, it does become messy morally due to Nigel being romantically interested in Sam but as stated earlier, Sam seemed to be a present paternal role for him as his father isn't at all mentioned or referred to past Issue 1.

The way the three are presented would maybe give the impression of a(n albeit stereotypical) lesbian couple. This mainly derives from Sam's queercoding throughout the series but it's a lot stronger when she's contrasted with Lola. This also circles back to the character design.

Although a relationship interpretation I enjoy better is that they're like a mother and child. Lola consistently looks after Sam and considering that she knew about her murders possibly even before knowing about Nigel, she decided to just continue keeping her close. Somewhere in those 40 years, there was the beginning of that moral disconnect that taints the friendship they have into something that enables and allows the depravity to simply continue.

However, let's just assume that Lola found out about Sam's activities around the time of Nigel's. No matter what scenario, she would never tell on either of her children. Lola has no reason to tell on either of them. She's already DYING, do you think she's going to feel better saying that her son and daughter are murderers?

I DON'T PRETEND TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS

The question becomes: How do we reframe this?

Kinkaku-ji, now renamed as Rokuon-ji, is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto well known for its gorgeous golden facade. It was once a mansion that was converted into a temple at the wish of the estate's owner. This temple remained intact throughout World War II and was then considered one of the most beautiful places in the world. In 1950, the pavilion was burned down by a novice acolyte. The statue of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was lost to the flames. Many stories have come from this incident: from Yukio Mashima's The Temple of the Golden Pavillion to abridged, loose hearsay legends which you might have heard of:

There was once this golden temple long ago that people pilgrimage to. It had captured the heart of a young priest who grew paranoid of the temple losing its luster. To preserve its beauty eternally, he burnt the temple so that nobody else would have to see it deteriorate. It remained as beautiful as it was once in his mind forever.

Yes, let's admit that the reason Sam killed Lola was to spite Nigel. She has every reason to be angry at him, and this is the best way to hurt him before he dies. Now that she knows Lola knew, of course she's gonna take that opportunity to twist the knife.

Yet, I can't help but imagine a world where Lola lived. She is going to resent Sam for killing Nigel. The purity of her love is going to be tainted and to lose that last semblance of her life before becoming a serial killer, the anchor of some emotional comfort and reassurance is such a painful thought to live with. To be able to preserve Lola as she is now as this loving mother who's begging for resolution and as her only friend is the only way she can go about it peacefully.

Preserving her in that rose colored memory is how she shows her love back.

This unsettling stillness in her eyes and in her speech kind of gives away that she knows it will be painful for the both of them. She wouldn't wanna do it, either way because you don't murder the locals.

You especially don't murder your mother.

Lola knew all along this is how it was gonna end. When she asks Sam why she's wearing goggles, she's not curious, she's denying it. For sure she's seen Nigel's photo collection. For sure she's heard every single detail about it from her son.

But she's dying.

She's not gonna feel better anyway.

I know Horvath said that Sam isn't lying in the Curare scene. But I think this goes for the both of them.

We all loved well.

Closing Thoughts and Other Notes

Lola deserved better. She's the bravest person in this series to love horrible people and to continue trying to be a woman with agency even when she knows its her silence that continues everything happening. It's not her fault to love a child born into prejudice. But it's her fault for not pulling harder on Nigel. The helplessness extends itself from one child to another. In another life maybe the three would still stay friends. Maybe Sam would care better than just love what she could take.

On the title of this essay is The Mountain Goats' Love Cuts The Strings which I find quite apt for her character. I think often of the description John Darnielle attaches to Love such as the following:

"...I thought also on a holiday like this [Mother's Day] we think about where we come from and where we ended up and about our families and our chosen families and about the wide-ranging nature of love." "The point of the song is, you know, that we are fairly well damaged by the legacy of the Romantic poets--that we think of love as this, you know, thing that is accompanied by strings and it's a force for good, and if something bad happens then that's not love. And the therapeutic tradition that I come from--I used to work in therapy--you know, also says that it's not love if it feels bad. I don't know so much about that. I don't know that the Greeks weren't right. I think they were--that love can eat a path through everything--that it will destroy a lot of things on the way to its own objective, which is just its expression of itself, you know. I mean, my stepfather loved his family, right? Now he mistreated us terribly quite often, but he loved us. And, you know, well, that to me is something worth commenting on in the hopes of undoing a lot of what I perceive as terrible damage in the way people talk about this--love is this benign, comfortable force. It's not that. It's wild, you know?"

Maybe, maybe Love to Sam is like Nature. When we think of nature we idealize it so when a typhoon destroys our homes or when rabies finds its way to the brain, we curse and condemn it when Love is a neutral feeling and force that makes you act upon your wants and your desires whether that is for yourself or for anyone else (Mostly for Herself).

We can love our friends and be bad to them. Love doesn't cancel out the horrible things we do yet neither do our horrible actions cancel out the belief that we did love them.

Cherished, pitied, hurt, preserved, and loved.

On a lighter note, maybe this is coincidence but perhaps Lola and Sam were based off of Ernest and Celestine, a Belgian children's book series about the friendship of a bear and a mouse. There aren't much fables about mice and bears as far as I could remember or research, but their character design and personalities eerily match Sam and Lola's so I do wonder if they were based off of them!

Also! "Lola" in the Philippines is another name for grandmother which could be associated with her motherly nature plus her character design suggesting she's much older.

Thank you all for reading! Feel free to add some additional insight or observation. Critique and additional commentary is ALWAYS greatly appreciated - Julianne

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