Attitudinal beliefs
The Fear–Love line, through the whole film
Jim Cunningham’s "Attitudinal Beliefs" teach that every human act sits somewhere on a line between Fear and Love. Kitty Farmer hands the line out on cards. Donnie refuses it: "You can’t just lump things into two categories. Things aren’t that simple." This page takes the film’s own instrument and lays the film along it - and keeps Donnie’s answer as a third place, off the line.
Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.
There are other things that need to be taken into account here, like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else.
The line
Numbers follow the film’s order. Hover or tab through them; the ones on the shelf above the line are the moments that refuse it.
Placements follow what the characters say and do; they are one reading, and the point of the exercise - as Donnie tells the class - is that it does not hold. Disagree? Place them yourself in the quiz. Take the cards yourself →
In the film's order
1 Jim Cunningham
The line itself: "Attitudinal Beliefs"
Kitty Farmer plays Cunningham’s video to the class: fear is the source of every wrong choice, love of every right one, and a person can be trained to choose Love. The lifeline card follows.
Placement Placed where it claims to stand: at the Love pole, the product being sold. The film will move it.
2 The class exercise
Ling Ling finds a wallet
The card: Ling Ling finds a wallet full of money, keeps the money and returns the wallet. Fear or Love? Donnie is asked to place it. He says the exercise ignores everything else a person might feel and refuses.
Placement The film’s first refusal of the line, and the reason this page has a third place. Donnie is sent to the principal for it.
3 Kitty Farmer
"I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!"
Kitty polices the dance troupe, the curriculum and the Darkos with the same alarm. She campaigns to ban "The Destructors" and has Ms Pomeroy dismissed.
Placement Her own instrument turned on her: everything she does is done in fear - of corruption, of the wrong influence, of losing control - in the name of Love.
4 Gretchen Ross, Ms Pomeroy
Gretchen takes the seat beside Donnie
A new girl walks in from the rain. "Sit next to the boy you think is the cutest," says Ms Pomeroy, and she does.
Placement The film’s one uncomplicated act of the Love end: an open door, offered without terms.
5 Roberta Sparrow
"Every living creature on this earth dies alone."
Sparrow whispers her only line into Donnie’s ear. He carries it to Dr Thurman: "I don’t want to be alone."
Placement The fear the whole film orbits, stated once. Every later choice Donnie makes answers it.
"Every living creature on this earth dies alone." → Character →
6 Donnie, on Frank’s instruction
Donnie floods the school
Frank tells him to; he breaks the water main with an axe and writes "They made me do it" on the pavement.
Placement Done under a countdown, on orders, with the blame written on the ground. The act of someone afraid - though it also empties the school and gives him the morning with Gretchen.
7 Donnie, to Jim Cunningham
"I think you’re the fucking Antichrist."
At the assembly Cunningham asks the students to confess their fear. Donnie takes the microphone and asks how much he is being paid, then says what he thinks of him.
Placement Rude, and the bravest thing anyone says in the film: he refuses the man selling the line, in front of the people buying it.
Donnie confronts Jim Cunningham at the assembly → Character →
8 Jim Cunningham
The house burns; the dungeon is found
Donnie burns Cunningham’s house on Frank’s instruction. Firefighters find a hidden room of child pornography. Cunningham is arrested.
Placement The video moves from one pole to the other in a single scene. The film’s verdict on the line is that the man who drew it lived at the wrong end of it.
9 Donnie, to Cherita Chen
"One day everything’s going to be better for you."
Cherita, bullied and silent, is told by Donnie - for no reason the plot needs - that things will get better for her.
Placement The only promise in the film made without a countdown behind it.
10 Dr Thurman
"They’re placebos."
In his last session Donnie asks whether he should be afraid of dying. Thurman tells him his medication has never been real.
Placement She stops protecting herself with the prescription and tells him the truth - and stays in the room with the question.
11 Donnie and Gretchen
The Halloween party
With Rose and Samantha in Los Angeles, Elizabeth throws a party. Donnie and Gretchen sleep together. Then Donnie notices the time.
Placement The far end of the line, for one night, with the countdown running underneath it.
12 Frank
The Ensurance Trap
Outside Sparrow’s house Gretchen is killed by Frank’s car and Donnie shoots Frank. Sparrow’s book: the Receiver "is left with no choice".
Placement The trap works on the fear named at the mailbox. Whether the dead Frank acts from fear or love is the film’s open question; the mechanism runs on the former.
The cellar door: Gretchen is killed, Frank is shot → Character →
13 Donnie
Donnie stays in bed
The Primary Universe resumes. Donnie is awake, in bed, laughing, and does not get up. The engine falls.
Placement Fear of dying alone, love for the people the loop would kill, or something the line cannot hold - the film gives the laugh and no card. Not that simple.
14 Gretchen Ross, Rose Darko
Gretchen waves to Rose
The next morning Gretchen, who has never met Donnie in this universe, hears a boy has died and raises her hand to his mother. Rose waves back.
Placement Two strangers, one gesture, nothing asked for it: the film ends on the Love pole after all - just not the one Cunningham sold.
Fourteen moments, the last ones from the end.