We Need to Talk About Uncle Rico

I am going to assume that you have seen Napoleon Dynamite. It is a hard movie to describe, but it is a fun indie film about friendship.

The movie has a unique and fascinating antagonist. Uncle Rico. Uncle Rico is sent in to care for Napoleon and his brother Kip after their grandmother suffers an ATV injury while on a date. Kip is in his 30’s, but it is decided that Rico needs to be there.

We learn quickly that Rico is a jerk, uses people, is not very honest, and is stuck in the unrealized moments of the past that drive his toxic choices.

He sells Tupperware-esque food storage solutions with the fervor of a used car salesman in a time when Carfax reports did not exist. He rarely has to face consequences except the time he got beaten up by Rex for touching his wife inappropriately trying to sell her breast enhancement solutions.

Napoleon is right. Uncle Rico does eat all the steak and is ruining everyone’s lives. He literally assaulted Napoleon twice in the movie and painted him out to be a special needs person to a mom in the community to generate sympathy to sell her stuff.

Uncle Rico Analogous to Toxic Gen X Nostalgia Traits

Uncle Rico is a jerk through most of the film. He is particularly mean to Napoleon and basically uses Kip. There is a scene where Kip is talking to Rico about his online girlfriend and Rico is more interested in how his muscles look in his shirt and only truly engages in the conversation when he sees an opportunity to make money with Kip’s help. In another scene which he is focused on himself he throws Kip’s steak at Napoleon. But in the same scene he buddies up to Kip when he wants his help in getting Rico a time machine. The time machine is to take Rico back to the moment where his life derailed in his mind.

Other than a photo shoot where he is asked to think about seahorses, the only times we see Rico with a softer side is when he speaks of the past and his time playing football for his school. But it went wrong and his dreams of going pro were dashed in his mind when he was not put in the second half of the game dashing their hopes to be state champions.

Often when I hear Gen Xers being mean to younger generations or complain about how things are not as good now as they used to be, I wonder what their Uncle Rico moment was.

When did life not become what they expected it to be? That moment that if this one thing had been different their life would have been better. Everything, even if they are not aware of it, is segmented into a personal BC and AD. Before Crisis and After Disappointment. All of their nostalgia is from that time before crisis, the moment where the dreams of youth did not meet the realities of adult life. They now live in the after disappointment.

The lie is created that everything was better before and worse after. When the truth is often that life did not work out the way they wanted and they miss out on the ability to see now as good and then is seen through a dishonest lens.

Is There Hope for Uncle Rico and Gen Xers who Live Like Him

There might be. In the movie we have a little deus ex machina in the end for Rico. There is an ex girlfriend we hear about from time to time in the movie. Towards the end of the movie we see her ride up to his van home on her bicycle. You see a look on Rico’s face that is softer, kinder, and hopeful. And it is not about the next sale, con, time travel, or the past. It is love here and now.

Will it be enough for Rico to take the chance or will he drive her away again because of his inability to be here now and accept now and see the beauty now?

I feel badly for the people I can see that have a personal AD and BC that defines them. They cannot see the wonderful things happening now. In my case, not being able to live in now and see beauty in it led to a failed suicide attempt. In their case, they are not killing themselves, in some ways a part of them already died. What they do is worse. They kill the joy of others and become gatekeepers of joy and are indifferent to love and dreams that do not serve their agenda.

The Lesson?

Expectations are a vicious thing to cling to. Things will never go 100% our way. Whatever we get is what we get. And this is where we are now. Some things we can improve and others we can not. But we can live in that tension and not hurt others.

I suffer from PTSD. My innocence lost and my BC/AD moment started when I was 9. Childhood was gone from the first molestation. It is hard to come back from moments that change everything. Nothing is ever the same. But if we can stop and look around we can see what the younger generation is seeking and realize we are seeking the same things.

Kip wants to be loved as he is and the person we see him fall in love with does that. They may seem culturally like opposites, but they have an authentic and kindred love. Napoleon wants friends and he wants to be accepted but does not want to change. He finds that. In contrast to the beginning where he alone, even in tetherball, in the end he is playing tetherball with a friend.

Had Uncle Rico stayed longer, he could have created a BC/AD moment for both men. There are concentric ripples when you live in the BC instead of accepting the AD and doing what you can to make this existence as good as it can be. Because as Rico found out in a painful manner, there are no time machines.

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