A few months back, I watched the film se7en twice in quick succession, as I knew two people who hadn’t seen it, and thought I might join them. The film actually rewards repeated viewings, which is nice, but I couldn’t stop a particular question from popping into my mind as I watched the film again. The murders in the film, as the title implies, all follow a fairly basic theme, with each based around one of the seven deadly sins. However, I had a bit of difficulty making “sloth”stick.
Dead tired...
In most cases, it’s a fairly obvious example of that sin. For “gluttony”, our serial killer had a guy literally eat himself to death. For “lust”, he had another person kill a prostitute. For “greed”, he killed a lawyer. The pattern is quite apparent, not least of which because it’s in the title of the film. However, the victim of “sloth” confused me a little bit. By the way, I checked the on-line dictionary for a definition of “sloth” and the following came back:
Reluctance to work or make an effort; laziness.
The victim here is a drug-dealing pederast who John Doe tied up and doped up in his bed for a year, feeding and maintaining (and sanitizing and bandaging) him, just enough to keep him alive – to the point where his poor victim’s brain turned to mush. It’s fairly obvious where “sloth” comes into the creepy poetic fate Doe has mapped out for the former criminal, to the point that the character can’t actually leave the bed.
Clearing the air...
However, with one big exception towards the end of the film, Doe doesn’t appear to force the sin he punishes on to the victim in the first place – he just exacts a sort of “poetic justice.” As a rule, looking at the majority of the victims, the sin is major part of their lifestyle before they meet John Doe. The lawyer is greedy, the fat man over-eats, the prostitute makes a living off sex. However, the guy locked in his apartment (and, about a year afterwards, inside his own head), doesn’t appear to have been especially slothful.
He was convicted with having sex with an underage girl, which would lead one to assume “lust” might be a more appropriate sin. He dealt drugs, so he earned a living (even a criminal one). Had he just been a user, perhaps it would seem a better fit – it’s easy to picture a zoned-out stoner as the very embodiment of “sloth”, sitting there and doing nothing all day – occasionally giggling uncontrollably to children’s television.
You snooze, you lose...
On the other hand, I suppose, as I sit here thinking about it, you could argue that John Doe wouldn’t consider selling drugs to be a job at all. Or, perhaps, merely fronting for a drug organisation isn’t exactly the most demanding of occupations. From what I gather in popular culture, it works in a fairly simple manner: a few people show up, pay you a large amount of money, and then leave. It isn’t exactly meeting deadlines or pushing paper. However, I think there’s more to it than that.
Maybe the guy was just withdrawn and quite. After all, he’s the kind of person who can disappear for a year without anybody missing him enough to check his last known address. Even the landlord doesn’t seem especially bothered that he never sees his client, only happy paid on-time and not asking any questions. One would imagine that a person must be quite distant from those around them to vanish completely unnoticed. Of course, given the film’s attitude towards life in a big city, it’s entirely possible that the lack of anybody noticing was meant to refer more to the city than the victim in question.
Call the detectives!
Perhaps there’s an aspect of enablement to this. Perhaps, as the prostitute might be argued to encourage lust, you could argue that a drug dealer encourages and enables sloth – he allows and fuels a lifestyle built around that particular deadly sin. However, in the murder of the prostitute, Doe makes her client complicit – here there’s no such element to proceedings. I don’t think that’s quite it.
I don’t know. This is just one of those minor little questions that occurs to me on watching a film like this. It’s amazing and sometimes bizarre the questions we have after watching a film – particularly after we’ve already seen it, so we aren’t focusing on the plot so much. I find that’s when you start to notice stuff like that. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it and the guy was just a lazy bag of bits, but it’s strange that this grabbed me weird fancy one evening. What strange movie questions bother you?
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: crime, film, john doe, kevin spacey, Movie, murder, se7en, serial killer, seven, Seven deadly sins, Sloth |
the m0vie blog 
I love those kinds of details in films. It reminds of the part of Inception where they blow up the hospital. It works on a superficial level, but the more I think about it, the less it makes sense, and the more I want to discover a way for it to make sense. I think it’s a mark of quality that a movie makes you delve into details like that.
That being said, I’ve never really understood the appeal of Se7en. Sure, it’s an entertaining and interesting serial killer movie but I don’t see how it’s a “masterpiece”. I never really felt like any of the characters were particularly interesting. Both Pitt and Freeman do a great job lending their movie personas to their roles, but these roles are fairly conventional “rookie” and “soon-to-be-retiring veteran”. John Doe doesn’t seem to have much characterization, other than his signature criminal pathology. Like most of Fincher movies, I sometimes feel like the dialogue “tells” us what kind of characters they are, rather than a demonstration through their actions. In this respect, it felt similar to The Social Network.
Even this kind of characterization wouldn’t be a problem if the story and plot was inherently interesting. But again, it feels like the story is there to only live up to the premise of “what if there is a serial killer who murders are based on the 7 deadly sins?” In other words, it feels fairly straightforward and arguably predictable (other than ending, I suppose).
I don’t know. I guess I feel like the movie is just a vehicle for it’s “artsy” message. Don’t get me wrong, I like it when directors take “trashy” genres and class them up, but I guess I prefer it when something more interesting is done with story and character.
I don’t know. I think se7en suffers because every serial killer movie since has been trying to ape it – at the time, the only film that really felt similar was The Silence of the Lambs, but now films like that are a dime a dozen. I think it works so well because, as you observe, they’re archetypes – even the city is just “the city”, archetypal and anonymous.
Fair enough. I saw Se7en years after it was released, so that might have influenced my opinion.
This is, literally, the exact same issue I had with the movie. I loved it, but I have no idea why sloth wasn’t as self explanatory as the other murders.
Nice to see I’m not the only one.
Sloth means spiritual apathy. When you’re smuggling drugs and abusing children (like the guy in the movie was), you’re showing spiritual apathy.
Thanks Casper. Very fair point, certainly on dealing drugs. Never thought of it like that.
That said, abusing children seems like more than spiritual apathy – it’s a much more direct and active type of crime, and it feels like it would have been more firmly rooted in lust.
He didn’t directly kill him by imposing sloth upon him, he forced him to live the sloth lifestyle for ages and then he died.
Yes, but all of the other victims had aspects of their life that made the punishment poetic. The lawyer was greedy. The lust guy was visiting a prostitute in the first place. The greed guy was fat. I suppose drug dealing is a lazy way to make money, but child abuse doesn’t seem slothful. Unless you accept the well-argued comment above about sloth being mroe spiritual than literal.
“Sloth,” as it was understood by the early theologians who formulated the seven deadly sins, is called “Socordia” or “akedia” in Latin and Greek respectively and referred to the idea of failing to foster or develop spiritual virtue because it is difficult or taxing. Think about R. Lee Ermey’s line in the film about Victor being raised a strict Southern Baptist but eschewing it in favor of dealing drugs (neither a difficult or virtuous job) and being a paedophile (real relationships take work and commitment, overpowering a minor with rape is neither difficult nor committed). His sins weren’t overtly passive (like our modern view of sloth) but they were easy choices to make that avoided the overt difficulty of virtue. Hope that helps!
To be honest though, I stumbled on this blog looking for more theories about the research into the victim’s deterioration. I’m really curious how accurate Fincher’s depiction of the victim is.
This is dead-on. Thanks!
Fair point.
I think Doe chose Victor, a pederast and drug dealer as a victim because honest work is hard to do and requirse a lot of effort. Choosing being a criminal and to rape children is easy to do, because he chooses not to work hard and prefers to make money in the easy way, meaning forms of both physical and mental sloth. Falling into his desires of raping children is a form of mental sloth.
Tht’s my point of view.
Thanks Sen. It’s not a bad point, but it still seems a bit more of a reach than the other sins.
John Doe chose Victor as he was the pedophile that the (Greed) lawyer set free. If you go back to the scene where Pitt and Freeman search John’s apartment you will see a newspaper clipping that reads something like “Lawyer sets free pedophile, public is outraged” and John circles Lawyer and pedophile.
The sin that got me was Pride. I guess because the chick was some Supermodel or actress or whatever she was guilty of pride? That’s not necessarily right. Being a Model is a job, it does not make up for who you really are. If your an attractive person, and offered a career to Model…who wouldn’t be tempted to take advantage of that opportunity? Easy money. So basically because she was beautiful she had to be taught a lesson? Of course she chose to overdose rather than call for help. He cut off her fucking nose! Good grief. She probably swallowed the pills and chased them down with her own blood. I don’t know, maybe she was a unnecessarily nasty person inside and “deserved” it.
I think pride was the choice made after the disfigurement:
a.) call ambulance, live, but wind up disfigured;
b.) suicide by pills.
I think it was the choice itself that marked her sin as pride. (Although one suspects he picked his victim based on observation and knew she was pre-disposed to pride.)
With regards to “being taught a lesson”, I don’t think any of Doe’s crimes are justifiable. So a guy is large, that doesn’t mean he deserves to be punished; a lawyer is successful, that doesn’t merit Doe’s justice; the prostitute killed during the lust crime was probably just trying to make ends meet. However, I can understand the logic of most of them, barring Sloth.
I was thinking the same thing… how did she swallow all those pills with no water? Then I too thought oooohh she must of used the blood rushing out of her nose.
And the reason she was (Pride), if you look at the scene she has pictures of herself framed on wall and on her nightstands. So Im guessing he picked her cuz she thought she was so pretty
Much like “sloth” in this film, you need to get out more.
Sick burn, bro! 🙂
You’re stoner comment’s inaccurate , I think you just watch to many movies. As for this movie “se7en” not the greatest.
I’ve never been enamored by Se7en. To me, the motivations of John Doe never made sense. Here’s what I mean:
My favorite “murder” of this film was pride. In my mind, this was the perfect way for John Doe to demoralize the detectives by showing them the inescapable nature of our sins. A woman makes the choice to take her own life rather than abandon her vanity.
This left me feeling hollow about the rest of the film for I feel that none of the other murders, with the possible exception of wrath, managed to capture this feeling. As mentioned in the original post, the sloth victim had his sloth inflicted upon him. The gluttony victim wasn’t given a choice or opportunity like the pride victim, he was simply murdered in a horrific way.
I know this movie came years before Saw, but I would have liked John Doe a lot more if he had a bit more Jigsaw in him. I think the message of this movie would have been much more poignant if each of the victim’s had been given the chance to avert their fate but decided not to.
This is the thing about Saw, though. I’m not sure that he does allow his victims a chance to avert their fate. After all, even the survivor from the first film is [spoiler] irrevocably changed by her experiences. I think Saw affords the illusion of the possibility of escape, but not the reality of it. Which is – to me – just as (if not more) sadistic than John Doe’s “okay, you’re dead in a horrific manner.” Not that either option is anything less than horrifying.
In my view I think the drug dealer lived nasty, didn’t hardly bathe but they just didn’t go into that enough. He was probably greasy, stinky ect so the killer forced him to live that way in the extreme. When some one never washes their smell can literally last for days. My family once resold a car because no mater what we did the person’s B.O. just wouldn’t die, It can get that bad and in that sense it’s a “sin” because it effects everyone around that person.
That scene was so horrific and memorable, I never even thought of a criticism of the scene. But yes, drug dealing or using definitely leads to the sin “sloth”. Thanks for the good read. I must have seen this movie a dozen times, and the sloth part of the movie still blows my mind. Would love to chat more about the movie. Thanks, Pat
Thanks Pat. Glad you enjoyed the read.
I was wondering the same thing. That’s how I found this arcticle. I googled the question..why was the junkie picked to represent sloth in the move se7en?
All of the other victims ( as stated ) occupations or actions clearly reflected their respective sin. I was baffled. I couldn’t make the connection between “ a drug pushing pederast “ and sloth.
So then I put myself in the shoes of the writer of the story. I asked myself… If I was writing the book, what occupation or personal day choose to represent sloth? Again I was baffled. I couldn’t think of any occupation that embodied sloth. A professional gambler was the best I can come up with. And that Took a fair amount of time to come up with that. But I guess the writer couldn’t use a gambler because that could also be connected with greed. So I’m thinking a drug dealer was the best choice for sloth. Another question is what city did this movie take place in? There is no definitive answer to that anywhere in the movie. If you notice it is raining and everything mix up the final scene. The movie was filmed in LA I believe.
Are used voice text on my previous comment. I didn’t proofread it before I sent it. But I’m sure you get the gist of it. Sorry
Not at all. No need for apologies!
Heroin makes people move in slow motion. Heroin junkies shoot up and then just lie around lazily feeling the effects. It literally makes them experience time slowed down. It’s perfect.
Cheers.
Scrolled and searched for comments about the effects of hardcore drugs in relation to Seven’s sloth and I wasn’t fucking disappointed.
Glad to help!
Hello, well technically the term sloth as a sin, encompasses not only laziness, but idling and wasting your life away, without doing anything substantial.
I rewatched a few clips from se7ven and also had an issue with the victims of sloth, lust, and pride. Although it could be argued that drug dealer could induce sloth (laziness or idleness) to his clients (assuming they bought downers and pot versus speed etc) or that the victim’s lack of employment (leads him to sin of dealing drugs and molestation), the victim is not a strong depiction of sloth (someone smoking pot to extreme or other example of extreme idleness would be). He is induced into sloth by John Doe. If it’s drug dealer inducing sloth argument then John Doe is guilty of sloth as well.
As for pride, The model she wasn’t engaging in sin of pride. Only when doe mutilates her face she chose to end her life with pills, that is debatable that it is shame vs pride, lost of identity.
As for lust, it would make more sense to clients prostitute to be victim vs prostitute who may be working not due to her own lust.
Also he kills someone innocent.
And in his masterpiece the mills who e is driven to wrath , vs that being his everyday sin …circumstantial sin in the moment ….unlike his other victims mills survived.
I agree, maybe it points to that john doe isnt really some servant of god and on gods mission like he leads you to believe in the cop car ride but rather has his own severe mental problems and really is just forcing stuff, like the sloth, instead of being on some sort of divine mission. This is the one flag I’ve noticed in the film, it’s a great movie, but the drug dealer wasnt a sloth until john doe made him one, which kid of defeats the ‘moral mission’ john doe is on but rather just paints him as a mentally Ill homicidal maniac.
Sloth is apathy toward one’s own spiritual and moral obligations. A drug dealing pedophile is a perfect example of someone rejecting their moral or spiritual obligations.
Not just you. I rewatched Se7en the other night and specifically went searching the internet for the reason why a man who is FORCED to stay in bed by his captor would be considered lazy.
Laziness is choice. A prisoner stays in his cell, because he literally has no choice.
Yep, it’s still something I find interesting.
You were 100% not reading too much into it. I thought the exact same thing after I rewatched it; I came across your article because I was so bothered trying to make full sense of it that I had to Google it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Of all John Doe’s victims Victor is special because, unlike other victims, it isn’t as obvious how he was guilty of his mortal sin, and I think the makers of the movie should’ve done a better job communicating it to the viewers. Fincher and Walker, the scriptwriter, are both guilty of it. But when you give some thought to it, you can see what the movie makers’ intent was. Victor was a drug dealer. He was someone who didn’t earn his living in a positive way that contributed to society. In fact, he was damaging it. And someone who isn’t contributive is uncontributive which is in a wider sense slothful or connected to sloth.
You might object that that’s not sloth because drug dealing isn’t inaction, and you’re right if you take the meaning of the concept of sloth literally, but I think the movie makers didn’t take it that way. If you stretch its meaning to include avoidance of positive productive work, you can get to what the movie makers had in mind. At least I think.