A Voice of Moderation
To add a voice of moderation to this one, were I his father looking down on what he was doing, I'd give him a good two slaps as well. Just because Katie Holmes' character is a woman does not mean that everything is motivated by her being a woman. If you start looking at the world like that, you're just being hyper-sensitive.
As for the motivation behind the slaps, look at the magnitude of the situation. Is it justified for him to want to kill this guy? Sure. But to me (and to the attorney character in the film), that in and of itself is WRONG. Justice is one thing...and sometimes the law doesn't offer justice...but killing in cold blood someone who's shackled and unable to defend themselves, when our justice system has run its course and let them free,
well...morally, your actions speak louder than the words you use to justify them.
We live in a society based on laws - and an attorney, of all people, should be most offended by someone pulling a Jack Ruby. But add to it the fact that it's someone she cares about and, well...they don't call it tough love for nothing. Sometimes the level of the act is so intense as to need more serious correction. In the face of a man I care about telling me they want to kill someone, a slap is nothing. I understand it's a
double-standard (I wouldn't do that to a woman)...but men and women do operate differently. Most men I
know (even the hyper-sensitive ones) would be shocked by the slap - not hurt -and would consider its causes, as opposed to offering the immediate knee-jerk reaction.
It would certainly bring me back to the real world more quickly than trying to soothingly talk to me and pamper me about it.
Anyway, incidentally, speaking to the mechanics of the film, consider this: had she just talked to him and told him it was wrong, it wouldn't have had nearly the impact on him, now would it? I doubt it would have facilitated the emotional build to the point where he throws the gun off the bridge and vows never to use guns in his "hunting" of criminals.
One of the reasons Shakespeare was such a brilliant writer (if his works were, in fact, his) was that he could distill an entire paragraph into one sentence. And though that scene was most certainly not Shakespeare, it effectively provided a plot point, and took a lot less time than would a continued conversation.
It also lends a decidedly masculine side to the movie. I personally think one of the components of masculist (?) thought is that there is sometimes a cause for violence. The key word is sometimes. I personally think that something that makes a man is the knowledge of when that time is.
Call me old-fashioned. I don't necessarily think double-standards are a bad thing. Though men and women are considered equal under the eyes of the law, that does not make them the same. I certainly don't think that women should go around hitting men, but in some cases, it's more acceptable than others. We're talking a life-and-death situation, here. It's certainly more acceptable than a man hitting a woman in the same situation.
But back to the point - If you start automatically jumping to the conclusions that this woman is justifying hitting this man because she's a woman, well, you're not moving us forward. In fact, you're stuck in the same mindset as most of the so-called feminists out there. Feminism should NOT mean that men are 'the enemy'...and masculism (does anyone have a better word...please?) should not automatically mean an adversarial relationship with women. It shouldn't mean that we assume that just because someone has
estrogen and a vagina, she thinks it gives her rights to tell men what to do. Not all women are like
that. In my opinion, most aren't.
By automatically throwing in the "she's a woman" argument every time you take issue with something a woman does, you only serve to alienate them. Shouldn't the issue in society be to bring more women around to seeing how men feel and think and are being treated by society as a whole...and not vilifying them? Isn't that the best way to move society forward, as opposed to taking the feminist approach and jumping on every little thing we consider a slight to men, or an elevation of women?
She judges him because she's human. And because she cares about him as a person. And because she thought better of him, and wants better from him...and knows his parents would feel the same.
That, to me, is more than enough justification.
user: KC |
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