bleeding heart

....the remake, not the seventies original, which I think I saw but don't really remember.. (Spoilers Alert!....not that it matters.....) It's a pretty depressing movie, and not especially good. A young writer rents a place somewhere in RuralLand, and is brutalized by the local redneck knuckledraggers. After a rape scene that goes on seemingly forever, she manages to escape, barely alive. Then she comes back and enacts a brutal revenge on each man in turn (including the local sheriff, Who Was In On It.) The whole thing is quite vicious, and certainly not for everybody. Oh...also, the mentally-challenged young man who was goaded into enjoining the rape by his friends--but who ultimately took to the challenge with some gusto--is also dispatched violently. So, happy stuff all around. It's a revenge fantasy in the purest sense...a genre with which I take no exception, except that this movie is just so unpleasant, and not terribly well-done...as a viewer, you don't even sympathize with her, really...during her lengthy assault, sure, but in the second half she's an emotionless killing machine. OK, fine....but revengeful robots without emotion aren't exactly conducive to empathy. What's slightly more interesting than the somewhat banal movie itself is the meta-discussion surrounding it (more accurately, surrounding the original...though my understanding is that it's more or less the same in tone, and in narrative arc: culminating in castration scene...which is in effect also a "rape scene," as is plainly the intent.) Apparently, among film school academics, historians, and general buffs, there have been ongoing sociological discussions about this thing since its release in 1978 (originally under the title "Day of the Woman"). Much of the debate has centred around, secondarily, class (the well-to-do ravaged by the irredeemable lower orders, in the ancient formulation); but primarily, gender, which I suppose is quite understandable. The main debate seems to be whether the film (whatever its merits as a movie on its own terms) is feminist, or reactionary and anti-feminist. My two-bit response is that it's obviously both at the same time. Like many a seventies exploitation film (and continuing seamlessly till present, at least for this remake), there is both an intentional political slant (usually, though not always, in the "progressive" direction) but within the Exploitation form, which is somewhere between apolitical and openly reactionary. It sounds confused and contradictory because these movies tend to be confused and contradictory. But if you're not in the mood for pondering how less-than-stellar movies reflect culture and ideology, but are looking for an entertaining escapism with lots of thrills and fun!....stay away. At least don't let the kiddies watch the nightmare-fodder.

Another major problem with it, that any true-blue conservative should recognize instantly, is that it's the ultimate in statism; it's the final word in "Big Government."

TimG: I scarcely know where to start correcting this mess of illogic. If your analysis were correct (it isn't, as I'll get to) then "marriage" is to "man and woman" as "superfluous" is to "supererogatory." But perhaps we can agree that your argument is smashed beyond repair by sticking our heads warily into the horse's superstitious mouth (bolding mine): From Trinity's website: "Civil" same-sex unions are now recognized by Canadian law. But views on same sex marriage differ widely. Many religions [...] have chosen not to bless same sex unions, and have drafted resolutions of official church policies, based upon their traditional religious teachings, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. We share those views. https://www.twu.ca/academics/school-of-law/faq.html Mind you, this is easily predictable and understood--except by yourself, for whatever reason--given that Trinity is an Evangelical organization, whose first statement of its Core Values is:

Yes, silly, because it's crude partisanship. Period. the only defense I can give to the fanboys is the extremely tepid and backhanded one: leaders of other parties frequently inherit the same sort of dewy-eyed--and ahistorical--admiration. So it's not a Conservative phenomenon. Would that it were!

Now that you mention it, in the piece I linked to, there was a bit about a similar kidnapping of girls several years back by a Christian organization in Uganda. Just for the edification of those who like to say "Show me where Christians in this day and age behave as abominably as the Islamists!"

Ah, you gotta admit Argus zinged you pretty good.

Ha! Yeah, predictable stuff.

An eight-minute trial...and no defense allowed. Ye gods.

Well, let's hope it doesn't come to such a dramatic conclusion. Schadenfreude only goes so far, before it becomes truly ugly. (I'm not pointing this at you, Rue, just to be clear.)

My initial thinking was that there is somewhere between nothing and almost-nothing to this story. I see I'm not alone.

? How so?

If the degenerate little sadists were torturing me, they'd no doubt get a PIN number from me. Torture always gets "information," which is fine, so long as you don't care whether it's good info or not. Perhaps for the moral cowards who explicitly perform the torture, good info is secondary to the sexual jollies they get from "tenderizing the meat," as it is interestingly termed from the inside. (Incidentally, I like your use of "we," as you align yourself with such august company, by the way...not that I imagine you'd personally have the stomach for the dirty work, being presumably insufficiently sociopathic.) But as many intelligence officials have pointed out, they got better and more solid intelligence from the non-brutal methods. Waterboarding is simulated drowning....and instills fear of imminent death. It's whole point, in other words, is to be torturous. And it's extremely dubious that it led to bin Laden...as the CIA have candidly admitted, even as they were trying to defend its usefulness in other situations. It's interesting you'd let a patriotic Hollywood film determine for you what is real.

Well, we'll be sure from here on in to ask Argus what are the proper avenues for decent outrage. I assume the American Tea Party, Somalian immigrants, and some nebulous entity called "the left" are the prime candidates.

So "casting aspersions" on the openly anti-homosexual stance is "bigotry"; but the anti-homosexual stance itself is not "bigotry." alrighty.

"Casting aspersions" on those who believe homosexuality to be something bad is not "bigotry," anymore than casting aspersions on any other form of bigotry is, itself, bigotry. Whatever one thinks about recognizing their education credentials.(a separate issue from "casting aspersions")..pointing out the obvious fact of their religiously-inspired bigotry is not...bigotry.

"The [senate Intelligence Committee] investigation determined that the [enhanced interrogation] program produced very little intelligence of value," according to McClatchey DC. Ah, all those Blame-America-First Lefties would conveniently come to such a conclusion, wouldn't they?

Good points; I remain a little baffled about the palpable outrage so many men, including ostensible liberals, seem to exhibit whenever a transgender subject is introduced. Rape, too, is never a subject of much interest unless the (admittedly horrible enough) spectre of false rape allegations are the subject...or unless maybe it's Islamists doing the deed, in which case "we're all feminists now!" At any rate, I think WestCoastRunner misinterpreted your remark.

No, it has not been "proven to be highly effective"; it is claimed by torture apologists to be highly effective, and many people, including in the intelligence-gathering and interrogation world, have continually been disputing it. And waterboarding--drowning someone and stopping short of death--is not only torture, but has been prosecuted as torture--by the United States of America. Therefore, the onus is on you to explain how it is not torture. Perhaps you can use Whoopi Goldberg's "rape-rape" thesis as your template.

The mothers and relatives of the kidnapped girls speak: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/rescue-them-mothers-of-abducted-schoolgirls-tell-nigerian-government-9308318.html Also a few related bits: the same group is alleged to be responsible for at least 88 murders of girls and boys in the past year. Also, this is not the first such occurrence: the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda (a similarly ugly group of cruel religious fanatics) kidnapped 140 girls in '96, though many were rescued later.

"The real world is more complicated"....like, for example, that "the difference [in unemployment rates] is possibly "entirely the result of bad choices made by the individuals in question." That's not "more complicated"....that's far less complicated than an institutional analysis implied through cybercoma's posts.

He needs some help with his substance-abuse problems. I wish him well (just not in politics).

Even if we could prove that torture is efficacious enough to make the horrors worthwhile (and that idea is hotly contested even among high-level intelligence-gatherers...as you well know), the idea that killing people is "coddling" them is yet another in a long stream of Palinesque foolish remarks.

I don't agree with the death penalty, but I think principled arguments can be, and are, made for it. But delighting in torture? That's for moral weaklings and losers. It's akin to those who say that prison rape is a kind of rough justice...that is, siding wholeheartedly with rapists and predators. In this case, siding with torturers and sadists. Good job.

It is an unbelievable horror. There are plenty of monstrous acts occurring all the time, but there's just something so viscerally awful about this story--the mixture of cruelty, of oppression, of fanaticism coupled contradictorily with gangsterism and profit. It's an unbearable act.

Tim, Since you brought up "less significant qualifier"--referring to the "man and woman" phrase--you are summoning grammatical logic. Very well then. It is indeed a qualifier, but qualifiers can be fundamental to the meaning of a sentence. And in this case, it is. They are not talking about the "sacredness of marriage"; they are talking about the "sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman." The qualifier is part of the very meaning of the main clause. That's not me, that's elementary grammar. That is, it's not like the difference between "the car" and "the red car"; it's like the difference between "the car" and "the car that runs." The first qualifier is arguably trivial; the second qualifier is everything. And because same sex marriage is now legal, the pointedness of the qualifier is an obvious omission. It's meant to be an omission. Otherwise, it would be "sacredness of marriage," full stop. The qualifier is absolutely crucial to the meaning of the sentence....unless those who composed the covenant are ignorant of the fundamentals of basic grammar...a possibility, but a hypothesis I find unconvincing. Of course you know this; I'm not sure why the pretense. Must be your "prejudice," and "preconceptions," and "ideology" at play....since using such terms seems to help you understand a little better.