About a Movie

I watched a movie last night. In it, the main character finds out his girlfriend has been out with another man. He'd been trying to call her to tell her a good friend's father had died. He tried the friend she was supposed to be with and she didn't answer the phone either. He headed over to where the family of the man was gathering and saw his girlfriend's friend. This led to questions and suspicians. Finally, he knew. She was with someone else.

Not suspecting that he knew, his girlfriend comes home. She doesn't understand why she is upset. He confronts her and asks her who she was with. She continues the lie, insisting she was with her girlfriend who was having marital trouble. She finally gets that he really knows something and confesses. He goes crazy. He slaps her. She is begging for him to listen to her. It didn't mean anything, she says, please talk to me. She continues to plead. He is yelling at her to get out. Just get out. She refuses. Overwhelmed, he grabs a huge kitchen knife and screams at her once more to get out. She doesn't believe he is going to hurt her. She knows he wouldn't really do that. He chases after her. She gives up and leaves.

The rest of the movie is about her pursuit to regain his trust. She loves him and understands now that she was just scared about the future. Eventually, she is able to get him to see and the movie ends with you knowing they are going to try to pick up the pieces of their lives together. This kind of bothered me. The fact that he slapped her and grabbed a knife was never brought up in the story. I'm not sure that it is a good message to show someone who resorts to violence when upset as a good relationship option.

But first I need to confess something to you. I lied a little about what happened in the movie. The roles were really reversed. It was the guy who messed around and the woman who did the slapping and knife-wielding. And my concern is this: in a society plagued by violence against women, is it wise to show a woman hitting a man and it not being questioned or examined in any way as part of the story?

I don't know why last night this stood out to me. I've seen plenty of movies where a woman slaps a guy across the face, sometimes a drama and sometimes a comedy. I think my mind was already headed down the path of questioning during the previews. In one comedy/romance, coming soon to a theater near you, a woman punches a guy when she confronts him about his infidelity. It is done in a way that people laugh when they see it. So, you see, I was already thinking about whether portraying women hitting men is a good idea when the movie started.

I have been on the periphery of a domestic abuse situation as a friend trying to help, so I may be a little more tuned in to depictions of violence. Sunshine Scribe recently wrote about the problems of violence against women. There has also been a lot being written lately in the blog'verse about feminism. Maybe it was all these things combined. Additionally, I have always been very sensitive to inconsistencies in causes. (I don't want to explain what kind of consistencies I am talking about because I don't want to get off track. And it will take us off track. Believe me.) I am careful to call it inconsistency and not hypocrisy because I don't think of it that way. I see in causes sometimes a lack of thinking all arguments through to their conclusions and a fervent, passionate, well-meaning lack of perspective. I wonder how many women will go see this movie, feminist-minded women, violence-denouncing women, who won't question the depiction of violence against a man. I shouldn't use women only in this example. How many men will do the same? Isn't it understood that women, by far, are the victims of domestic violence by men but that domestic violence against any individual is wrong? Man, woman or child?

Overall, I liked the movie. There was a little too much, um, shall we say, sexual activity for my particular taste. I prefer the good, old-fashioned fade out; however, it did examine relationships at different stages and the difficulties they face. It showed people at a crossroads, facing a now or never precipice, deciding to make a change in their lives. If only they had shown the woman obviously struggling with her desire to strike out but reining it in; or, if they had talked about her response. I don't know.

There are always "if onlys," aren't there?