tracy@hcrvx1.UUCP (Tracy Tims) (04/09/85)
> From Lars Ericson > ...!cmcl2!acf4!lwe3207 > This movie stinks. Mia Farrow does a Woody Allen imitation for 2 hours. > She is supposed to have a non-fictional husband who beats her up. During > the time frame of the movie, he never does, and he always backs down in > arguments. She is never bruised. I know this movie is supposed to be a > comedy, about fantasy/reality etc., but I resent the idea of using a totally > unreal caricature of a real-life social problem as a minor factor in the > "reality" subplot. ... This sounds like the hostility of someone who just didn't relate to the movie and who resents that fact. What Woody Allen has done is created a reasonably plausible characterization of a woman who is driven away from reality into fantasy, without dwelling on the mechanism. He's not that interested in the mechanism. He wants to explore the absurd (and delicious) humor of a movie character coming to live in the real world and falling in love with a real woman. It's really too bad that the movie failed to come up to your ideological standards. > ...Because Woody Allen has a big name, and because the > other half of the movie is about fantasy, people might conclude that this is > what the psychological and physical scenario of wife-beating is really > like... This is nonsense. Any half sane or better human is going to come out of that movie with an overwhelming sense of compassion for her unhappy position in life. I didn't like her husband, and none of the 10 people that went with me liked him either. > Same person, from another article: > > ... The point is that a thoughtless trivialization of a > real social problem should not be a minor element of a comedy, if the comedy > is not about that minor element (then it is not comedy, but nihilistic > satire). If "PROC" is not a comedy, then the portrayal of the social > problem should not be a distorted and pale shadow of the reality. Wow. Sounds like Holy Law to me. This is a clear demonstration that the most important factor in building models of reality is not the "presumed objective event" but is in fact the system of assumptions and presumptions used to interpret the sensory data. By assuming that there is only a limited number of ways of presenting real social problems in a sensitive and accurate manner, by assuming that there are only a few good reasons for doing this, and by assuming that you were aware of all of these means and ways you have analyzed the movie with inappropriate criteria; and you have failed therefore to build a useful model of it. You don't understand it. The portrayal of wife beating wasn't thoughtless, it was carefully structured to contribute *just the right amount* to a movie about something else. What was there was handled reasonably well. Perhaps you have an unusually stereotypic notion of unhappy marriages. It may well be that Woody Allen showed us a fairly representative sample of a particular one. Why does a man who sometimes hits his wife always have to hit his wife? It may well be that he has found a more powerful way to tell us of the injustice done to her than by showing her getting slapped against a wall. I reacted very strongly to her husband's brutality and insensitivity. > ... I am saying that if violence of any form must exist in a > movie, it should be to inform, not to entertain. I walk out of movies which > use violence purely for the purpose of entertainment. ... "Entertain" is a slippery word. In the widest possible context, I suppose PROC was entertaining. I wouldn't say that the wife abuse/rotten husband subplot was entertaining, though. It was quite unpleasant. It was however, neccessary to parts of the movie that were entertaining. Few movies are monolithic in intent, execution, morality, technique, etc. A movie can both entertain and denounce. Why do you assume that the wife beating was trivialized merely because the picture was funny? Your whole approach to the picture sounds incredibly simplistic. I suggest you strive to improve your reasoning ability and your capacity to make meaningful distinctions between related phenomena. I have found that the best way to do this is to explore alternative perspectives. (That is, change the system of assumptions and presumptions you use to interpret your sensory data when you build models of the real world.) You sound unhappily narrow minded. Tracy Tims ihnp4!utzoo!hcr!hcradm!tracy Human Computing Resources Corporation utcsri!hcr!hcradm!tracy Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 416 922-1937 dciem!hcr!hcradm!tracy PS I thought PROC (I can see the marquee of the theatre showing it as I type this) was one of the most intellectually absurd comedies I have ever seen. It doesn't take itself seriously, at all. And it achieves this by taking itself *very* seriously. It's brilliant.