feotakahari (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feotakahari) wrote2024-01-02 07:40 pm
feotakahari) wrote2024-01-02 07:40 pm
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I like A History of Violence, but I find Jack’s plotline depressing.
Some stories have horrible offensive ideas about how the world works, but make up for it by recognizing that the world shouldn’t work that way. A History of Violence does that with toxic masculinity. The two genders are men who have macho rage-monsters inside them and women who want to be ravished by macho rage-monsters, but civilization at least theoretically gives us a chance to be better than that.
Jack’s peers largely don’t care about his intelligence, because they’re drawn to the macho jock who bullies him. Jack flips back and forth between defying masculinity and trying to live down to it. He fears he’ll eventually be worn down into just another macho rage-monster no matter how hard he tries, so why not get it over with?
When Jack kills a mob goon to save Joey’s life, he doesn’t say anything, but I can read an entire speech in his facial expression. “I did it. That was the manliest thing I could possibly do. I’m the big swinging dick now, and I did it because I loved you as my father, but I will never forgive you for forcing me to become this.”
I just wish Jack could exist in a story that allows him. There are so many paths where his violence and his kindness could be reconciled.
(And suddenly I understand why I love Mountain from Arknights. He has the macho rage-monster inside him, and he puts it on a leash, letting him become a truly heroic character.)
Some stories have horrible offensive ideas about how the world works, but make up for it by recognizing that the world shouldn’t work that way. A History of Violence does that with toxic masculinity. The two genders are men who have macho rage-monsters inside them and women who want to be ravished by macho rage-monsters, but civilization at least theoretically gives us a chance to be better than that.
Jack’s peers largely don’t care about his intelligence, because they’re drawn to the macho jock who bullies him. Jack flips back and forth between defying masculinity and trying to live down to it. He fears he’ll eventually be worn down into just another macho rage-monster no matter how hard he tries, so why not get it over with?
When Jack kills a mob goon to save Joey’s life, he doesn’t say anything, but I can read an entire speech in his facial expression. “I did it. That was the manliest thing I could possibly do. I’m the big swinging dick now, and I did it because I loved you as my father, but I will never forgive you for forcing me to become this.”
I just wish Jack could exist in a story that allows him. There are so many paths where his violence and his kindness could be reconciled.
(And suddenly I understand why I love Mountain from Arknights. He has the macho rage-monster inside him, and he puts it on a leash, letting him become a truly heroic character.)