Quote:
Originally Posted by scott free
Watching a pretty cool old western from 1971 called The Hunting Party with Gene Hackman, Oliver Reed, Candice Bergen, LQ Jones and several other familiar faces.
Its about a cattle barons wife who's kidnapped by bandits and he goes on the hunt for her... but wow, movies were just different back then... the guy responsible for her kidnapping smacks her around real good and rapes her a few times, but soon after she then begins to fall in love with him after the simple act of him giving her some peaches.
I mean, its kinda crazy considering the uproar something like this would probably cause these days... these old macho movies are pretty hilarious... all ya gotta do to tame a woman and make her fall in love is smack her around and give her a good poke, that'll set her straight!
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There is certainly some real life truth in the sympathizing with captors story line. It happens alot, and runs from helping a not-so-bad in the bad guy group, through the falling in love, or seemingly assimilating to the situation. I do think movies have gotten a bit better about exploring it than in particular old westerns like you called out.
However, there still remains a huge problem in tv/movies and that is the notion that violence somehow is a turn on to men. Care is taken to avoid violence of men toward women as a turn on, but there is still a rampant use of what I call the "slap and ****" where a woman is allowed to slap or otherwise inflict violence upon a man, and then the romance really takes off and they fall into passionate sex, as if all she needs is to have the frustration ****ed out of her. I could make a 2 hour movie of just examples of that progression that usually goes slap-hold arm from slapping again-stare at each other-crush each others faces in a really angry kiss- tear off clothes.
What a cheap device taking a short cut through what really amounts to a story problem. They set up the dislike so carefully and they know the payoff they want from the characters is to fall in love, they are just too lazy to do the hard work of really giving the relationship depth. Here is a good example of what I am talking about
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In Gangs of New York, a movie that I mostly really like aside from Cameron Diaz, and not because I don't like the actress, but because that character is a joke. She and Amsterdam are adversarial after he had rejected her, until one night she slaps him, they ****, no words hardly at all. Then while she sleeps, he has a great conversation with Bill the Butcher and we learn all sorts of good stuff about the two of them. Bill and Amsterdam of course, who would need to know anything about the girl character who's name I forget and Amsterdam? They slapped and ****ed. Clearly it is love.