Poornima Manco

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violence

The sweetest revenge

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I’ll start by saying that I was fully prepared to hate it. I’d read enough bad reviews about ‘Once upon a time in Hollywood’ to have preconditioned my mind to not like the movie. However, I was on a long haul flight and the film offerings were nothing worth getting excited over. This one piqued my curiosity and I started to watch it.

I am not new to Quentin Tarantino’s films. Just out of teens, I’d watched ‘Natural Born Killers’ with my friend and been riveted as well as disturbed by the violence in the movie. ‘Pulp Fiction’ though, just blew my mind, it was that good! ‘Kill Bill’ I watched on television when there was nothing else to watch, and despite myself, got sucked into the story. The point is, I am not unfamiliar with his oeuvre. Accusations of misogyny and gratuitous violence aside, there is no doubt that Tarantino has earned his stripes as a maverick filmmaker.

So, what about the people who’d said to me that this movie was one long yawn-fest? Without discounting their opinions, I tried watching it with a completely open mind and I was not disappointed.

A bit of background for those who do not know what this movie is about: In 1969, the horrific, brutal and senseless murders of Sharon Tate and her friends rocked the Hollywood community. Committed by Charles Manson’s ‘family’ members, a cult that believed so implicitly in their leader’s vision that they were ready to kill for him, it shook Hollywood to its core. Particularly as Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s wife had been eight and a half months pregnant, and despite begging for the life of her unborn baby, been stabbed fatally with her blood being used to write ‘pig’ on the front door.

In Tarantino’s retelling, he’s kept to most of the truth, combining the fictional lives of his protagonists played by Leonardo di Caprio and Brad Pitt, with the very real lives of Tate and co. In splicing real film footage from Tate’s career, he once again bucks the trend of recreating everything from scratch. This does not divert from the storytelling. 

A washed-up actor and his stunt double are best buddies, having been through thick and thin together. Rick Dalton’s career is on the wane, and despite having bought property in Hollywood Hills, and being a neighbour to the hot new director Roman Polanski and his beautiful actress wife, Sharon Tate, Di Caprio’s Dalton is well aware that his glory days are behind him. In his downward slide is his pal and Man Friday, Cliff Booth, played by Pitt. Their career trajectory is also an examination of the rise and fall of the genre of the Westerns, and the lure of the terrible Spaghetti Westerns that flooded Hollywood in the ’60s.

Tarantino’s homage to Hollywood is heavy-handed and ham-fisted in many places, but his love for the industry shines through regardless. In this long (and sometimes rambling) tale, he examines the disparate states of human behaviour. There is Dalton’s self-awareness that his time is nearly up, there is Tate’s excitement in her rising star, there is the grime and the grunge of Manson’s cult and the shadowy side to their encampment, there is the muted loyalty of Pitt’s Booth and there are also many many digs at film stars past.

Can this retelling be taken as gospel? Of course not! Fiction is fiction after all, even if its basis may be fact.

Yes, Tarantino’s women are imperfect (cue: they snore!), nearly everyone uses profanity, Tate is portrayed as a vacuous, sweet blonde, his men are unlikely heroes and the violence when it arrives, is vicious, merciless and savage. These are all classic Tarantino tropes, and for a first-timer, they can be pretty shocking.

But look beyond that and you will see that what he is really trying to do, is change the course of history. In circumventing what really happened, by placing his protagonists as the obstacles to the murders, he is reimagining a more innocent world where evil was taken down before it could destroy beauty, innocence and life. 

Sure, that’s not what happened. But it could have.

In the distance between reality and Tarantino’s fiction lies his imaginary revenge, a sweet and futile attempt to alter the past.

Lone Wolf

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So what makes them do it? What makes an ordinary, quiet, seemingly normal teenager fire an automatic at his school friends and teachers? What makes a man drive his car into innocent pedestrians on a sidewalk? What justification is there for these lone wolf attacks?

Wolves are pack animals, just as humans are by nature socialised beings. Lone wolves on the other hand, prefer their own company. They live and hunt on their own. They are outcasts by temperament, by circumstance and sometimes of their own volition.

Nearly always after another chilling attack, emerge the clues that led to it. A social misfit, a dysfunctional background, a lack of love, a propensity for violence, vulnerability to ideological brainwashing. Taken alone, each of these qualities may perhaps lead a person to a solitary existence, a criminal career or even a mental institution. Together, however, they become so much more dangerous.

Can we, as responsible citizens; parents, neighbours, co workers, pick up on any of these clues, and report them to the relevant authorities? Do we, as a society, have a duty towards these social outcasts? Is it possible in any way to intervene and diffuse a potentially fatal situation from developing?

These are amongst the many questions that lie at the heart of the modern dilemma of home grown attackers. Are killers born or made? Are terrorists just victims of circumstance and conditioning?

Reflection and responsibility. Two things that might lead us to answers. Uncomfortable truths of the part we play in marginalising these peripheral pariahs, whose only moments of recognition and glory lie in death, terror and destruction.

Then, and only then, will we vanquish this multi headed Hydra.

Frape and the debate thereof

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This blog post arose from a funny experience I had last week.  Having been justifiably busy with the run up to Christmas, I was jotting a few random thoughts on my laptop, in the hope of fleshing it out into a blog post later. The thoughts were a jumble on fidelity, constancy, marriage, partners etc. This had been triggered by an interesting discussion I had had the previous day with some old school friends about soul mates.

Needless to say, the ideas were still amorphous, and the post in its absolute infancy. At this point, I did, what no thinking individual should do, with a teenager around.

I left my laptop unattended.

A few hours later, I found the following addendum:

Usually, you may find that that only happens in stories or ‘happily ever afters’ however that is not always true. I have pledged my life to another, a great being who understands me: he just gets me, if you know what I mean. He is my soul-mate, my other half, the one. I have pledged my life to him trusting him with everything, even me and my soulllllll. Thank you, thank you for being such a passionate and loving man. 

I have dedicated this wonderful love paragraph to MIKE ! Thanks babe for being there to feed me all the time (would be nice if u cut down a bit tho ;)). I love you no-matter what and you will always remain my hubby, you are one of the coolest soul-mates a woman could ever ask for. Thank you xxxxxxxxxx

 tehehehehehehehhe mummy like my creative writing?????

I had the biggest belly laugh upon reading this! Immediately I thought about the times I had seen my friends being “fraped” on Facebook. Their statuses being hijacked by mischief mongering sisters, husbands,children or friends.

I wondered if there was a blogging equivalent of the term, and went in search of it.

Wow! Did I open a can of worms?! While never entirely comfortable with the word Frape, I had just assumed it was another one of the teenage slang terminology that circulated for a while, became a part of the lexicon, promptly lost it’s edginess and was dropped just as quick by the aforementioned teens.

However, I had much to learn.

Frape is, of course, a combination of the words Facebook and rape. A violation of privacy, and of status.

Rape however, is no joking matter. By including it quite as widely in our daily usage, are we trivialising what is essentially a beastly attack upon another human being? Feminists seem to think so. And to be fair, I am not too far from agreeing with them.

Words like “Ho”, “Bitch”, “Nigger” lose their shock value over time. They become mainstream. And therein lies the danger.

Reams have been written about gangsta rap and it’s objectification of women and perpetration of violence against them.  Can Frape, a word that carries connotations of violation and abuse be the first step towards legitimising another cowardly misogynistic attitude?

One could argue it both ways, and people have.

However, as a woman, and as a mother to two young, impressionable girls, I choose hereon to NOT use this term. Vilifying it gives it the importance it does not deserve. Ignore it, relegate it to a store of bad taste verbs, and hope that the teens out there are way too smart to let it dictate their code of conduct.

In the meantime, however, sign off and shut that laptop!

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