Innocence vs. Ignorance

Today I watched a rape scene from a film that may honestly have scarred me for the rest of my life.

I'm a very sensitive person. Much more sensitive than many might guess. I feel what other people feel, especially if those feelings are sad, frightened, frustrated or broken. It can get overwhelming.

The clip I watched today was from the film The Usual Suspects. I hadn't even heard of this movie before. My teacher showed it to make some point. What that point was, I have no idea. But I do know it had nothing to do with the rape scene. Of the five minute clip the rape scene was a total of maybe ten seconds. Ten seconds enough to send me over a mental edge.

What makes me so angry about these films (and I've talked before about why I think R-rated films are a disgrace to art more often than they are actually art) is that they teach us to stop feeling, to not worry so much, "it's just a movie, it isn't real."

As I watched that scene, I watched a woman being raped as her children were made to watch at gun point by three intruders. My first reaction was that my heart felt like it was ripped out of my body and shock just took over. My second response was to calm myself down: "It's just a movie, it isn't real."

But I couldn't really shake it.

I kept thinking about it. I left the class and started crying. Then I felt stupid, so I pulled myself together, let go of a little piece of myself and stopped being shocked and hurt and felt a little more detached and a little less whole. And for what? Entertainment?

What is wrong with us?

I'm not an ignorant person. I know things like this happen in real life. I don't need a film to tell me about reality. I've helped battered women leave their abusive husbands. I've taught abusive parents to not hit their children. I've worked with girls whose fathers raped them and left them to deal with not only the emotional catastrophe that was left over, but a unwanted and embarrassing pregnancy. I've known women sold by their "boyfriends" as sex toys to their buddies. I know a woman whose husband was shot for having an opinion. I know a family who was murdered for changing religions.

I don't exactly live under a rock. I'm not an ignorant person. But, I'd like to believe that I am still an innocent person, even idealist at times. And I'd like to stay that way.

I think people who take the real-life hell of another person and use it to "entertain" others are disgusting, heartless people. But, according to them they are probably just "agents for change" or "truth tellers." Whatever that means.

Call me jaded, but I don't think that it works that way. You can't "entertain" someone into caring. You can't even shock most people into caring for more than a limited amount of time.

What worries me most about films that warrant an R-rating in today's society is that they, like my reaction after watching the clip, pick away at our sensibility, our humanity.

Sometimes I try to tell myself that it doesn't matter, that I just need to get over it, toughen/loosen up and stop being so sensitive. But then I start to wonder what would happen to me if I did.  Who would I be in ten years? five years? even five months if I just "let my guard down" and stopped caring about what I watch and how it makes me feel? Would I even recognize myself? Would I be the same person? What would happen to my innocence that I love?

I doubt that I'd like myself much.