Girls.

Before I begin, I would like to mention that this is actually only my 85th post. A friend of mine pointed out my mistake, and I realized the discrepancy at once. You see, on my "Blogger Dashboard," it says this very post is number 102. However, I have only published 85 of them.* So basically, I was once again fooled by the Machine Mastermind and made the fool of.**

* * * *

I just finished watching the movie "Gran Torino." I thought it would be a ridiculous, over-the-top action movie of sorts, blown way out of proportion and lacking a good story. Yet I was pleasantly surprised. I hope everyone out there has seen it, but in case you haven't I'm not going to ruin it for you... Go immediately and indulge.***

There are a lot of things I could focus on when reflecting on the movie, but one stuck out to me more than the rest as I watched. About three quarters of the way through the film, the major conflict is introduced. Gang members do a drive-by shooting of Walt's (Clint Eastwood's character's) neighbors. The neighbor's daughter, Sue, is nowhere to be found until she finally turns up beaten and raped a few hours later. Walt goes into his house and breaks some crud in his anger, then sits down for a while to think.

Shifting gears a little bit, I want to bring to light two different experiences that made this scene so powerful. The first is Dr. Watson's "Exploring World Cultures: Emphasis on the Middle East" class I took last semester. Each class, Dr. Watson would begin by opening with a discussion or debate on an assigned essay or news article from the Middle East of today, then delve into the history of the area for the remaining time. During a few of these discussions, he would remind us that every day in the world, thousands upon thousands of girls and women are trafficked and sold into sexual slavery.**** Yet we as humans (or, dare I say, Americans) have this tendency to ignore the horrible things happening in the world around us and focus on what makes us feel comfortable, secure, important. (Did you hear what Barack Obama said about the Bush administration?! How dare he!)

The second tributary to this emotional scene was a speech I heard from Donald Miller once. He was talking about our lives as stories and what that means as far as how we should live them. He talked about the protagonist in a story, and how he or she should be portrayed in order to get the audience to like him or her. Miller referenced the newest Rocky movie and highlighted how the directors had Balboa fathering a fatherless child, helping a single mom carry groceries, and changing light bulbs. Those seem like meaningless details, but in reality the authors of the story were setting up the audience to like Rocky. That way, when the final fight scene came, everyone wanted Rocky to win. If the authors had failed here, no one would care if Rocky got K.O.ed or not.

Jumping back to Gran Torino and Sue's savage beating/rape, I found myself feeling legitimately angry at the guys who did that to her. I sympathized with Walt for punching holes in his cabinets and kicking things over. I wanted to do the same. You see, the directors had set me up for this. As Donald Miller pointed out, they had portrayed Sue as an intelligent, upbeat, confident girl. A very attractive girl. A protagonist who I wanted to see win. Yet she didn't. When she showed up at the door, face horribly bruised, blood running down her leg, I felt like retching.^

Yet like I always do when I get a strong emotional pull from a movie (whether that be fear, joy, or anger), I took a step back and thought about the events out of the film context. This usually works because, for example, I realize that there are no such things as radioactive mutants out to get me, and that I am not in fact on the football team that just lost the championship title. Yet when I did that with Gran Torino, I came face to face with an appalling truth. Girls are beaten and raped on a daily basis. There was no stepping out of that conflict.

In fact, taking that conflict out of the context of the film made it even more appalling. It made me even more angry. How many intelligent, upbeat, confident girls get raped every year? Dr. Watson would say thousands and thousands.

I'm at a crossroads here because I consider myself to be a pacifist. I don't think it's right for a person to kill another person, period.^^ Yet I legitimately wanted to kill those guys in the movie Gran Torino for doing that. I legitimately would enjoy sinking my fist into a man's face over and over and over if I knew he had raped a girl.^^^

I really don't have a concluding thought on this just yet. It's definitely something I'm going to have to work out between the Man Upstairs and myself.


Thanks for reading,

-Daniel K




*Hmmm, what are those other 17 posts that were not published, you might wonder? I should start a "Commander Awesome Premium Membership." For only $10/month, you can get FULL access to all blogs, published or otherwise. Genius!
**Touche, artificial intelligence... touche.
***Though I will warn you that Clint Eastwood has what we in the adult world call a "potty mouth."
****This was always followed by an exhortation to stop this injustice.... one of the reasons I like Dr. Watson so much.
^Then I felt like killing.
^^I would go into more detail here, but that's a subject for another blog.
^^^Maybe the key here is realizing the difference between my immediate emotional reaction - the will of the flesh - and my prayerful, lasting reaction - the will of the Spirit. I dunno...