Madness

I’d been hearing about The Woman for a very long time ever since it caused all kinds of controversy at Sundance. When looking up some reference material for this blog post I came across another blog post about the film that contains a video of a gentleman who watched the movie … going insane afterwards. There is no other way to describe what happens to this man that eventually has to be escorted out of the theater by security. He had lost his mind.

Another woman who saw the film, was so disturbed by what she saw, she almost gave herself a concussion trying to run out of the theater.

The author of the blog post, Drew McWeeny, writes the line of the show when he says, “… I get what was happening to him. The movie hit him so deeply, in such a private place, that he was lashing out to try and maintain some sense of balance … I can promise you… that guy wasn’t acting. The movie broke him deeply.” 

I love that line … that the man was “broken” by the film.

I think I prefer that last one … I think it describes, more accurately, what it truly means to go insane; your mind becomes broken because it has suddenly changed direction … abruptly.

If you watch the trailer for “The Woman” and you read carefully the ratings description about violence, gore, and rape and then you couple it with watching the video of the man going mad after seeing it, I think you can probably imagine what kind of film it is. You can imagine what someone as daring and fearless and Lucky McKee wants to show you and wants you to experience.

It’s not about shock and horror. It’s not about pushing boundaries of what can be considered art and what is snuff. (I think snuff is a kind of art actually) It’s simply about truth. It’s about what I mentioned yesterday – truth and reality.

This man, the one who goes insane, has been torn from his dream – abruptly. He has been awakened to something that he cannot comprehend. What I find so fascinating and wonderful about watching him is that he wants to know “how” and “why” in regards to the film being made and shown. “Who would have done this?” “Why would someone do this?” He cannot begin to handle it without some kind of rational explanation as to why someone would want to … wake him from his dream …

How sad. How beautiful.

The calm and surreal decent into madness … questions … confusion …

“There are limits,” he says. “This isn’t civilization. I can’t imagine who imagines this stuff. I tried to take it. I couldn’t take it. People in the audience are clapping and cheering for the boy to be raping this woman but when I stand up and express myself and my feelings, I get hauled out.”

“I don’t want this stuff on my mind anymore,” he says, finally walking out.

He wants to go back to his dream … back into The Matrix … he wants to be blind, deaf, dumb, and blissful again.

Oh I understand, sir. Believe me. Believe me I understand.

Cheering and applauding rape. Encouraging young boys to learn how to rape this woman his father keeps as a pet. Audiences of women and men alike. Cheering.

But sir … this IS civilization. This IS the real world. This IS NOT The Matrix. This is REALITY.

How could you not go mad? How could you not be outraged when you’re the ONLY person who is capable of WALKING OUT while everyone else is cheering.

Oh believe me … I understand.

“I don’t want this stuff on my mind anymore …”

Women get raped on the street while whole GROUPS of people watch, video tape it even … and you’re disturbed by a FILM?

It’s not really a film though is it? Just because its up on the screen and people are eating popcorn the whole time doesn’t mean it’s a film. It’s a hole cut in the back of the wall, didn’t you know? It’s life you’re watching. It’s just actors depicting a day in the life of people who probably live next door to you or even worse … you. Isn’t that ultimately why you’re disturbed?

Like the Jerry Springer issue … it wasn’t Jerry Springer that people hated and despised, it was the showing of these people who somehow represented the average American person for all the world to see. Jerry was just the referee. These people were real and it’s them that offended and disgusted everyone, not Jerry himself. Who? Why? For what? Because this is life that’s why. These are people. This is civilization. This is reality. This is truth.

The world is crazy. Everyone is mad. But when we talk about this truth, we’re the ones with the problem … We’re the ones who get hauled out.

The security guards said it was because he couldn’t control his anger or his outrage. What is cheering and applauding then? Positive outrage? It’s ok to yell and cheer and applaud at the screen but it’s not ok to shout words of outrage, shock, and disapproval? That’s the logic of an insane person right there …

Sir, we had to ask you to leave because you were disrupting everyone else’s enjoyment of the violence, gore, torture and rape scenes. There is a time and a place to be heard, this was just not your time and it was not your place.

This is madness. The mind so beautifully undone. I find it beautiful to see this man undone because it makes me feel not so alone in the world. But then again it also means that I’m just as insane as he … doesn’t it?

The most wonderful thing about all of it is, I can also appreciate those who cheer and applaud the film – those who defend it – those who throw out the “disruptions”, “the others”, “the insane”. It confirms everything I have been saying about people, about the world we live in, about why I can barely stand to wake up in the mornings anymore, why I have become a recluse …

Those that cheer, even laugh, get raging hard ons and wet panties when women get mutilated, raped, and tortured for their entertainment … thank God for all of you … because you only prove how right I have always been.

“THE WOMAN is an exploration of the very definition of horror …” 

Oh please. No it’s not. How is that horror? That’s life. That’s truth. That’s reality. A woman being brutalized, a man dominating a woman, how is that horror? People being worse than the animals that they hunt? Old news. Your tagline “Sometimes monsters aren’t only found in the wild” Fucking stupid. Questioning what it means to be human? Upside down and backwards women’s liberation through a torture, mutilation and rape? That’s the most boring shit ever. People aren’t horrified by your film, Lucky … THEY’RE CHEERING IT. THEY’RE APPLAUDING.

They’re more horrified by the man and his outrage than anything else.

That’s horror.