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Eve Tushnet
Monday, March 26, 2012
CREEP: One thing I really liked about the first season of Veronica Mars (and this isn't a thought I came up with on my own) is that it created a crime in which an entire society was guilty. Veronica's rape happened because of a long domino rally of cruelty and indifference, in which no one actor ever made the specific decision to rape her. There was no way she could get "closure" by finding out whodunnit and getting him locked up. Closure came only through changing her society and herself--the whole first season, her transformation, was the process of creating a substitute for the justice she was denied.
There was a moment in Silent House when I thought it might be headed down a somewhat similar path. The girl's father looks at what are pretty obviously his brother's disturbing photos, almost certainly ones of his daughter, and shoves them into his pocket to prevent her from seeing them. The central "mystery" or reveal of the movie is pretty clear from quite early on, I thought, but there would be an especially cruel twist if the father was complicit but not outright villainous. Let's say, for example, that he had a bad feeling about how his brother looked at young girls, but he never had what he considered "enough" proof. Let's say that the pictures showed girls "playing dress-up" but not naked. There are all kinds of mottled motives here: family loyalty, patriarchal norms in which women and children are to be protected but not believed or trusted, a desire not to be "hysterical," overconfidence in one's own ability to accurately assess character ("Oh come on, I'd know if something really bad were going on"), willful blindness.
And then his daughter's fractured mind reveals the truth: By failing to protect her, failing to believe her or see telltale changes in her behavior, he had hurt and betrayed her profoundly. His misprotection had the same effect as outright cruelty and so she would punish it with the same fury.
That isn't what happened, but I do think it would have made the movie better--and darker.
There was a moment in Silent House when I thought it might be headed down a somewhat similar path. The girl's father looks at what are pretty obviously his brother's disturbing photos, almost certainly ones of his daughter, and shoves them into his pocket to prevent her from seeing them. The central "mystery" or reveal of the movie is pretty clear from quite early on, I thought, but there would be an especially cruel twist if the father was complicit but not outright villainous. Let's say, for example, that he had a bad feeling about how his brother looked at young girls, but he never had what he considered "enough" proof. Let's say that the pictures showed girls "playing dress-up" but not naked. There are all kinds of mottled motives here: family loyalty, patriarchal norms in which women and children are to be protected but not believed or trusted, a desire not to be "hysterical," overconfidence in one's own ability to accurately assess character ("Oh come on, I'd know if something really bad were going on"), willful blindness.
And then his daughter's fractured mind reveals the truth: By failing to protect her, failing to believe her or see telltale changes in her behavior, he had hurt and betrayed her profoundly. His misprotection had the same effect as outright cruelty and so she would punish it with the same fury.
That isn't what happened, but I do think it would have made the movie better--and darker.
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