Wash My Brain Out With Soap

My husband and I declared date night and thought it would be an extra-special treat to spring for dinner and a movie. We couldn’t even remember the last time we went to a movie together.

We didn’t have many choices, so I caved to Watchmen. Supposed to be about super-heroes he said. There were girl/women super-heroes so I was interested.

Guess what happens to the girl super-heroes? Violently raped and beaten by one of the a-hole male super-heroes. Another female super-hero was violently raped and beaten and then murdered by pornographers, but “she deserved it because of her whorish-lifestyle.” At least I think that’s what happened, it was cryptic and I had my eyes closed and my ears plugged to avoid ingesting more violent rape of women on-screen.

In fact, most the super-heroes were really violent, angry, mean, cruel, heartless murderer-slash-rapists who dressed up in costume to commit their crimes and yet kept talking about how they were “saving the world.” Huh?

About half-way through the movie one of the super-heroes shoots a Vietnamese woman he impregnated. She asks him to acknowledge his coming child and refuses to disappear so he shoots her in cold blood. Kills his own unborn child and its mother. He’s remorseless.

“This movie should be called ‘Plotless Gratuitous Violence,'” I muttered.

“Want to sneak out and go see Madea?” my husband suggested.

“Yeah, that will be funny and light. It’s PG-13. Tyler Perry’s funny,” I say.

I sit through another preview – ears plugged eyes slammed shut –  so horrifically violent that even my husband closes his eyes so as not to take in a graphically violent depiction of Satan and evil spirits torturing and killing an entire family.

Aside from the pot-smoking uncle and the wanton criminal behavior of Madea it’s almost appropriate for 13-year-olds, you know, if they are 25-year-olds.

Then there I am – plugging my ears and smashing my eyelids together – trying to avoid ingesting yet another very graphic, long violent rape and beating of a woman. Tyler Perry takes 13-year-olds (and the rest of us) through an examination of prostitution, how a smart college girl might end up on the streets, how she might be raped and beaten into submission by a pimp (he shows us how in graphic and horrific, bloody detail). How she’ll need a Pretty Woman moment to save her.

Hysterically funny, really.

There was a 9 or 10-year-old girl, with her family, sitting right in front of us and no one bothered telling her to close her eyes and plug her ears.

I spent nearly the whole “romantic evening” with my eyes closed, shoulders hunched up, and fingernails digging into my ears to avoid taking in and internalizing the atrocities in these movies. Of course, the most violent and horrific of these atrocities were committed against girls and women. But, you know, sometimes they “deserved it” because they were “just whores.”

What the Bleep is going on in the distorted, jumbled, sick and violent minds of film-makers?

How are people watching this kind of graphic violence against women (or humans in general) as entertainment?

How desensitized have we become as human beings?

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.

I guess that rules out the movies entirely.