On Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:14:30 -0800, Michael Britt wrote: >I'm reading a research article on Just World Belief and somehow I can't >get that line from the movie True Lies out of my head. Jamie Lee Curtis >asks Arnie, "Have you ever killed anyone?" and he says, in a way that only >Schwarzenegger can, "Yes, but they were all bad". Perfect example. >Too bad some kid hasn't put that scene on YouTube (I checked of course).
Sometimes I laugh when I see this scene (I've seen the movie a lot of times) because it typifies the conventional morality underlying the Just World Belief. In the beginning of the movie when Schwarzenegger is found out at the party at the chateau, he kills a number of "bad guys" in an exciting chase scene. In somber reflection on this scene, one might ask who are these people? What gives Schwarznegger the warrant to kill them? Is it because it's just an action adventure film and everyone is expendable except the principle actors (though they too may die but in a poignant moment). If we assume they're all "bad guys" (not really human or, more importantly, like "us" or "me") and Arnold is the good guy (good guys never do anything wrong even if it looks wrong there has to be a good reason for the action -- reminds me of a conversation I read somewhere about an old upper-class British gentleman who was told that one of his classmates from "public" school had been a spy for the Russian during the cold war: "Well, I don't believe it but if he was, he probably had a good reason for it!"). As a counterweight to this scene, may I suggest something from Clint Eastwood. There is a scene in "Unforgiven" that shows up the conventional, Just World Belief viewpoint. Let me quote the following as a set-up and the scene itself: |Another motif in Eastwood films is the sometimes cruel meaninglessness |of particular truths. In Unforgiven, the character of William Muny tries |desperately to change his ways and forget his murderous past, but somehow |the trajectory of his circumstances invariably leads him to have to kill once |more with cold brutality even when his intentions are noble. He submits |himself to the fact that he cannot shake who he truly is, but simply contain |it until it is inevitably unleashed by forces beyond his understanding. It is |very powerful when Eastwood has to make the admission, pointing the |barrel of a shotgun in the face of a guilty, though helpless, victim, that he |has in his lifetime murdered every kind of living being. When he finally kills |him, it is apathetically, as routine as breathing. There is no explanation for it. | |[snip] So what is it Clint Eastwood is trying to say about human beings? |Some things are best left unsaid. Nor does Eastwood waste time trying to |explain. His messages are all as straightforward, direct, and economical as |the dialogue right before Eastwood kills Gene Hackman in Unforgiven. |Hackman: “I don’t deserve this, to die like this. I was building a house.” |Eastwood: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” |Hackman: “I’ll see you in hell, William Muny.” |Eastwood: “Yup.” |That’s when Eastwood shoots him in the face. Hackman's Lil' Bill is the representation of law and order, the keeper of the flame, the person who through sheer will and behavior shows that the Just World Belief, at least as he sees it, is maintained in his town of Little Whisky. Eastwood's Muny is the entropy to Lil' Bill's order, he is the one who has transcended the illusion of the Just World Belief and realizes that it is the man with the gun and who isn't afraid to use it that is the true source of power in human society. It is, however, fitting that Clintwood's Muny kills Lil' Bill for his "murder" of his friend Ned (Morgan Freeman who was beaten to death by Lil' Bill in order to get information out of him; Ned hadn't hurt or killed anyone but, perhaps as an example of the treatment of Black men at the hand of White Justice, he is the only one of the trio who suffers for the crime that the others have committed). For those interested in the scene where Eastwood's Avenging Angel of Death is unloaded on the self-satisfied folks of Little Whisky, here's a clip of it on the YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SO5VO2ixWY -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] http://mansurahmed.com/?p=1378 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7662 or send a blank email to leave-7662-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
