Deploring ‘the mean- spirited little-boy fantasy of how women ought to respond to cruelty.’
Re “Dancing the ‘Naked Tango’ ” (Jan. 7):
Lines in John M. Wilson’s article such as “. . . the abuse and degradation of some women characters is unrelenting . . .” and “. . . Cholo pushes her to the edge with him, hoping to influence her cold spirit and meld their souls” reveal all too clearly the mean-spirited little-boy fantasy of how women ought to respond to cruelty and that little-boy need to control.
Supposedly, the end (“inflaming her cold spirit”) will justify the means, as brutal as director Leonard Schrader feels they must be. Schrader’s savage story seems to say that the man must give the woman not what she thinks she wants (i.e., to be treated decently) but what she really needs (i.e., to be degraded) in order to “experience passion.”
This idea, that brutality can somehow equal love, is the very lie that threatens to destroy the women of this nation.
RAINEY HAYNES
Hollywood
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