In response to “Quite a bad year for guys on the screen” published on Dec. 28 for the Los Angeles Times.
Thanks for your thoughtful piece on the latest crop of cinematic “villains” as they relate to our current social divide. Outside of iterating the present roster of male crimes, however, you stop short of elucidating the actual relationship between the two. You seem to hint at the culprit when you point to “the villain (which) resides in our imaginations,” but how does that figure into the present social “dis-equation”? Might I suggest, Jeffrey, that you stop short of the knowledge of good and evil, the “heart of darkness” that lies at river’s end in Conrad’s novel or abides in the oil drilling site bunkhouse in “Wind River.”
The cellular knowledge of evil—as well as the propensity for deeply dark and heinous deeds—belongs exclusively to the male species. Viewed through this lens, one may be inclined to view our nation’s present “social divide” perhaps as more of a reminder of a central truth of human existence. A truth often as uncomfortable and unwelcome in these times of happy faces and, arguably, soon-to-be state-mandated correctness as that with which religion has long grappled—the broken nature of man itself. Regrettably, no amount of well-meaning yet ill-advised statutes and legislation will ever change that central reality. A reality which, one might add, rests squarely at the heart of all truly great art—which, with time, perhaps our current crop of social engineers will get around to “cleansing” as well.
Jeff Denker