The Old School Lunch

Earlier I posted about an upcoming movie called An American Crime which is, most depressing of all, based on an entirely true story.

I’m not talking “based on true events” like some bullshit ghost horror movie, i’m talking true as in what is depicted in the movie really happened to real people and specifically a very real girl years ago.

The trailer has since been released and like reading about the true events, i’m shaken just watching it. If you regret reading the above link to the previous post I warn about watching the trailer because although it doesn’t technically show any graphic images, it has multiple triggers and is just flat out disturbing.

I’m not even sure why I’m following up on the previous post because it’s just that fucking depressing. Each time I come back to it, I wonder if I should even write about this again because in all seriousness it leaves you with the worst feeling.

But that I think is something that can’t happen especially considering that a movie like this was made and that the discussion following it has the potential to be so beneficial in challenging violence against women. I think it would be the worst thing if the reviewers, the viewers dismissed this as some nihilistic, pointless Chaos-type film [rape, sexual assault triggers in Chaos link] that was just a huge regret to watch. Rather, I think this can be something that people look back at and say “what the fuck kind of society are we living in that people think like this, that people do these kinds of things and that nobody stopped it until it was too late?” But to be realistic, and judging from the YouTube comments, you know many folks are going to walk away from this thinking “well, [the main cause of the abuse] was just a nut” and the special interest groups are going to hop on their soap box and talk about how “child abuse” could never happen today since all these safeguards are in place.

My worst fear with this film is that folks put on their gloves and it becomes a 100% gender avoiding discussion solely about child abuse and the responsibility of schools and neighbors to “watch out for bruises and changes in moods” as opposed to a discussion about violence against women in religion, about the ways in which women are maligned as weak Eves, and about the ways in which society in whole is implicated when something like this happens.