It seems to add a little brashness to the romance, and she doesn't seem to mind. But damn, it's still abusive. I don't quite get it, is he a somewhat abusive guy? Or is it just okay that he smacks her around.
Still a great movie. There are love stories, and there are romantic comedies/chick flicks. This is a love story.
Slaps her around a BIT? He nearly kills her, for crying out loud. That's why when she asks him to sodomize her later, I was like, WTF's wrong with you, woman???
I love the movie too. My favorite scene is when he dives into the sea, looking for his knife and she wakes up, thinking that something's happened to him and that she's totally alone now. She starts screaming for help, it's just so hilarious!
But the disturbing fact remains- not only does he abuse her, but she seems to LIKE it. But that was exactly Wertmuller's point, so I guess it's alright. Besides, she's not saying, this what all women are like; she's only saying, this is what THIS particular woman is like. Personally, S & M is not really my thing, but I could totally see where she was coming from.
LMW: Wag the Dog (1997)- 6/10.
If she likes it, it's not abuse.
Terry
Your soul and your body are your own, and yours to do with as you wish.
Maybe the point is, if a man and a woman find themselves together and alone on an island, the relationship could turn primitve (Cave man style). Why bother with all the rules? No Police, no courts, no in laws, and no friends.
shareI don't think that he's an abuser in a traditional sense. I think that this is the only way he has of getting her attention. She is actually quite verbally abusive to him. If he was not that rough with her, she would not change, there would be no story, and no love. My hunch is that he probably would not treat other women he was romantically involved with that way.
But it is shocking for us to see, I'm not denying that. I think she loves him not because he beats her, but because in effect, he's calling her on her *beep* and no one else has ever done that.
...what he does to her physically she did to him verbally....wertmuller is not making the portrait of man vs. woman...but of the poor and uneducated italian vs. the rich and well-read one...the slapping around is only his way to communicate...when she asks him to sodomize her he hits her not because he find her demand degrading...he smacks her because he's embarassed of not understanding what she wants....and i agree that-even if she dosen't like the beating-she does love the fact that for once,she can let go and let someone else take control(something he does brillantly by providing shelter and food).
www.carlovandelli.com
I do think he's an abuser in the "traditional sense". Even before they leave the yacht he expresses opinions that women are beneath men and should be subservient and put in their place.
He's a complete Neanderthal. He's everything that he believes she thinks of him and his kind. He beats her, he beats his wife. Why Rafella doesn't kill him in his sleep is a mystery. That the director has her fall in love with him is disgusting.
There's a difference between BDSM and abuse.
SPOILERS!!!!!!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The slapping around of the rich bitch and her LIKING it is what made the movie SO DAMN EROTIC. YUM. One of the best movies of all time. The love story had a basic formula with a wicked yet pleasurable twist. The ending ripped my heart out, though we kind of figured she wasn't going to leave her lifestyle behind.
[deleted]
You forget that she feels the exact same way about him -- she, a member of the norther italian capitalist elite, believes that he and his kind are beneath her. Which is worse? She verbally abuses him and treats him like a second class citizen, if one at all.
I am not defending his views concerning women, or his abuse. What I am saying, and what you have missed, is that both are really one and the same. You call him a neanderthal -- she is nothing more, just richer, more educated, and a bit less hairy.
[deleted]
All women, deep down, love a cave man....no doubt about it...in fact, with all the wimpy guys in the world, they yearn for it...
shareIt might have had potential to be a good movie, but i could'nt look past the vile abusive misogynistic rapist jerk who was the "hero" of the film.
I know it's just a movie, but it was disturbing as hell to watch.
Cara_ra, I don't think you're suppose to think of him as the "hero" in the classic sense. Your feelings about his cave man styles on the island while initially you're like "yay, get that *beep*", I think are suppose to change like "whoa, wait a minute, he's kinda brutal". Then she kinda likes it and you have to decide what to do with that.
Rhonda Weasley
http://www.rhondaweasley.com
From what I remember, I think he was getting back at her for the way she treated him. It doesn't justify what he did but he was getting back at her. she fell in love with him and took all the *beep* he dished out. I guess it could also be some sort of masochist kind of thing?
"Robin Williams turns me on when he's in his Mrs. Doubtfire costume." -Kilanjo
Some female behaviors are much more disturbing than male violence (that is bad), but his violent reaction is what she should've expected after she treated him like sh*t...
I think that feminists can enjoy this movie only by thinking about the fact that it was directed by a feminist.
I don't think that the characters in this film are intended to depict what is "okay". Swept Away not about norms and what we might ordinarily find acceptable, it's about transgressions and and extreme states. Giancarlo uses isolation from society, his own physical strength, and Mariangela's lack of survival skills to entirely crush and subjugate her will. In pursuit of this, he abuses her savagely, repaying her prior cruelties a thousandfold. None of this is "okay", but it is what he does and she seems helpless to resist.
That Mariangela is eventually moved to something like love by his systematic torture might say something about her, and it might say something about gender relationships in general -- or it might simply be an instance of the Stockholm Syndrome. But, again, it's clearly not okay. He's using her forced devotion merely to inflate his own shriveled ego. And we eventually see that his ego is so fundamentally crippled that his insecurities force him to sabotage the "paradise" that he's constructed anyway...
You must have been so afraid, Cassie... Then you saw a cop.
its obvious the movie says that without modern society rules,a man is the master and the woman is the servant like in the caveman days,and that many (maybe not all)women would like that.Its a promitive state of things ,and the absolute power of the man over the woman,which can never exist in modern society is a secret female fantasy.
shareThis is a ridiculous statement because this kind of behavior exists nowhere in nature, and certainly not in human society. There is no known animal who likes to be abused. In societies where rape is common like with chimps the female chimps obviously don't like it, or it wouldn't forced copulation, it would just be copulation. In human society women have family and friends to protect them. This guy did what he did not because he liked her romantically but because he DIDN'T like her romantically. And there is a big difference between wanting someone sexually and romantically.
You have to ask the question why this movie's perspective isn't the norm in society. Men where the ones to create the basic laws we live with now so if men are the master why is society what it is today? In the US before the end of slavery married women had no more rights and in some cases less rights than a literal slave (slaves could work on their off day to earn money to buy their freedom so there was a way out for a small few). A married woman didn't own land, didn't have rights to her own body or her children and could be sent away at the whim of her husband, and had almost no way of making a living if she stayed single. They weren't allowed to divorce if the husband was unfaithful or abusive but could be divorced for being unfaithful or being unable to bear children. For a woman there was almost no way out unless her family was willing to help and sometimes not even then.
So why weren't women treated as badly as literal slaves if they basically had the same legal protection? Because of basic human nature and the fact that even if people aren't always monogamous they are generally still invested in their relationship and invested in building a partnership, not a dictatorship, with shared goals and shared feelings.
Humans, like with birds or monkeys or many other animals, have specific behaviors that lead to sex. One person lets the other know they are interested, they do something nice, maybe gives a gift or even just says I like you or you're pretty and then they both agree. That's romance at it's most basic. Boy meets girl, boy impresses girl, girl agrees to have sex with boy. Anything beyond that is deviant behavior, because the boy meets girl is the norm. And no one should use the deviant perspective to describe what the majority or either men or women want because it's just not true.