What: Abduction Narratives Part Four Good V Evil

Implicit in the Good vs Evil conflict is judgement about right and wrong.  We like these stories because we wish we were these "good" characters and life were this clearly defined.  And we especially like the Good v Evil conflict with sex trafficking stories because anyone with even a minimal sense of justice would agree that the abuse, sale and/or ownership of people is wrong and destructive -- evil or no.  This is the difference between judgment and discernment.

So I asked myself why not pick the genre that most depends on judgement to unhinge Good v. Evil?  What could possibly go wrong?

Of course the storytelling consequence of this unhinging -- only a slight blurring, really -- is devastating.  First, there can no longer be a clear protagonist and antagonist -- as is the case with Holiday.  Anne is as close to a protagonist as the story gets, but she's only semi-conscious for a third of the story.  Also, since the story tracks emotionally from Anne's POV, the audience is made to start liking Graham just like she does.  But audiences hate being fooled and they don't like developing empathy for the Evil character.

What I'm getting at is that without a conflict to move the film forward, the story mushes to a halt, leaving only unmotivated character actions moving us through plot points.  You need conflict to keep the audience pulled forward into the future -- without getting too Heideggerian -- to keep them interested.

There is conflict driving Holiday -- five of them in fact -- all interweaving throughout the story based on ideas put forth by 20th century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

I have no intention to create sympathy for abductors and rapist.  Quite the contrary.  What I'm calling for is discernment instead of judgement. If anything, what I'm telling a story about is a man and a woman who dream of being/doing something else.  We are watching both in a state of Deleuzian becoming.

In both cases, everything goes wrong.  One reacts with rage and violence, the other with cunning and violence.  Judgement in either case is hardly justice.  Judgement condemns us to infinite failure against an ideal standard.  Discernment, which acknowledges we possess both the life-affirming and destructive, asks the question, what are you doing?