HOLIDAY, Misogyny, and Violence

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I read an interview with Rose McGowan in which she asserted it was not just the men in the industry that were misogynist, but the very product itself.  My feature project, HOLIDAY, is exactly about that.  I don’t care for films about women in captivity as entertainment, so I made a thriller that leeches all the joy from the standard thriller audience.

The abduction thriller genre is certainly one of the most rooted in misogyny and violence.  And here’s a truly sobering thought: the woman abducted is inconsequential to the story.  Many times she even dies by the end of the second act so the third act is righteous rage and revenge.

I based HOLIDAY on the oldest abduction story I knew: the abduction of Helen of Troy.  But Helen’s abduction was just a pretense to tell a glorious war story.  She meant nothing.  In fact, there are multiple narratives as to what happened to her after the Greeks won the war.  So there is a war story in HOLIDAY, but it is going on inside the head of the abductor – and there is Helen, the marked woman – in HOLIDAY’s case the Tattooed Woman thought about.  The abducted girl and her predicament are simply by-products of choices made by men who believe in women as objects.

And unlike many of these thrillers, she is on her own – no one is coming to rescue her. 

So can you tell an abduction thriller story which foregrounds the misogyny and violence inherent in the genre?  HOLIDAY attempts to answer that question.

I wouldn’t categorize the experience as entertaining.

So why would I want you to sit through 84 minutes of reminding you what you already know in your heart – that the abduction of a young woman as an opportunity for some entertainment does harm?

To bear witness to the violence.  How simple is it for a man in his 30’s to con a 17 year-old girl?  Watch.

To bear witness to the misogyny.  Do we want woman viewed as property to be bought and sold by men wallowing in some sort of self-absorbed, middle-aged male lunacy?

What then, does justice look like?

HOLIDAY, December 10, 7:30 pm Culver City Film Festival

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