Derrida and Holiday Part 1

(this essay begins here: https://4kdirector.blogspot.com/2018/12/good-and-evil-on-holiday-introduction.html )

 

Abduction plots, Middle-aged male madness, and Death

For Holiday, I was offered the use of a remote location in Topanga Canyon and had access to an actor who wanted to play a character that seduces a young woman, drugs her and takes her to Mexico to be sold to a rich Indian industrialist.  In order to develop these plot points into a story I returned to one of the abduction ur-texts, Helen of Troy.

Abduction narratives and the Abducted

Helen was first abducted as a child by Athenian, Theseus, and then sold off to the King of Sparta, Menelaus.  As a teenager, Helen had several children with Menelaus.  While Helen was in her early twenties, the Olymipian goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, demanded Zeus declare who was the most beautiful of the goddesses.  Zeus, being wise about the potential wrath of the two losers, promptly appointed Paris, a Trojan prince, to be the judge.  In order to win, Aphrodite offered Paris the most beautiful woman in the world as a bribe.  Shortly thereafter, Paris chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful in Olympia.

Aphrodite did not mention that Helen was already married to the most powerful king in the world.  Paris travelled to Sparta and met with King Menelaus.  Paris then either raped or seduced Helen, kidnapped her or eloped with her to either Egypt or Troy, where later she was captured, rescued, killed, or escaped, all depending on who tells the story.  Helen’s story remains ambiguous because her character was not the point of the story.

Helen, ironically, “This face that launch’d a thousand ships” as Christopher Marlowe wrote almost two thousand years later, was actually quite insignificant to the story.  What was important to the Greeks was to have an opportunity to tell a great war story.  Helen was coincidental.  Collateral damage.

Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, kidnapped as a child, sold off at puberty, and given away as a prize, had no say in any of her life.  In Holiday, the abducted young woman, Anne, is merely a business opportunity with no say in her soon to be new life as a bride of a rich Mumbai industrialist.  No one really knows if Paris’ techniques were any different than the abductor in Holiday. 

As with the Greek myths, in Holiday, Good and Evil are not important distinctions. Was Paris evil?  Graham is a man haunted by his own reality.  Does that make him evil?  Anne is not a metaphor of Good.  These judgments of who is good and who is evil are culturally dangerous—a point I will return to shortly.  Anne is, however, a victim and thus due justice.

Keeping humans captive is nasty business and unfortunately has not been eliminated in the world.  Is it shameful, oppressive, and unacceptable?  Absolutely.  Is it Evil?  I’m not sure—that demands judgments.  God-fearing Christians kept Africans as property for centuries on this continent with no moral conflict, long after the formation of the United States, even after all other industrialized nations had outlawed the business.  Abduction and slavery of people is harmful, so what happens if we shift away from Good and Evil?  Does that make slavery acceptable?  Are all things relative at that point?  Absolutely, not.

The Good and Evil categories in Holiday are merely feathered soft on the edges—this is no relativist equivocation.  I'm not suggesting the young woman is not a victim.  What I am asking is, can we tell an abduction narrative without judging the act Evil?  A victim narrative not defined by the victimization.  Is that possible and still not condone the act as anything but harmful?  What would that look like?