Abduction narratives and the Abductor
The abduction
of women as an opportunity to create a bit of entertainment is creepy, as in
perverse creepy. Yet the "loss of a loved one" revenge plot
usually developed out of these abductions has always been a crowd favorite. Despite the fact that these plots require
gross simplification of the world around us, what is even more dangerous is that
these stories reinforce a view of revenge as a means to justice. I assert
revenge only leads to death and collateral damage, never justice.
Culturally, abduction narratives are
dangerous. Any injustice perceived balloons into a righteous cause for
revenge and death. We love these stories, but they validate acts of
unspeakable violence by assurances of easily defined good and evil.
Furthermore,
the abduction narrative is certainly one of the most rooted in misogyny and
violence. In most of these narratives,
just as in the story of Helen, the women abducted are inconsequential to the
story. Many times they even die by the end of the second act, justifying
a third act full of righteous rage and revenge.
These women are
a pure commodity object, just like Anne in Holiday. Anne as an individual human being is
irrelevant. Her dark, challenging
journey spirals down into a hallucinogenic nightmare, only to wind back out
into reality with real consequences—an adolescent Alice through the looking
glass in all this popular genre’s brutal adult horror. However, unlike popular abduction narratives,
Anne is on her own—no man with a gun is on his way to rescue her. She must figure everything out for herself.
Holiday
lays bare the power relations in abduction narratives and how those narratives
feed into the culture more broadly as either validating or normative. The film confronts the audience at every
turn: a beautiful assault on their conscious. They should feel repulsed
and shaken out of their suspension of disbelief into the real horror of a young
woman being abducted and forced into a conflict she had nothing to do with, all
for others’ entertainment.
Holiday
is not a story of hope, of Good triumphing over Evil, or the virtues of
revenge. In fact, the only revenge
narrative in Holiday might appear to
be between the Russians and Graham, but there is no self-righteous revenge for
Graham, only Death.
Death
Death
is the extreme limit of our corporal existence.
If you are lucky enough to live to fifty years old, Death will seep into
your thoughts. This is often manifested
in males as “middle-aged madness.” Most abduction tales involve men 35-55 years
old avenging a younger female “loved one lost.”
The predictable result: a story about a woman close to half the man’s
age who truly loves him—lover, spouse, daughter—it’s all the same.
In Holiday, Graham’s internal, middle-aged
madness churning his thoughts throws him off his game. Anne reminds him of another woman from his
past—the tattooed character—Graham’s “Helen”.
Ambiguous as to whether he seduced her, kidnapped her, or she pursued
him, this personal Helen haunts Graham as a woman he once dared to have
feelings for. What’s more, he is lost in
a soul-sucking, dead-end job working for wealthy people who view him as
disposable.
The
Russian character might be misunderstood as a rival for the tattooed Helen, a
modern day King Menelaus out to reclaim his property and power, ready for
revenge. But the Russians only exist
inside Graham’s head. Pure and simple:
The Old Russian is Death riding into town in a black limousine, instead of on a
black horse. He advances slowly and without
emotion, creeping closer and closer to Graham.
Graham feels it. It’s in his
head.
Everyone
the Russians meet or speak to dies.
Graham dreams the Russian and the Indian Industrialist plot against
him. It is Graham who murders Timo and
Rosa, but imagines it to be the Russians to absolve himself of blame as
splinters of guilt burrow into his armor.
When the Russians are in their closest proximity to Graham, he is
closest to dying. But there are no
Russians, in reality. We are watching
Graham have a mental breakdown, of him feeling Death closing in on him. The memory of a woman he might have cared for
has been triggered by his latest, and hopefully final, abduction. That sliver of empathy he feels festers and
grows in his head, potentially costing him his life.
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