Derrida and Holiday Part 3

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

Conflict Engines

On a rudimentary level, a Good versus Evil conflict exists in Holiday.  Anne’s choices are innocent and harmless enough.  Graham’s choices are calculating and malicious.  But the Good versus Evil conflict is marginalized by the intentional blurring of boundaries between those two categories.

The softening of good and evil categories in Holiday is a deconstructive turn that pulls on the lynchpin of this genre’s underlying power structure validating its existence: judgment of Good versus Evil.  Abduction narratives are all about a victim’s loss of power and how that power is regained. In these stories, the powerless Good overcome their weakness and destroy the powerful Evil.

Today we sell Good versus Evil in narratives where the powerless are seen as victims seeking righteous justice.  Audiences love them, but why?  Because we know Good triumphing over Evil rarely happens in the real world, and the categories are never cleanly defined.  These stories contain corrupt power relations at their core and require complex human relations to be reduced to simple judgment calls.

We like Good versus Evil because we project ourselves onto the "good" character.  And Good versus Evil is perfect for 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.  But Good versus Evil carries with it the damaging baggage of judgment, specifically judgment to a higher authority for which there is no further appeal—the need for one who is above the law.  This can be very disturbing to those disenfranchised by the law who seek regress. 

I have no intention of creating sympathy for abductors and rapists with Holiday—quite the contrary.  What I'm calling for is discernment instead of judgment.  What I'm telling is a story about a man and a woman who dream of being/doing something else.  In both cases, everything goes wrong.  Each reacts consistently with their character, one being self-empowering, the other self-destructive.