Taken movie discussion.
Introduction: I loved first Taken movie. Like a lot. When it came out I was 21, and I felled for it, felled for its politics. I was unaware of its hateful rhetoric, I agreed with its Islamophobic, racist views of the world. I was a product of the propaganda at the time, and I am extremely ashamed of it.
After some time, my process of transformation, de-radicalization, and de-programming in terms of politics, but also my personal perception of the world began. I read Fromm, Lacan, Deleuze, Foucalt, Zizek, Roudinesco, Baudrillard and at the same time, I started psychoanalysis with lacanian psychoanalyst, which lasted for several years.
Fast forward to present day, I have a wife, two children, son and daughter. I was commuting from work, 1-hour ride, and felt, yeah I’d watch something. Started watching Taken and I was shocked.
Before we go forward, there is something to say about this kind of movies. Taken re-started and perfected the genre of angry middle age (white, but not only, as Equalizer shown us), divorced dads who are phantasizing about violence, as a sign of powerlessness and frustration that has no way out. Revenge flicks where always present, but Taken gave it another spin.
The way this kind of movies work, are as follows, first part is the boring setup before the action begins. It’s mostly based on reality, people sees injustice, threats of violence, someone close to main character is being hurt/abducted/killed. It’s just a cover to unleash the violence on the screen.
The second act, is where the phantasy begins. It’s so different than act 1, that is almost ridiculous. In Taken, the first act is about Bryan/Liam Neeson who is trying to reconnect with his daughter. He fails, because he doesn’t care, he has an emotional burden with his daughter that has not been resolved by him in any way. In this part, he’s shown the way he is in reality, a pathetic loser. The way he speaks, the way he looks, acts around his family. He thinks he’s badass, but he’s not. It’s so cringe it’s hard to watch. He feels underestimated, he would like to show what he can do, but his ex-wife and her new husband look down on him as if he were a loser. And he is, but this is just a build up to act 2. Second part is just pure Fox News propaganda. I mean it’s so over the top, that it’s ridiculous. You know, Europe, France and Paris especially is where the rapist are. There are no real men, they’re being cucked by the Muslims. Our poor Bryan warned everyone that her daughter shouldn’t go to Paris, he knows how the world looks like you know. He’s badass CIA or some other operator. A preventer. Nobody listened to him, so as soon as his daughter left the plane with her friend, she was harassed by some Muslim trafficker. You know, like in real life. Women are being literally snatched from the airport by Muslim gangs in Paris, and the cucked French police can do nothing about it. I mean come on, it’s so manipulative, racist and stupid. But sadly, it works. Bryan confronts his ex-wife and her rich husband, he’s so agitated and visibly happy to show everybody that – A-ha I was right, look I will save my daughter, I will show you that you were wrong about me. It’s pathetic. After his daughter is TAKEN, Bryan flies to Paris to investigate the crime scene. When he found out a picture of the trafficker from the airport, he did what every professional CIA operator would do. Beat him up and throw under a truck. You know, the classic, standard procedure. When he confronted the Albanian kidnappers, posing as his friend from French intelligence (speaking in English, nothing suspicious of that), the ideology of the movie spilled out from the screen:
“You come to our country, take advantage of our system, and think because we are tolerant, we are weak, and helpless. Your arrogance offends me. And for that, the rate just went up another ten percent”.
I mean damn. What the fuck is going on here? You’re trying to find your daughter or are you on a personal mission trying to defeat the evil that you identify with immigrants for some reason. It’s very convenient and fits in with the right-wing rhetoric. And of course the torture scene, it’s basically porn, scene is shown in a way to give a sense of pleasure. For some, maybe even sexual pleasure. This guy (lazy, breaking the law, snatching our precious women, of course Muslim) is being tortured, he got what he deserved. So that’s the way to deal with this kind of issues. No systemic reforms, no integration into society. You coerce them with violence. That’s the ideology of this movie. If you haven’t got any strong opinions about immigration etc, after watching Taken you will have ready-made answers. And of course his daughters friend is fucking dead. Why? Because she’s a whore. She’s not as pure as his daughter. She deserved it. I mean it’s sickening. The whole narration, its psycho-sexual undertones. His daughter is alive because she’s precious on the human trafficking market, because she’s a virgin. There are no virgins in Europe you know, only God blessed Americans are pure.
Beside the racist, fascist ideology, the psyche of Bryan is conflicted, it is unable to cope with the fact that his daughter is maturing and she wants to decide for herself who should be her sexual partner. It is this conflict that is the cause of his outbreak of violence. In his mind, even the slightest chance that his daughter is going away alone and she will have an intimate relationship with someone causes enormous stress. So we can say that what is shown after act 1 is a product of his phantasies. The fact that she was kidnapped and someone could take her virginity, it’s too much for him, he must save her. Not to save her life, but to protect her virginity.
Well that’s Taken for you. What the fuck is wrong with Luc Besson.
You could say, b-but wouldn’t you do anything for your daughter? Wouldn’t you go for a murdering rampage to save her? No. As a parent, when something happens to your kids, you have to do anything to keep them safe and to look after them. Look after their mental health, do everything so that the inflicted wound heals. There is no room for revenge, rampage and violence. It’s just in your head. You fucking moron.
Taken is like American Psycho if it was unironic. Everything after the first act should be understood as a stress induced hallucination in Neeson’s character and then the daughter should just show back up after a week when she gets back from her totally uneventful trip. Would be a far better film
And we see pictures from her trip to Paris, taken with some Middle Eastern men she befriended in the youth hostel.
What makes the Islamophobia really pop to me is how old the script clearly is - the daughter character is going to Europe to follow fucking U2 on tour.
It’s like “Oh yeah it’s 2006 we need something with pro-war red meat for libs and chuds, so pull up that old script from '94. Script editing? Yeah we’re not doing that.”
Reminder that in the original script for León, the 12-year-old girl seduces and has sex with the 45-year-old man. It was supposed to be portrayed as a hot scene.
MATHILDA (con't)
"I want you to be the first to touch
me... The first to make love with me.
Nobody before you."
She stands up and modestly gets off her briefs without taking
off her dress. Leon cries, unable to oppose her. Mathilda is
too young, but she's also too beautiful and lovely and sweet
and tender... She sweetly, very sweetly, gets on him.
LEON(crying)
"Why me, Mathilda, why me?"
Mathilda leans over to speak in his ear.
MATHILDA
"...Because you deserve it, Leon..."
Leon embraces her. He's full of happiness, shame, so many
emotions, he can't control very well. But, hell, how
beautiful it is seeing them sweetly making love.
:yikes-1::yikes-2::yikes-2::yikes-2::yikes-2::yikes-2::yikes-2::yikes-2::yikes-3:
“how beautiful it is seeing them sweetly making love.” :gulag:
Oh wow. I mean I get it, Leon has child-like mentality, maybe he has mental disability, Mathilda had to grow up and be the ‘adult’ one. But still it’s gross and inappropriate. I mean what the fuck dude. Is this the movie is all about? Their love is forbidden so they need to go into hiding? Jesus in “Fifth Element” Leeloo is described a “sand-girl” who has the “beauty of youth” despite being over 2,000 years old. Oh fuck she’s a loli isn’t she? Goddamn you Luc Besson.
Leon has child-like mentality, maybe he has mental disability, Mathilda had to grow up and be the ‘adult’ one.
Without knowing anything about Besson, I got this out of the movie: Léon is essentially a childlike adult, forced into a parenting role. Mathilda is an abused child trying to grow up way too fast. She has never had a parental figure, at home she was only ever exposed to sexual relationships… So this is what she projects onto Leon, a lover, a figure that should help her simultaneously “grow up” and give her the affection she never received.
And it’s a good story. It’s super uncomfortable to watch, there are many moments that make me raise an eyebrow, but they are not unrealistic at all.
But then, knowing that Besson thought their relationship was hot in addition to tragic… Plus the fact that at the time he was writing the script, he was a 32-year-old man dating a 15-year-old girl… Nah, I couldn’t watch it again. Natalie Portman’s parents fought to change the script and the other writers managed to wrangle Besson into creating a good piece, against his will.
And of course his daughters friend is fucking dead. Why? Because she’s a whore. She’s not as pure as his daughter. She deserved it. I mean it’s sickening. The whole narration, it’s psycho-sexual undertones. His daughter is alive because she’s precious on the human trafficking market, because she’s a virgin. There are no virgins in Europe you know, only God blessed Americans are pure.
Taken literally uses staple tropes ripped straight from 80s slasher films. The virginal Final Girl survived because she started following her dad’s rules.
You could say, b-but wouldn’t you do anything for your daughter? Wouldn’t you go for a murdering rampage to save her?
An adventure in incoherence:
My brother is a Sorkin-brained libs lib, but he also absolutely believes he is the “righteous violent badass” that will merc anyone who threatens his personal friends (all adult women who he feels he is the protector of…ughhhh). Anyway, here’s a fun experiment, try asking their opinion on US foreign policy crimes. I asked him about the famous Madeleine Albright quote about 500000 children dying in the middle east from sanctions being “worth it,” and he literally just said “we have our interests.” After that, steer the conversation toward why reform doesn’t work under capitalism to get the ol’ reliable, “Oh, so you advocate using violence, eh? You have such a strong political position that you have to use force, eh?”
And yes, he does consider himself a sophisticated political thinker.
Ask him if he was the father of one of those 500000 children what he would do to the US to avenge them as a righteous violent badass and see if you can get him to admit that the US brings terrorism on itself.
It’s not easy to address this kind of things. Death of 500 000 children is so incomprehensible, that for him it’s just not very relatable. Protector of women sounds a little immature. I mean, women doesn’t need guardians, but reliable companions to push the shit treadmill called life. But that’s the thing with living a phantasy. You don’t have to push the shit treadmill, just the imaginery one.
Arguing with this type of lib is an excercise in futility. It works like this; in TV dramas, arguments are rapid fire back-and-forths until one party can’t think of something to say. This person is the loser of the argument. In reality, of course, arguments don’t work that way, but in TV land, being stumped is shorthand for being wrong.
So every conversation goes the exact same way, as a lefty, I try to start making an argument against one of these incoherent views of his. He’ll interrupt and say “so what you’re saying is insert strawman (or sometimes complete non sequitur).” Now, I’m explaining why the point I wasn’t finished making isn’t the thing he said it was…he’ll interrupt my explanation with a new strawman. Now I’m explaining why my explanation to the first strawman of the point I haven’t fully made yet isn’t what he said it was…he’ll interrupt…ad infinitum. The entire point of this is to produce the scenario in which he has made an objection that I can’t quickly fire back a response to, thus he wins. I’ve given up on him until the reeducation camps open up.
Whenever Westwing libs try and pull that shit, browbeat them about being uncivil and not respecting your right to say your piece. If you can fit in a snide remark that their school must have been shit to not teach them basic courtesy in a debate, do it. You’ll not convince them of anything, but it might make them sweat.
