The good, the bad, and the insane

Should we sweep outdated codes of what is right under the table or allow them to stand as a lesson in history asks CONSTANTINOS PSILLIDES

Ever since I was a kid, I have had a soft spot for spaghetti westerns. Fake blood, ridiculously protracted shootouts, vast empty plains painted in Sergio Leone’s unique cinematography, a silent gunslinger taking on an army of bad guys. At the same time, an Ennio Morricone theme plays in the background. What’s not to love?

So, it was with great surprise that I saw a movie suggestion on Netflix for a spaghetti western last week that not only had never I seen, I never even knew it existed. The movie is called High Plains Drifter and to top everything off, Clint Eastwood was in it, playing the beloved Man with no Name character that made him famous. I was blown away. How on earth have I not seen this before?

It turns out there was a pretty good reason.

The movie unfolds like pretty much all westerns. A stranger with a mysterious past comes riding into a dusty frontier town. He immediately heads for the saloon, where he is greeted with unnecessary hostility from the local tough guys, and a gunfight breaks out. I can see the patrons’ Yelp reviews: folksy place, good service, got shot. One star.

Things then took a turn.

Hero walks out of the bar drunk, bottle in his hand, and comes across a woman (played by Norma Bloom) who insults him. So he does the only reasonable thing. He rapes her.

I want to make this extremely clear. The crime doesn’t take place off-screen. There are no insinuations. The ‘hero’ doesn’t menacingly look at her, cackling in a manner that suggests evil intentions to appear some time later with a scratched face. Nope. The viewer is offered the entire scene, front and centre, with all the screaming and desperate fighting that comes along with it. There is no nudity, thankfully, but the agony is all too real. And if that wasn’t disturbing enough, we are led to believe that the victim had started enjoying it by the end. Oh, and there was a guy leering in the corner, watching while he was licking his lips.

We are not done yet. In the next scene, the ‘hero’ goes for a bath in the local barbershop, and while he is in the tub, smoking, the woman barges in with a gun to exact revenge. I knew it was impossible to kill the main character 15 minutes into the movie, but a part of me hoped that’s where the plot was headed. She misses, of course, as our ‘hero’ puts his head in the water and the is woman dragged away screaming while our ‘hero’ emerges from the water unscathed. But look! His cigar is now wet! What a delightful movie!

The men of the town then hold a meeting to decide whether they should hire the Stranger to protect them from outlaws, but the meeting is interrupted by the screaming woman. She demands that someone punishes the ‘hero’ for what he did. She is told to drop the hysterics. That was as much as I could take on a Wednesday afternoon, and I turned it off.

By the way, this movie came out in 1973, when Eastwood was already an established movie star. Also, he wrote and directed it. He was not a young actor, getting any role possible, no matter how horrible it was so that he could get his foot in the door. This scene was a creative choice consciously made by Eastwood. Make with that information whatever you want.

The movie gives somewhat of an excuse for the behaviour of the ‘hero.’ By the end, he is supposed to be an avenging spirit, coming back from the dead to deliver just punishment to the townsfolk. Sure, Clint, sure.

This movie is by no means the only one that uses graphic sexual assault as a plot device, and there are far worse rape scenes. But there is a reason this has become increasingly rare. People change. Society changes. Something that was acceptable 50 years ago today is inconceivable.

Here’s the fistful of dollars question: Do I believe Netflix should take the movie down? The answer is ‘no.’ Doing that will sweep the problem under the carpet. Pretending that there wasn’t a time when a woman telling people she was sexually assaulted was treated as being hysterical. Instead, they should go the Looney Tunes DVD way and at least inform viewers, especially younger ones. Art is supposed to instigate change, so maybe films and outdated TV shows can make this their final purpose and makes us wonder: if people used to be OK with things that are now abhorrent, is there something that is today considered acceptable that will shock people 50 years from now?