Sunday, August 07, 2005

Snuff Films

Here's a story that reads like something out of a Brett Easton Ellis novel:

Remember Karla Homolka, the psychopath who tied up, tortured, raped and killed young schoolgirls with her boyfriend and recently got released due to the relative incompetence of the Canadian legal system?
Well, a Hollywood film crew has made a film about her starring Laura Prepon from That 70s Show as Homolka. How are they planning to spin this story? Well, according to the film's website, "Karla" was "conflicted by her conscience, but still unable to escape." Homolka's own defense! Which was thoroughly disproven at her own trial when the defense played a videotape she made of her own self having a ball raping and killing a teenager! Moreover, how exactly is the question of murdering your own adolescent sister one that you can be conflicted about?

So, Canadians are not too happy with the movie. To explain this to Americans, imagine if a Canadian film crew was making a movie called "Dahlmer" in which we learn about "A nice guy named Jeff Dahlmer who was railroaded by an unfair society. They called him 'murderer', but wasn't he really the victim?". Would that piss us off a bit? Oh, how about if the French made "Atta" "the story of a man who never really wanted to hijack planes, but who had no choice". Get the picture?

Anyway, the film was to get its premiere at the Montreal Film Festival recently, but Air Canada pulled their funding for that one showing. This is their decision to make, of course. On the other hand, if you're funding a film festival, then you should fund the damn film festival.

In a statement that rivals Homolka's own for pure lack of human emotion, the director has vowed to fight this, ahem, "injustice against the rights of freedom of expression." And, freedom of profit-making, no doubt.

2 comments:

W. S. Cross said...

The French have a saying: "understand everything, forgive everything."

We tend to "understand" what we can't really comprehend until the point that we convince ourselves these sick, evil people deserve sympathy. Compassion doesn't mean letting the guilty get off the hook, though that's how it's usually manifested.

Rufus said...

And I think that's why I could never really be a good Christian. It's too hard for me to have compassion.