The Killer Inside Me is set for release in 2010; its five minute trailer promo gives away a good chunk of the plot, which seems to involve quite a lot of graphic violence against women. This isn't particularly surprising, considering the long-standing media fascination with sex crimes, and the rising acceptance of rape scenes on prime time television (we're particularly reminded of the Last House on the Left trailer, which clearly showed a very young actress being raped). However, the level of violence shown in the clip is striking, and given the context, quite disturbing.

The film is based on a 1952 novel by the same name by writer Jim Thompson. According to Wikipedia, the novel centers around a young deputy sheriff living in a small town in western Texas, who has always felt the presence of some sort of "dark rider," to use the Dexter-terminology. Lou Ford is a sadistic monster, but he generally keeps his sociopathic tendencies under wraps (except for that one time when he sexually abused a young girl as a teen). As an adult, Ford takes up with a prostitute, in an apparently consensual sadomasochistic relationship that ends in her death. He then attempts to cover her murder by embarking on a series of killings, which ultimately ends up exposing his "sickness" to the world.

Judging by the clip, director Micheal Winterbottom has decided to stay pretty close to the source material. It's clear that Ford is a fucked up dude, who escalates from isolated acts of torture to beating his lover until her face is memorably described as "stewed meat, hamburger." Gwen from Sociological Images writes:

Clearly, Casey Affleck's character is a sadistic asshole (the cigar on the guy's hand), but in the promo, at least, the graphic, sexualized violence is reserved for women…who also appear to like it, at least for a while. Jessica Alba gives in to him, and apparently starts a relationship with him, after he pulls her pants down and whips her. Perhaps that's because she's a prostitute; of course she'd like a dominant man who plays rough, right?

The thing is, you could make this movie and tell the same story without actually showing all the violence in such a graphic way. Movies imply things all the time. It's a choice to show this type of violence toward women as a form of entertainment…and to show the women liking it.

Full disclosure: I'm a horror movie fanatic, and I generally don't shy away from violence on film. I have no problem with Tarantino, and I've seen more of the Saw franchise than I'd like to admit. And yet, Gwen's final comments hit the nail on the head as to why this is particularly bothersome. Not only do we get a truly horrific glimpse of Jessica Alba's face after she's been beaten to death, but we also see the start of their relationship, which begins with a beating, followed immediately by passionate, consensual sex.

It's this series of events that bothers me. Less than a minute in, we see him carry a screaming Jessica Alba to the bed, where he turns her over and whips her with his belt while she screams in pain. Suddenly, something changes - he's no longer an abuser, but a lover. Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying some healthy, consensual BDSM, but those relationships don't start out as a brutal attack. As far as I can tell, it appears that the first time these two characters meet, he begins to act out his violent fantasies upon her, but it's turns out O.K. (for awhile), because she likes it! This is a dangerous way of approaching sexual violence, for although she may be enjoying the spanking, it is clear that she is never in control. And this is the main problem with portraying rape fantasies and BDSM sex: If there is no discussion of power-play, it just ends up sending the message that women like rape or want to be beaten. Furthermore, Lou Ford's penchant for violence is explained away simply as a "sickness," which, while it may be good for the plot, glosses over the prevalence of rape culture. In making this an illness, particular to one individual, the movie is able to dabble in the same tropes that we see over and over again, and exploit the thrill of watching violence against women, without touching the greater issues at play. So unless Winterbottom is willing to delve into the dynamics of consent/control, The Killer Inside Me will be no better than a snuff film.

"The Killer Inside Me" Promo [Sociological Images]
The Killer Inside Me (Novel) [Wikipedia]
The Killer Inside Me [IMDB]

He took a seat in a booth with two Russian girls, but he kept looking to the stage, where she was dancing. Meeting his eyes, she thought, "Who is that old foreigner? Does he have any money?

Murray's thoughts were more lyrical."As I caught her glance, I felt she was drawing me into her very soul," he writes in his 2006 memoir, "Murder in Samarkand" (called "Dirty Diplomacy" in the 2007 U.S. edition). "She looked lost and anxious, like she really didn't want to be there. She defied the impossible by exuding, at the same time, such ripe sexual attraction and such innocent vulnerability. Her body invited sex while her eyes screamed, 'Save me.' "

So now they are together, albeit broke, in London; she made a play out of her life story, he sold his memoir rights to A Mighty Heart director Michael Winterbottom.

She doesn't love him; he doesn't ask her to; he wonders if she's incapable of love; she doesn't know; he adores her; it's probably fair to say his teenage children do not. He babbles on just like any expat dude about cultural relativism to excuse his philandering. But it doesn't matter, he's found true romance, and heroism. If only that were true. Does he think it's true ? You hope he doesn't. You'll never know until she leaves him.

Great story, though.

The Envoy And His Navel Liason [Washington Post]

I left the movie depressed. Depressed because I wanted to like Mariane Pearl because she had gone through so much and stands for so much and Angelina Jolie, of whom some of us here are a fan, is such a fan, but I had a feeling that the real life widow was the only thing standing between the world's most famous couple making a serious important film that could do for a mass audience what Control Room did for, you know, the NPR-listening choir. A Mighty Heart, in other words, had to be a bad book.

So I looked it up on the internet. Everybody loved it! She even had a co-author! Maybe I was stupid! (Duh!) Did I just not want to blame Angie?

So I bought it. I started reading it; I did not finish; my suspicions proved correct.

Mariane clearly, clearly, clearly loved loved loved Danny. To read the beginning part where she talks about how proud she is of him and how warm and perfect and wonderful he is is like reading some very precocious teenage girl's diary about how she imagines life with the man of her dreams is going to turn out. And who knows, teenage girls could love this movie. It could be the next The Notebook. But to the adults in the audience it seemed false, and immature, and dishonest. (I cannot speak for Kimora Lee Simmons.)

Like Daniel Pearl I worked for a distant bureau of the WSJ when 9/11 happened. (Unlike Daniel Pearl, I was not so much a great reporter.) Also, my distant bureau was Los Angeles. (Unlike Daniel Pearl, I mainly wrote about shoes.) My weeks after the towers fell were spent mostly in an eastern shitty suburb of San Diego called Lemon Grove, where two of the 9/11 hijackers had lived and worked and attended the odd strip club. The story was so impossibly big and important and terrifying-to-get-beaten on that they sent two of us down at first, me and an editor about twelve years my senior. I was reminded of this because in the first chapter, Mariane talks about how she went on almost all of her interviews with Danny, and interviewing subjects with a companion is really cool, especially, when they are the sort of people you don't actually relate to much, like this methhead we met whose neighbor followed a very fringe anti-modernity sect of Islam that had inspired him, it was revealed in family court, to skin his daughter's pet rabbit as punishment for playing with "idols" (Barbies).

Point being: people out there = weird. Situation = stressful. This editor = the only sane person with whom I communicated for weeks after this cataclysmic event.

"So did you ever think about, like, just giving your editor a blowjob in the car? Just to like ease the tension?"

That was the first question my friend Evan had when I returned. Evan used to work in porn, which might be why he's such a great reporter, because people don't get as creeped out when he asks shit like that. Some even answer honestly. I did not.

"He's married!"

But yeah, of course I had. We were all in this weird place with all these strange poor people (Muslims in America: not so affluent, a lot!) and all their weird skepticism and racist neighbors and meth fiend advocates and everything was really really really tense and all the editors back in New York were falling to pieces because their offices had been totally destroyed in the attack, and yes, for being with me through all of that I wanted to hump my editor, very much yes. He was the only remotely doable person I was going to happen upon.

It was not so easy to reconcile that with the righteous humanism with which I wanted to view the world, especially in the wake of 9/11, when suddenly my own country had experienced a tragedy on the scale of other countries and I wanted to believe that the world would share in our grief, that we were all grieving together, that out of tragedy ought to come some better understanding between us and our neighbors.

Also: The world was collapsing. Why all the thinking about fucking? Because I was human and horny and all this chatting up of poor crazy religious people was starting to feel really fake? Because I was human and I DON'T love everyone else in the universe equally, especially the ones who seem so unlike us? Or because in the movie version, there would be romance; in the movie version, there would be a Great Affair?

To read A Mighty Heart is to think Mariane Pearl is kinda in the latter camp without ever really have considered the question. In fact, to read A Mighty Heart is to think Mariane was actually writing the movie before her husband was even beheaded. I'm not saying she didn't love him sufficiently, but there's a scene in the movie in which someone wonders why she's not more weepy about things and it's because she can't help it, she's thinking ahead, about what it will mean, what sort of statement she can make out if it, how she can narrativize it. That's a common thing in a journalist, something she's so aware of she cops to it on the very first page:

It is the curse of all journalists, I suppose, to be writing a story even as you are living it.

That said, if anyone loves Mariane, Angelina Jolie seems to, because she manages to portray her in a way that is both accurate and gentle. We've all read about how they're friends. It makes me glad for Brad and the family that she spent all that time being crazy and fucked up. We bet she's a good mom. We hope she rubs off on Mariane.