Just a thought
May. 11th, 2006 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseThis sequence, strangely funny and sadistic, seems to suggest that if there’s one thing better than taking revenge, it’s watching it dished out – an objectionable premise which can only give queasy pause as you sit watching it.
From the Time Out review of Lady Vengeance.
I have to say that I rather agree with that sentiment seeing as while hands-on, visceral vengeance would presumably be fun and cathartic, it might actually be an awful lot more satisfying to see it melted out by hands other than your own. It might be less messy to. And as long as you can guarantee that it will be carried out, presumably for your viewing pleasure, then there’d be none of this trouble with worrying that the only way to get the job done would be by doing it yourself.
I suppose you might argue that it’s a rather more Eastern, indirect way of getting your revenge and it would definitely depend on exactly what you meant by watching your vengeance being carried out. But surely there’d be something eminently satisfying about being able to sit in your office and having the severed hands of your foe delivered to you in an ice-packed box? You’d then be able to chuckle to yourself over the matter and go on your way to dinner, rather than having to go home directly and attempt to soak the blood out of your shirt and trousers, leaving your charming dinner companion to wait for you while you fetch a change of clothes.
Hands-on revenge perhaps then seems a little gratuitous, more for effect than that actual act itself. Perhaps it’s a case of indulging in theatrics above and beyond necessity that worries me a little, the idea that you need to be splattering blood about to really feel that the situation has been resolved to your satisfaction. It just seems so unnecessary.
Brash action may well have its place but isn’t it more fun if you can be entirely subtle?
From the Time Out review of Lady Vengeance.
I have to say that I rather agree with that sentiment seeing as while hands-on, visceral vengeance would presumably be fun and cathartic, it might actually be an awful lot more satisfying to see it melted out by hands other than your own. It might be less messy to. And as long as you can guarantee that it will be carried out, presumably for your viewing pleasure, then there’d be none of this trouble with worrying that the only way to get the job done would be by doing it yourself.
I suppose you might argue that it’s a rather more Eastern, indirect way of getting your revenge and it would definitely depend on exactly what you meant by watching your vengeance being carried out. But surely there’d be something eminently satisfying about being able to sit in your office and having the severed hands of your foe delivered to you in an ice-packed box? You’d then be able to chuckle to yourself over the matter and go on your way to dinner, rather than having to go home directly and attempt to soak the blood out of your shirt and trousers, leaving your charming dinner companion to wait for you while you fetch a change of clothes.
Hands-on revenge perhaps then seems a little gratuitous, more for effect than that actual act itself. Perhaps it’s a case of indulging in theatrics above and beyond necessity that worries me a little, the idea that you need to be splattering blood about to really feel that the situation has been resolved to your satisfaction. It just seems so unnecessary.
Brash action may well have its place but isn’t it more fun if you can be entirely subtle?
