LaVar Hosting Jeopardy July 26-30 Stan Account 👁

So he treats the particulars of violence as an off-screen trauma. Or a background character detail. Or a laugh line. Or context. But he does not center violence.

Now this might have been avoided if he had any interest whatsoever in particularly how black people survive in America in our particular context of ubiquitous violence. Which frankly would be a fascinating thing for him to explore if he were capable of doing so.

And I would argue while he treats domestic violence flippantly (as he treats all violence flippantly, which we find unacceptable because of our intense interest in attending to and remedying certain kinds of violence on a systemic/societal level)...

He is very interested in how this particular woman exists within the ubiquity of violence in her life. And he’s very interested in how that racist cop, as a purveyor of violence, exists within the ubiquity of violence in his life.

So we get fairly nuanced explorations of those individuals. Not of domestic violence as a phenomenon, nor of police brutality as a phenomenon, but of a survivor(/purveyor?) of brutal, capricious domestic violence and a purveyor of brutal, capricious police violence.

And of all the adjectives before violent, McDonaugh is (by far) least interested in “domestic” and “police.” We as a society are very, very, VERY interested in those two adjectives.

And here’s the deal: as an exploration of how grace, forgiveness, and growth are achieved in the context of ubiquitous violence, this film succeeds.

As an exploration of domestic violence, sexual violence, police violence, etc., it fails so utterly miserably that it can only be explained by a profound lack of fucks given about those things.