A few weeks ago, I had a chance to watch the latest Jason Statham vehicle,
Death Race. The film wasn't too original, the script wasn't that compelling, and the ending was fairly predictable. All in all, a pretty traditional U.S. American action flick. It wasn't something I expected to inspire theological reflection; but sometimes I just can't help myself.
There's a pretty detailed plot synopsis
here, and my discussion will probably include spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
Death Race is a play off of the gladiatorial story, and toys with our culture's obsession with reality television. You can read about gladiators
here, if you're so inclined. Is reality television the 21st century version of the Roman gladiator pits? In
Death Race, the question is taken to an extreme. Some other artists have dealt with this same issue: Stephen King's
The Long Walk and
The Running Man were published in 1979 and 1981, long before the current reality TV craze;
Series 7 (2001) was one of the first films to imagine a world where we watched people die on television and enjoyed it. While we could argue that we will never get to that point, how far away are we really?
And, more importantly, as Christians, what is our responsibility in watching reality TV, in watching people suffer and seeing it as entertainment? Is it something we should do? Or is it something we should avoid? I have to admit, there's something that feels wrong when I watch Jon & Kate plus 8 or The Biggest Loser. Even knowing that a lot of what makes the final cut has been edited and manipulated so that I'll feel a certain way towards the characters (actors? personalities? people?), I still think of those people as real. And watching their suffering and passing judgment on them feels wrong.
The other issue that seemed especially vivid for me in this film was the issue of vengeance. I noticed a similar plot device used in two other films I watched recently,
Taken and
Fast and Furious. In all three films, the (male) protagonist has something horrible happen to his (female) significant other. In
Death Race, Jensen's wife is murdered and he's framed for it; in
Taken, Bryan Mills' daughter Kim is kidnapped to be sold into sex slavery; and in
Fast and Furious Dom's girlfriend Letty is murdered. In all three films, the hero commits horrible violence in order to gain vengeance for this wrong that has been done to him.
We as the audience are okay with this. In Death Race, we know we're supposed to sympathize with Frank, because we see what a good guy he is in the beginning. We know he loved his wife and baby girl, and that the only reason he's going around snapping people's necks and blowing them up is because he's trying to get out so he can be with his baby girl again. We know that Warden Hennessey, with her white clothes, blonde hair and red lipstick, is the enemy, and that even though she doesn't get her hands dirty, she is ultimately responsible for all of the violence that Frank commits. Bryan Mills slaughters countless kidnappers and ignores other victims of the sex trade, all in search of his lost daughter. Dom kills and steals and commits violence, all in the pursuit of the truth of what happened to his precious Letty.
What do we as Christians believe about violence as vengeance? With the very real war in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is not just a question about what movies we watch or books we read. There is something in us that yearns for justice - and yet, we're told to turn the other cheek to someone who slaps us on the right. Christianity is a religion of nonviolence, and yet it has been used to justify violence in the pursuit of vengeance for centuries.
I don't have a lot of answers, but that's not my job. I just like starting conversations. So let's conversate. :)
~peace&blessings~
