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Showdowns
Youtube keeps sending me clips of showdowns. They have been extracted from westerns and gangster movies. Obviously I must like showdowns.
But the more of them I watch the less patience I have with them- because they're all the same. There's always a swine who seems to have the upper hand and a hero who is the coolest head on the block. Witticisms are exchanged in an atmosphere of menace. And then talk becomes walk as our hero resolves the situation with either a devastating put-down or an even more devastating act of violence. It's drama by numbers. Cheap stuff.
And so very unlikely. Was there ever a real person who carried themselves like John Wayne (in almost anything) Clint Eastwood (as the man with No Name) Tom Hardy as a Kray or Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby? I doubt it. We're being sold an impossible vision of masculinity- and one that looks a lot like psychopathy...
But the more of them I watch the less patience I have with them- because they're all the same. There's always a swine who seems to have the upper hand and a hero who is the coolest head on the block. Witticisms are exchanged in an atmosphere of menace. And then talk becomes walk as our hero resolves the situation with either a devastating put-down or an even more devastating act of violence. It's drama by numbers. Cheap stuff.
And so very unlikely. Was there ever a real person who carried themselves like John Wayne (in almost anything) Clint Eastwood (as the man with No Name) Tom Hardy as a Kray or Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby? I doubt it. We're being sold an impossible vision of masculinity- and one that looks a lot like psychopathy...
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