Two young women
have just arrived in France and their introduction to the City of Light begins
with a flirtatious greeting from a handsome, young man. The women are unaware
that this man has just targeted them for abduction. Hence, the movie Taken entertains us with the horrific
hypothetical fear of being kidnapped in a foreign country. The theme of this
sensational movie illuminates sexual exploitation under the context of a father
(Liam Neeson) trying to find and rescue his daughter from an underground network
of brothels. The target audience is teenagers and adults because the movie is
rated PG 13 and deals with mature content.
The cultural
beliefs of the movie reflect the stereotypical plot structure of placing the
divorced father into the passive role of having little control over the
decisions made by the permissive mother who grants permission for their
daughter to travel alone with her friend. The mother encourages freedom and
independence. Therefore, independence from one’s family is an implied value,
which needs to be accomplished regardless of the outcome. The value of
virginity in the female is also addressed by the fact that the daughter is a
virgin. Virgins are valued as “diamonds” in the slave trade.
Chasteness leads
to the attitude that women should abstain from sex until they are married
because this prevents them from becoming “used” products that no one will want
to “buy.” The attitude suggests that chaste women are able to survive. The
daughter’s virginity enables her to stay alive longer than her non-virgin friend
who is immediately placed inside a brothel.
First rate and second rate “packages” emphasizes
the narrative that women are being sold as stock in the slave trade. The risk
of allowing young women to travel alone without chaperones suggests a cautionary
narrative: women are vulnerable prey because their bodies continue to be
labeled and sold as commodities. Additionally, women still need their fathers
or a male hero to rescue them from their predicaments. Male chivalry relates to
the mythic knight who rescues the “damsel in distress” in fairytales. Cultural
entertainment must fulfill the typical mythology that our hero (the father)
will successfully rescue his daughter.The positive value of the film endeavors to generate awareness about the international exploitation of women being sold as slaves for prostitution. A father’s love and determination to rescue his daughter is also positive. The negative value suggests that a father’s wisdom is not culturally acknowledged until a crisis occurs to prove that he was right. The superficial mother holds all the power and her decisions veto input from the father.
Finally, Taken shines a spotlight on the corrupt
society in which we live. The contradictory value that society cares about
women’s bodies being sold as products reeks of hypocrisy. Ironically, our
culture openly capitalizes on exploiting women as “X-rated” models in
advertisements, music videos, and film etc. Propagating females as sexual
products for images supports the same undignified idea that human traffickers promote—a woman’s body is worth more
than her brain.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/
i think you choose a great film to examine the relationship between parents and their offspring, we well as how the world seems to be changing in a way which permits us to become more reserved. connections that can be made from this are visitors that go to Mexico, or those that don't want to go to Mexico for fear of abduction. a boss of mine at work had a friend of a friend who was on vacation in Mexico for spring break and she was kidnapped, cut open, and used her body to attempt to smuggle drugs across the border. the rating seems to be very fitting on a film like this because if it was rated R, not many teenagers under 17 would go see it. i believe that the creators did this so they could make their point clear that when you go out to these places where you are essentially alone, you have to be very careful. great analysis
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how you talk about how Taken is so rapped up in the profoundly fucked-up views of femininity and masculinity that are prevalent in our culture. That kind of makes me think of an idea I had to deconstruct/weird up action films the same way Evangelion did giant robot anime and Twin Peaks did for the cop show. It'd take the idea of the action-hero-stopping-terrorists-at-the-behest-of-a-government-organization and start it with the weird twist of the terrorists having powers of a disturbing and unnatural nature and the homeland our hero is defending being slightly creepy and fascistic.
ReplyDeleteBut then the twist comes that he is working at the behest of a disturbing conspiracy by men in suits and wire glasses to keep the fascistic state of the world by manipulating his (and the people he works with's) psychological issues (All foc course stemming from this warped, twisted view of masculinity, and the terrorists are actually people who were outside of/hurt by the system and found a way to get free under their own internal power. And the disposable "Girls-of-the-week" are actually all replicant-type clones of a single person.