Monday, March 30, 2009

Untraceable and insanity

Yesterday, I watched Untraceable starring Diane Lane. This movie was similar to Lolita in its encounter with the abnormal mind. Owen Reilly, played by Joseph Cross is a boy who has a site where people are tortured and killed. He rigs whatever torture device he chooses to use in a way that the more people that log onto the site, the faster the victim dies. The boy who was responsible for all the murders was always referred to as” a piece of shit”, and I did not think that was entirely fair. How about the people who after realizing how the site worked continued to log onto it, or the people who had given created this monster by making a public spectacle of his father’s death? I am not defending Humbert’s act in any way, but do we as a community ever fantasize about doing what Humbert did, or anything equally outlandish? If no one else was there to make sure we were reacting to Humbert the way society expected us to, would we see him differently? On the movie, when the site killwithme.com was pulled up, and there were people being tortured and killed, on the side there was an area in which people were blogging. Some were saying really nasty things, some were laughing, others wondering where they could download the torture to watch it over and over again. These people seemed to have a mask they could hide behind. They could say what they were really thinking because as they were anonymous, they feared no consequences from society. They could wake up the next day, show their faces in public, and no one would be any wiser.
To some degree we are all mentally insane, but would it benefit or hinder society if everyone was to come out and claim insanity? I guess it is the difference between killing someone and “simply” thinking about it, but how big is that difference?

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