Disgrace
Disgracei is actually a pretty good film.
The plot goes something like, a geezer figures himself a man. This mistaken belief leads him to delusions of a distinct Nietzschean flavour - perhaps a little less depth of thought than you'd expect of what appears to be a tenured professor, but then again they always sent the refuse to the colonies.
So there's "Sooner murder an infant in the cradle than nurse an unacted desire" this and "Every woman [I've raped] has taught me a bit about myself" that, a healthy steaming pile of self-infatuation.
The geezer mercilessly and unrepentedly uses his superiority (as being white, and as being a professor, and most importantly as being male) to impose himself on a young student, who yields not for any passion, not for any interest nor anything else except obedience. To the superior, to the colonist, to the male.
Obviously this is right and proper in a historic perspective, and in a natural morals perspective, and in the culture she lives in (South Africa) this history and this moral body constitutes the norm. And so she yields to him, when she perceives to have no choice, avoids him whenever she feels she can get away with it and otherwise tries to live with the facts of life. Such as being a woman, and not quite white, and kind of young and all that.
The geezer is kicked out by the faculty, and moves in with his daughter, who is a pretty blonde innocent-looking lesbian girl living out in the bush, together with an older black guy by the name Petrus, who lives on the government dole (a dole rich enough to allow him to buy land from her, no less). The geezer discovers that his daughter's girlfriend moved out, and in general that he's now to take the role he was so glibly assuming for himself back in the city, defended by a thousand corners of a thousand shields of a thousand actual men.
Three kids come in and put him in his proper place. That is, hugging the toilet, giving himself whirlies. Apparently when push came to shove he wasn't a man at all. Just an old geezer and nothing more. The least valuable of the "women, children and invalids" group of dependents. He can't be fucked today, there's no hope he'll blossom into something fuckable tomorrow. He's dead weight, death waiting to happen and a drain on the resources meanwhile.
And so he bitterly contemplates the workings of the system he was stroking his ego with in the beginning. Apparently "sooner murder an infant" isn't quite as refreshing when you're the infant.
And so they sit in the car, the woman and the old man, the ex-man, the not-man-anymore and they share their experiences. It's sort of poetic, if you think about it.
On a more humorous note, apparently the custom for serial rape victims in rural South Africa is to shower with their panties on.
PS. I find it particularly offensive that the daughter is using her father's personal name. I don't understand how anyone can allow that. Sooner murder an infant in the cradle...
———- 2008, by Steve Jacobs, with John Malkovich. [↩]
