Warning: Conclusion May Contain Triggers
(Some Film Spoilers in Post)
Last week, my life-partner Tom and I watched Salvation, the Danish tribute to Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti Westerns, with Mads Mikkelsen as the iconic “loner” whose wife is raped then killed, along with their young son, in the early scenes, and who then searches for vengeance.
Salvation is also a tribute to the iconic Western “lone, good man,” defending the rest of the town, as in High Noon and Firecreek, although no one else in the place stands up with the “hero” to fight evil until the hero reluctantly fights back against the vicious gang himself.
Salvation is a pretty interesting take on the iconic Western: Mads’ character is an immigrant rather than a stranger, and has already settled and prospered enough to bring his wife and son over. Salvation is also a fair tribute to the “Man with No Name” series as well as to the “good man as reluctant defender” Western icon.
Mads’ character does have a name — John — and is a more realistic shot than the character Clint Eastwood made famous in Leone’s films (i.e., it always takes John several shots to kill someone). John is first rescued from the gang by his brother, and then eventually joined by “The Princess” (Eva Green), who appears to have been the captive “wife” of one of the rapists/murderers and who had her tongue cut out by Indians when she was kidnapped as a young girl. The Princess comes to John’s aid in fighting the gang members after they kill John’s brother, and only one other town member lends his aid: a boy whose grandmother was killed by the gang. At first, John refuses the boy’s help, telling him, “You’re just a kid.” He replies, “I’m almost 16.” John then accepts his offer. The young boy dies helping John. At the end, the Princess leaves the town with John (from which I inferred that no one in the town had ever protected her from the gang members).
This post is not a review of Salvation. Instead, it is about a discussion that ensued after my partner Tom made a surprising comment about Mads’ looks in the film, which led me to an epiphany about how one man — my man — judges male actors’ looks in films and television.
“Mads is actually quite good-looking, isn’t he?” said Tom in the middle of an important scene.
I was shocked. I’d never heard him say something like that before. Not about a male actor’s looks. At first, I thought it was because we were watching a Western, one of Tom’s favorite genres. Then I thought it might be because John was already seeking “justice” by killing the bad guys. But Tom said it when Mads’ character John wasn’t actually looking his best (above). Not classically handsome or anything. So I wondered what had suddenly made Tom comment on a male actor’s looks: something he’s never done in our 22 years together, but which he constantly does about female actors if he finds them attractive. (I don’t know what female actors he finds unattractive because he doesn’t make comments like that.)
“You just noticed that Mads is good-looking?” I said.
“I guess.”
“You didn’t think he was attractive in Hannibal?”
“He was a serial killer and a cannibal,” said Tom, as if he had watched more than the final season of Hannibal, which, by the way, he was really watching for Gillian Anderson, whom he continually called “stunning” and “gorgeous.”
“You never commented on Mads’ looks before.”
“I guess I never noticed.”
“You didn’t comment on him in King Arthur.”
“Mads was in King Arthur?” said Tom. “He wasn’t that pretty boy, was he?”
“What ‘pretty boy’?”
“The one with two swords.”
“That was Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) with the two swords. Mads played Tristan.”
“Which one was Tristan?”
“The one with the hawk.”
“Oh, that was Mads? He was cool. He fought Stellan [Skarsgård, who played Saxon invader Cerdic] at the end.”
“Tristan got killed.”
“Stellan looked over at Clive [Owen, who was King Arthur] to make sure he was watching before he killed Tristan.”
I was stunned that Tom remembered that detail, despite the number of times we’ve watched the film, which is one of our favorites.
“The actor who played Galahad in King Arthur was in Hannibal, too.”
“Which one was Galahad?”
“Hugh Dancy.”
“Oh, that boy,” said Tom after I found a picture. “Who was he in Hannibal?”
“He played the special FBI agent, Will Graham,” I said, showing him another photo. “He was trying to help catch Hannibal.”
“I remember that boy now,” said Tom. “They were trying to make it seem like he and Hannibal loved each other, but without their being homosexual.”
By that time, I noticed that Tom was consistently making a distinction between “men” and “boys,” though all the actors we were discussing are grown men. Even if they were playing warrior knights, such as Lancelot and Galahad in King Arthur, Tom was referring to some of them as “boys.” Before I had a chance to ask about this distinction, he made an even more startling comment.
“That boy in Hannibal was about the same as that red-head boy.”
“What red-head boy?”
“That red-head husband in the past.”
By now, I was most sincerely confused, since we were watching Salvation and The Princess’ husband had been dark-haired, and he’d only been killed by Mads’ character a few days before.
“What red-head husband in the past?” I said.
“The red-head husband in the show with the woman who fell through the rocks.”
“You mean Outlander?”
“If that’s the one where the woman has two husbands,” said Tom, “one in the past and one in the future.”
Did Tom really just make a comment about Outlander?
My Tom?
He’d only watched the show twice — the final two episodes — though he knew the premise, vaguely, and had caught a couple of glimpses of Caitriona Balfe (Claire) and Sam Heughan (Jamie) when they were nude (as he was passing through the room where I was watching Outlander, to return to the room where he was watching sports).
“You mean Jamie, the Scottish husband?”
“Is he the boy who got his hand nailed to the table by that ugly man in the prison?”
“He’s the man who got his hand spiked…”
“The boy who got raped by that ugly man.”
“His name’s Jamie,” I said. “And he’s the man who got raped by Black Jack Randall.”
“The ugly guy who threatened to rape the red-head boy’s wife?”
“Black Jack Randall,” I said, certain now that we were, indeed, discussing Outlander.
“That’s the guy who raped the boy?” said Tom, persisting in using the word “boy” to describe Sam Heughan’s character.
“Black Jack Randall raped Jamie.”
“That ugly guy,” said Tom, “who raped that boy and then tried to make it look like some kind of love scene or something.”
“They were probably only doing what the writers and director told them to do. I think I read that they were trying to make one of the scenes between the two actors look like Michelangelo’s Pietà.“
“That statue of Jesus after they took him off the cross and his mother was holding him?”
“They might have been trying to make Jamie a symbolic Christ figure… I don’t know. It didn’t work for me.”
“None of it worked for me,” said Tom. “It was disgusting and horrible, what that vicious ugly man did to that poor boy.”
He kept calling Tobias Menzies (Black Jack Randall) “ugly,” and he kept referring to Sam Heughan (Jamie) as a “boy.” I thought I was beginning to understand what Tom was unconsciously saying, but I wasn’t sure.
“You know that the actor who played Black Jack Randall also played Claire’s other husband, right?”
“What did he look like?” said Tom.
“It was the same actor,” I said. “Only his name was Frank when he was her husband in 1945.”
“That’s not the same man,” said Tom after looking at the photo above.
“It’s the same actor,” I said, showing him another view. “Honest.”
“That’s not the same guy.”
“It is the same guy.”
“No, it’s not,” said Tom, looking at the picture (above) with Tobias and Cait. “That guy is not ugly.”
“Is he good-looking?” I said. “Like Mads?”
Tom stared at the photo of Cait and Tobias, as Claire and Frank on their second honeymoon in Scotland, before Claire was transported through the stones at Craigh na Dun to Scotland two hundred years in the past.
“No. He’s not good-looking. Just average. But he’s certainly not ugly like the guy who raped the boy.”
“I swear to you, it’s the same actor,” I said. “Tobias Menzies.”
After looking at the side-by-side photo (above) for a while, he said, “How’d they make him look so ugly then?”
“All they did, as far as I know, was put a wig or hair-extensions on him,” I said. “And he acted like he had a facial tick.”
“He is not a good-looking man,” said Tom, handing back the picture of Tobias. “He’s ugly. In fact, he’s extremely ugly.”
“Even as Frank? Her husband in the future.”
“Then he’s just average. Unremarkable.”
“Why not good-looking? When he’s Frank, I mean.”
“Because he didn’t save his wife when he heard her calling at the stones. He just cried like a baby.”
Now I was really caught off-guard. When had Tom seen that? Before the final two episodes, which he watched to be morally supportive of me in case I got triggered since I’d heard there were torture and rape scenes in them, I wasn’t aware that Tom had seen anything substantial in Outlander.
I knew he’d caught a glimpse of nude Sam in the water because Tom said, “You know men didn’t look like that back then, don’t you? Men don’t look like that now unless they work out at a gym all the time.”
I knew he’d gotten a good long look at nude Cait in one of the sex-scenes with Sam because he was standing there staring until the scene ended, when he said, “Her breasts look better when she’s lying down” before walking away.
I guess he’d also seen Frank weeping at the rocks and heard Claire calling to him, though I’d never realized Tom knew what was going on in the show. I never discussed it with him because he doesn’t like fantasy and thought the premise was silly, and he rarely reads my blogs. (I don’t mind: he reads my books, which is a much bigger commitment, and he knows what I blog about.) I was still confused about Tom’s association between Will and Jamie, however.
“Why did you say that Will Graham in Hannibal was just like Jamie in Outlander?”
“Because one didn’t stop a serial killer and the other didn’t kill the ugly bastard that raped him.”
“You think Will should have killed Hannibal?”
“Of course, he should have.”
“He pushed Hannibal off a cliff,” I said.
“No, he hugged him off a cliff and they both fell together, like they were lovers about to have sex or something. And they probably survived for another season. So it was just stupid.”
I was starting to understand this film world-view. A male character’s being “stupid” can make the actor playing him a “boy.” A male character not killing another male character he knows to be a serial killer can make the former one a “boy.” A male character’s not killing his rapist can make him a “boy.” After all, the first time Tom ever remarked about Sam Heughan as Jamie, when he saw him nude in the water, he referred to him as a “man,” saying that “men” didn’t have bodies like that back then. After Jamie was raped by Black Jack Randall, he and the actor playing him became a “boy.”
I wondered what “boys” were — attractive, unremarkable, or ugly — in the world according to Tom.
“Do you think Jamie’s good-looking?” I said.
“Which one’s Jamie?”
“The red-head husband in the past.”
“The one who gets tortured and raped.”
“Right.”
“He’s a boy.”
“But is he good-looking?”
“He’s a boy,” said Tom. “With a weight-machine body.”
“Is he ‘average,’ like her husband Frank. Or ‘ugly,’ like Black Jack Randall?”
“He’s just a kid,” said Tom.
So, no comments or judgment on a boy’s looks, even if the “boy” is an adult male actor.
“But you think Mads is attractive.”
“He’s a good-looking man,” said Tom.
“But you never thought he was good-looking in Hannibal,” I said. “I even asked you about it.”
“I said I didn’t notice.”
“What about Mads in this picture?” I said.
“He looks good in glasses. He’s very manly.”
“It’s from The Hunt.”
“What’s that about?” said Tom.
“See the little girl? She’s one of his Kindergarten students who says that he molested and raped her. The whole town…”
“Is he guilty?”
“What?”
“Did he hurt the little girl?”
“No,” I said. “She doesn’t even realize what’s she’s saying about him.”
“How can she not realize that?”
I explained that her older brother and his friend had been watching porn on their tablets, and showed it to her in passing, as a joke, saying something like, “Look at that big ugly cock.” Later, the little girl, who was unconsciously jealous that she wasn’t getting enough of her belovèd teacher’s attention, told one of the administrators at the school that she didn’t want to see “Lucas’ (Mads) big ugly cock anymore.”
“So Mads didn’t ever do anything to the little girl?” said Tom.
“No. Never. But everyone assumed she was telling the truth because of what she said.”
“But he was really innocent.”
“Totally.”
“I’ll have to watch that some time,” said Tom. “And he does look very handsome in the glasses.”
This is our 22nd year together; we love films and watch them all the time, yet I never realized that Tom judges a male actor’s looks by what his character does in a role. Tom’s only one man, so I’m not saying that he’s representative of all men, but he’s my man, and that makes this an important revelation to me. Whether Tom consciously realizes these distinctions he’s making about a male actor’s looks — and I’m guessing that he does not — this is what they seem to be.
If a male actor’s character sexually assaults or otherwise tortures or physically brutalizes children, women, or other men, he’s “ugly.” If the violence does not happen on-screen and the other parts of the story-line are compelling, then, at the very least, Tom doesn’t seem to notice any physical attractiveness or ugliness in the male actor, as with Mads in Hannibal. He played a serial killer but Tom rarely saw any on-screen violence because he only watched parts of the final season, i.e., the episodes containing Gillian Anderson.
If the male actors’ characters don’t save their women — even if it’s because they cannot go through the stones at Craigh na Dun themselves — they’re just average-looking, plain, or unremarkable.
But the most important — and saddest — part of the distinction Tom (unconsciously) seems to be making between male actors as “men” or “boys” is this: if the male actors’ characters are raped (as Tom was, repeatedly, when he was a six-year-old boy, by his father’s best friend), then the actors, no matter their age, are “boys.”
And boys need to be protected from “ugly men” (as my poor Tom was not protected by his own father, though Tom told him, and others, what was happening).
Women, too, need to be protected from “ugly men,” and the women don’t have to be “stunning” or “gorgeous” to need such protection.
They can be ordinary women like me.
That’s why Tom watched the final two episodes of Outlander with me: because when I was a child, I was repeatedly tortured, molested, and raped (by my father, step-father, and mother, the last of whom raped me with implements when I was 11, causing so much internal damage that I could never have children). Tom feared that the scenes of torture and rape in Outlander, though they were happening to a man, would “trigger” me. Just as the horrific rape scenes in Casualties of War or The Accused “trigger” me. (In fact, I’ve never actually seen more than a few seconds of either of the rape scenes in either film: I can’t even listen to them.)
Tom was there to protect me, even if it was from a film or a television show.
He protects me now, in any way he can, because no one protected me when I was younger.
Just as no one protected him when he was a boy.
When I finally realized what Tom was saying during our talk after his comment about Mads’ being “actually quite good-looking” in Salvation, I went into the other room and wept with grief.
For both of us.
Epilogue
As I mentioned in the original post of this topic (above), Tom has long since stopped reading my blogs, though he always asks what I’m writing on. Always. For every single post. When I showed him some of the remarks and responses I was getting to this original post, and told him that it had gotten over 60K unique reads in less than 24 hours, he seemed confused.
“Why does everyone in your Facebook Outlander groups and on Twitter keep saying I’m sweet?” said Tom. “Why do they say the blog is ‘heartbreaking’? I thought you said it was on my view of men in some films and a couple television shows.”
“It is, based on the fact that you commented, for the first time ever, on a male actor’s being ‘actually being quite attractive’. Mads. In Salvation.”
“Mads is good-looking,” said Tom.
“You never said Mads was attractive when he was in Hannibal. I mentioned that in the blog. Then I put in the things you said about Jamie… the red-head husband in Outlander… about his being a boy.”
“He is a boy,” said Tom. “He couldn’t protect or defend himself from being raped, just like I couldn’t defend myself when I was raped as a little boy. And no one helped the red-head husband. Like nobody helped me. So he is a boy.”
“Some of the very thoughtful readers who responded wanted you to know that the character, Jamie, heals and becomes more of a man in the later Outlander books,” I said. “They don’t know what will happen in the show, of course…”
“He’s a man already. Or he was before the rape,” said Tom. “Now he’s a boy. And no matter how much healing he does, or how much of a man he becomes, that wounded, damaged little boy will always be inside him.”
“So you intentionally called him a ‘boy’?”
“Did I call him a ‘boy’?” said Tom.
“You did. Consistently. I thought you might be doing it unconsciously.”
“I guess I was, since I don’t remember it. But he is a boy if he gets his hand nailed to a table and gets raped over and over by another man,” said Tom. “He can’t protect himself. He can’t fight.”
“Then you really didn’t expect Jamie to just jump up afterward and kill Black Jack Randall?”
“He was in a prison. In the dungeon. How was he going to get out? He couldn’t have killed that guy,” said Tom.
“Why’d you say that he should have killed the rapist then?”
Tom was silent for a while.
“I guess I said that because I wanted to kill my dad’s friend every single day of my life,” said Tom. “Right up until the day he died. And you know how I feel about my dad never protecting me. Same as you feel about all the people you told, the ones who never saved or protected you.”
Because he’d mentioned me, but I’d never heard him call any female actors “girls,” I asked about Claire’s character in Outlander.
“What about Claire… the red-head’s wife… what if Black Jack Randall had raped her?”
“Look,” said Tom, “there would have been nothing she could have done about it. If she didn’t manage to run away before he caught her, then she couldn’t have stopped it. Rapists are despicable. You can’t fight them. You don’t know if they’re just vicious, disgusting people, or if they’re pedophiles, or if they’re serial rapists, or if they’re serial rapists about to flip over into serial killers. If you fight too hard, you might die.”
“What I wanted to know is this: would she have become a ‘girl’ if she’d been raped, instead of a woman?”
“She’d be a woman, just like you,” said Tom, “with that permanently damaged little girl inside her. That wounded little girl will always be in you, no matter how fierce or independent or sweet or loving or protective you are. That raped little boy will always be in her red-head husband. Same as he’s in me. Even if nobody else knows about it. You can’t go back and make it never happen.”
“So, you were unconsciously calling the red-head husband a ‘boy’. Just like you called the Special FBI Agent in Hannibal a boy, and he didn’t get raped.”
“He couldn’t kill Hannibal, even though Hannibal was obsessed with him,” said Tom. “Maybe if he’d snuck up behind him as soon as he’d figured out Hannibal was a serial killer and cold-cocked him, he might have had a chance to cut his throat before Hannibal gutted him like a fish. But you don’t have any chance with serial killers. Hannibal would have killed and eaten that boy eventually.”
“I guess the part that annoyed you, then, was how the shows tried to make the rapes like love scenes, or a serial killer relationship like a love story.”
“Hannibal might have wanted something from that boy, but he didn’t love him,” said Tom. “He had sex with Gillian. But he didn’t love her. Even she said she knew he’d end up killing and eating her. You can’t change serial killers. You can’t change serial rapists or pedophiles. The only thing they love is themselves and hurting other people. You know that. Your own mother was one.”
I sat for a moment, thinking about everything he’d said, and how he’d called the victims “boys” unconsciously, because, in the 22 years we’ve been together, Tom has never come right out and admitted that his father’s friend repeatedly raped him when he was a little boy. He always said he was “only molested” and “performed fellatio” — forced fellatio — on his rapist.
“By the way, be sure to tell them I’m sorry,” said Tom. “The people in those Outlander groups.”
“About what?”
“I know they really like that red-head husband. I’m sorry if they got upset because I said he was a ‘boy’. The actor’s a guy. Even if he kinda looks like a kid.”
“Someone wrote in comments that she thought they might have purposely cast that actor because of his boyish looks.”
“Then they knew he was going to become a boy, too. Because of the torture and rape.”
“Maybe,” I said. “They might have just thought he was pretty.”
“Pretty doesn’t make you a ‘boy’.”
“The actor who played the Special Agent in Hannibal is boy-ish.”
“When a serial killer’s got you in his sights,” said Tom, “or the writers of Hannibal make him act like he loves you, you’re a boy because he’s gonna get you eventually. There’s nothing you can do except run away as fast as you can. If you can’t do that… well, you know… It’s the same as when you were a kid. If nobody listens to you, and no one protects you, you’re gonna get hurt. Bad. And that kind of damage never goes away. Not completely.”
I kissed him on the cheek.
“The person who said you were ‘a good, good man’ meant that you were sweet for watching Outlander’s last two episodes with me, knowing they contained rape and torture, in case they triggered me.”
“You’d do the same for me,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “You’re my Eva and my Claire.”
