la_belle_laide | (Reply)

From: (Anonymous)

Hmm, awesome review.
About the whore/Madonna thing though. While I was watching the movie, the fact that Old Joe's wife(did we even learn her name?- oh wait, of course we didn't, otherwise Young Joe would know too) had no lines and was obviously his saviour ticked me off so bad. I wonder if the Chinese version is any better, though it's obvious they cut it so it wouldn't disrupt the diner scene too much, which is a fair enough reason I suppose. But it didn't anger me as much as Memento did, because in that, dead wife was dead eyes and completely blank slate, it was very stylish [as was this] but degrading. In Looper, at least she has a personality that shines through despite the lack of lines.

I do however, take issue with putting down the sex worker's character to whore. The way her work was handled was honestly one of the best I've seen in movies[that weren't specifically about prostitution]. She's never presented as a victim or weak, and neither is her profession put down. When YJoe tries to give her money (not to help her, or because he loves her, but to assauge his own guilt over basically killing his best friend- which she realises as well- she's no idiot) She tells him to go fuck himself, (or rather stop moping and fuck her so she can get paid- which you also mentioned- one of the best things about this movie is that it's the women always initiating, without descending into vamp/seduction territory).

And then there's the fact the O.Joe is kind of an asshole- he's never presented as being the paragon of good. And I don't think he ever loved her so much as felt she saved him, and loved her more for what she did for him, rather than who she was (though he did love her for who she was, which we sort of get a sense of with the finger and all that). When Y.Joe suggests letting her go, O.Joe refuses, which is incredibly selfish on his part, and also calls to mind the millions of movies/tvshows with the lesson 'if you love them let them go'; and given Rian's love for using references to classics/other works to build on and into his movies, I think what we are supposed to get from that is that O.Joe doesn't really love her. She certainly wouldn't want him to go around killing kids to get her back. Or rather, to ensure that he gets 'cleaned up'.
So, I think it was supposed to be more of a overturn of the whore/madonna trope than sticking to the whore/madonna trope?

Also, I never really thought about whore/madonna in regards to Brick, so thank you for pointing that out to me so I can over analyse it >.> at first glance, Brick seems like a whore/whore/madonna; and then you realise by the end its pretty much a whore/whore/whore.

wow look at that I wrote an essay. Why can't college essays be this easy to write? Maybe I should be doing Lit and Film:/