violence

This afternoon en route to appointment across town, I caught much of Terry Gross' interview with Guillermo del Toro, who was talking about his incredible new film Pan's Labyrinth. del Toro spoke of the heroism of the film's young protagonist Ofelia, who refuses to spill blood, explaining that she's the only person in the film's fantastic universe who declines to respond to her violent world with violence. No matter how high the stakes. This is why Ofelia's the heroine. This decision is what marks her as heroic. Make no mistake, Pan's Labyrinith is full of violent visions. Horror genre violence. Comic book (clearly one of del Toro's prime influences) violence. Sadistic violence. But none of the violence is at all admirable.

del Toro also referenced in the interview his Christian upbringing in Mexico--the grandmother who performed makeshift exorcisms on him when he refused to stop drawing pictures of monsters, the bottle caps he wore in his shoes as corporal mortification. (He suggests that his affinity for Alfred Hitchcock grows from their both being fat, Catholic, and repressed.) I got the sense that del Toro sees this element of his background as being "violent" on various levels. The violence done to him by family members. The violence of religious justifications for attempting to squelch his artistic vision. I kept thinking of that scene with Ofelia refusing Pan's orders to spill the blood of an innocent in contrast to the biblical scene of Abraham's *willingness* to spill Isaac's blood, that biblical moment that provided endless ethical debate back in ninth grade religion class. A vision that seems to justify violence. And a vision that condemns violence.

I've got no conclusions. No insights. Just two visions that are inescapable. Clearly del Toro is a provocative and insightful commentator. I just wish he had clearer answers to the problematics he introduces.