Reply #124: But the decapitator was hardly a role model

[Orrex]

He was portrayed from start to finish as a monster and a creep. And, across the board, the men in the film who abused women were dealt with most severely.

Roark Jr.: Ear shot of, genitals shot off, genitals restored and later torn off again by hand

Kevin: dismembered alive and fed to a wolf

Cardinal Roark: Tortured to death by hand

Jack: Hand cut off, all but killed by a damaged handgun, throat slashed, dismembered (his buddies were similarly killed)

Manute: shot to death in a carefully conceived gantlet-trap

Women killed?

The woman in the opening vignette: Killed by an assassin that she hired. Call it a suicide.

Goldie: And her death brought about the downfall of Cardinal Roark, so it's a form of noble, if unwilling, sacrfice. It could even be argued that she chose Marv because she suspected that he'd avenge her death.

Lucille: Hand cut off (and eaten), and she was shot to death in a field. Not much to redeem her death, I agree.

Nancy: Kidnapped as a girl and again later as a woman, tortured, and on-the-scene when her torturer is killed. Also "roughed up" off-camera, according to Marv. And see note below.

Shellie: Assaulted and threatened with rape by Jack & Co. Kind of a damsel in distress, to be sure, and her acting was the absolute low-point of the movie. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Almost unwatchable.

Several anonymous hookers: Killed almost as afterthoughts, but no more readily than a dozen or so equally anonymous male characters.

The women, even the strong women, are strippers and prostitutes. But two of the male protagonists are brutal thugs who just happen to err on the side of (their notion of) justice. Hartigan is a semi-noble figure, but even he contributes to the misogyny inherent in Nancy's character.

Physically, the most powerful character is Miho; she's fearless, capable, and highly skilled at defending herself and others. She took out five men with minimal effort, and in the comic itself she beat Manute in combat.

Nancy, however, is a big problem. In painting her as strong-despite-her-trauma, Miller also portrayed her as inescapably hung up on Hartigan-as-rescuer. She spends at least eight years in love with a man many decades her senior, and her teen years are put on hold or forfeited altogether for the sake of this impossible (and, frankly, creepy) romance-from-afar. She becomes little more than a channel for Hartigan's vengeance.

On the plus side, no woman is protrayed as evil, with the possible exception of Alexis Blidell (can't remember her character's name), and her evil is a matter of betrayal rather than calculated torture and/or murder.

Overall, the film isn't much more misogynistic than it is misanthropic. We may quibble about the implications of prostitutes as the heroic female figures, but then we also need to address the problem of uncompromising brutes as the heroic male figures, too.