An addendum!

After Tuesday's class, I found that there are some more ideas that I wanted to expand upon and discuss, and I also want to respond to what both Julie and Stephanie had to say.

In class, one of the main themes we found in the film related to the reading Shame: The Emotions and Morality of Violence. I think this is one of the readings that much of the class (myself included) found to be the most eye-opening, and Once Were Warriors really showed how this theory plays out in everyday life. In speaking about shame, Stephanie said, "it was also shame that ultimately took Grace's life from her. It seemed to me that she felt ashamed of what happened and the fact that she felt like she could not express her feelings about it to anyone, drove her to her suicide." I agree, although I think that though she was not able to express her shame directly to other people, she was able to express it somewhat through her writing. When her father ripped her journal in two, that was like a breaking point for Grace--her only coping mechanism was destroyed, and with that she had no other way to deal with her pain other than to end her own life. I know for me, I am deeply personal and I don't typically talk to others about my problems unless it's dire. I keep several journals to express how I am feeling, and if someone (especially a parent) were to rip one up right in front of me, I would be utterly devastated. Add to that the fact that she was only 13, had just been raped by a trusted family friend, and lived her entire life surrounded by violence, and it becomes very clear that in her mindset, ending her own life was the only option--it was the only way to be free from her pain.

Reading Julie's thoughts really made me think about how many factors are truly involved in matters of violence. It is rarely any ONE type of influence that causes people to act violently, but rather a combination of several. Julie talked about the fear of shame and social class, two points that were well-exemplified in Once Were Warriors. In the Boys Will Be Boys article, another influence discussed was early childhood, where Medzian states, "when a child's caretakers do not listen or respond to the child, when they neglect essential emotional needs . . . the chances of violent behavior in later life are greatly increased." This statement reminded me greatly of Boogie in the film, because I feel that his parents' neglect is at least a partial reason he began to senselessly commit acts of violence, eventually getting him in trouble with the law. I think the point of Boogie's character in the film was to show the incredible importance of family and cultural identification in a young person's life. Because Boogie's biological family could not provide the emotional stability he needed, he found it elsewhere--by relating to his ancestorial heritage through traditional Maori warrior chanting. With the help of a positive male role model who ran the boys' home, this activity gave Boogie a true sense of strength and belonging--one that he never felt within his own household. This lack of true family (chiefly because of negligent parents) is obviously also experienced by the other children as well. It is no doubt the reason why the eldest brother, Nig, joins a gang--to feel that same sense of belonging. In the film, the gang leader even tells him, "We're your family now."

It seems like all three of us were pretty blown away by Once Were Warriors. I think what shocked me the most about the film, beyond everything else, was the sheer enormity and depth to the cycle of violence. All of the acts of violence could be traced back to at least one previous act...even back to the time before Jack was even born and his ancestors were slaves. I would bet that Jack's father (or someone in his family) was similarly violent, causing "narcissistic rage" (as Medzian puts it) to emerge from Jack himself in his adulthood.

Before I end this post, I just wanted to mention a special I saw last week on The Learning Channel. It was called Tragedy in Amish Country, and it was about the well-publicized shooting that took place in an Amish schoolhouse last fall and left six (including the gunman) dead. All his victims were female and aged 7 to 13. What I found most confounding was that the gunman had, in fact, no real history of violence before the incident, but evidence showed he'd been planning it for weeks. This immediately made me think of the Gilligan reading that talked about violent people not being violent all the time. Was this man a "violent" individual his entire life and just managed to keep it all pent up until that point?

It was suggested in the special that his "snap" was caused by the fact that he had never fully recovered from the death of his infant daughter nearly a decade before. It also took place around the time of at least two other school shootings, which made me wonder about the gunman having somewhat of a "monkey-see, monkey-do" mentality. I'm kind of hoping we get to have an in-class discussion about this incident in more detail, because I would definitely like to explore the ideas of how gender related to this man's seemingly random but horrifying crime.