Monday, April 23, 2012

We love a vigilante until we meet one


“When we celebrate the vigilante on our screens, we tell ourselves it's because of our healthy mistrust of corrupt structures, or because we're genuinely vulnerable -- not because of our more shameful tendency to stereotype others based on fear or hatred.

“….It's easy to understand the enduring appeal of the vigilante archetype, whose hard-charging moral certainty jibes perfectly with this country's sense of exceptionalism, not to mention the narrative constraints of a 90-minute action movie. It's far more difficult to reconcile complicated reality with the simplistic, comforting fictions we crave.”

                  -- Ann Hornaday, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 15, 2012)

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