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Selleck's Size and Suitability as a Target


At the time the film was made, Selleck was 44, 6'4" and I would guess about 220 pounds. He was well built. Although he was quite handsome, his age, size and looks did not suggest the kind of guy the black boys and Jingles would be attracted to and try to dominate. He was hairy, big and looked like he could handle himself in a fight. Unless the black guys were trying to prove that they could dominate a big white boy, I just don't see it. Selleck looked like he could take Jingles in a regular fight w/o weapons; and with Selleck having an advantage with a knife, why would Jingles think he could take the knife away and turn things around?

In the film "Fortune and Men's Eyes," there is a line near the beginning of the film where a con tells a new con watching a gang bang with no one stopping it, "Nobody gonna stop a man from getting his oats." In this film, you'd think the black guys could have found an easier and more logical target to get their oats off from.

I was glad that Jingles got it. I hoped that Parnell would have bought it his first day in prison. Now there would be a better target for the black guys- or the whole prison population. They should have browned him for a week straight and then burned em like the guy in the opening scene.

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good point. Jingles might have been stronger but bullies are usually cowards and in order for bullying to work the bully must be WAY more powerful than his victim, if a bully only slightly stronger or bigger then the bullying does not work, you need a big margin. Most likely a smaller weaker person would be targeted.

That being said did you notice the bully took his time with Rainwood? At first he just "borrowed" some of the guy's toothpaste to see if he could be taken advantage of or would stick up for himself, to see if the guy was a pushover. Also, when he beat the guy up it was not alone it was with his gang backing him up, and he did not rape him at first he raped someone else then made Rainwood watch telling him next time he got horny it would be HIS turn. Had Rainwood been a real wimp he would have just dominated him flat out.

I am a big strong man, not six four like Tom Sellick but much younger than he is with a very thick bone structure and very well built and I work out at a gym. When I am in cities like New York I never fear being mugged because they are cowards and there are plenty of wimpy people to go after. I suspect prison is the same way. But man that guy was a real piece of crap and I enjoyed seeing him die.

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You said in your post "... then made Rainwood watch telling him next time he got horny it would be HIS turn."

I may have missed it, but I don't recall Jingles threatening to rape Rainwood. In that rape scene of the young black guy, Jingles made Rainwood watch and, among other things, said...there are worse things than that." But Jingles didn't, to my recollection, threaten to rape him. Despite being good looking, Rainwood did not seem the type of guy Jingles and the other black guys would be attracted to. I could be wrong, though.

I also was glad to see Jingles get shanked. As I said in my post, it would have been even better if after stabbing him, Rainwood would have doused him with gasoline and lit him up, like Robbie bought it earlier. But perhaps that would have taken too much time, been too risky and incurred hostility among the black gang. As Virgil said, Jimmie "did a piece of work and kept his mind." The other prisoners respected him for what he did.

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I might not have remembered that scene perfectly I saw this movie over 20 years ago and my memory of it is blurry in parts but I do remember him being forced to watch someone else get raped and what I take from that is that he would be next. He sure seemed in a hurry to get rid of that guy after that scene.

Anyway, what the hell does "attraction" have to do with prison rape? It is about power and dominance, most men are heterosexual and if it was about "attraction" they would not rape at all.

It is DISGUSTING to stuck your dick up another man's a$$ and I cannot understand why they choose that as a way of dominating. Can't you bully people in other ways or just plain beat them up? In Karate Kid the villain dominated Daniel just fine until the end and he never pulled Daniel's pants down to rape him jeez.

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Regarding the scene in question, I just watched it a few days ago on YouTube, so my recollection should be fairly acccurate.

I really don't understand prison rape, or homosexual sex very well either. Whether it's domination or attraction I can't really comment on. As I recall in one of the earlier films about prison rape, "Fortune and Men's Eyes," produced in 1971, it seems to be a comination of both factors.

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as long as we are chatting about this movie, which i really liked and maybe should see again, if this story had played out in real life what kind of restitution would Rainwood have been entitled to? Even if he was only in prison for a few years unlike cases where an innocent person is locked up for decades the extreme level of corruption where he had cops so corrupt set him up that those same cops (one of them was killed I think, a shame as I wanted both of them in prison) wound up in prison themselves. I would think that inside the fictional universe of this story it would have become a media sensation with talk shows and news shows and magazine articles etc talking about police corruption that it would be a major game changer. I am guessing that he would have been awarded a few million dollars which would make building a life for him and his fiancee much easier.

Also, if I was Rainwood I would tell my buddy (F Murray Abraham) to keep that crooked cop guy alive as long as possible, to not allow him to be killed as death would be too good for him.

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Doesn't matter the size in prison. Any con in the prison who had done some time could tell it was his first time in prison and that he was vulnerable. They could also tell he had no one backing him up. He was a target.

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