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Was she a good or bad person? Beware of spoilers

posted 8 years ago by Etxpeme
4 replies | jump to latest

So, after all, was she a good person or a bad person? Main points:

- She raped the guy in the train. I don't think it could be considered rape, he could have stopped her at any time and he didn't. It was bad, she did know he was married but she was very young and horny, and it's understandable.

- The abortion. I don't think the abortion was a bad thing. She did it because she knew what kind of awful life the kid would have if born and she didn't want that for him.

- She abandoned her son. But she did it because she was an addict, she couldn't help herself, and she did love him.

- She did extort people violently. But she did it to get money for her son.

- She was willing to use and manipulate P for her own sake. But she ended up loving and caring about her anyway.

Also there are certain things I think we'd have to know to judge her properly:

- Childhood.
- Normally, we justify a person's bad decisions based on a rough childhood.
- She loved his father but hated her mother and her mother wasn't very fond of her either.
- In fact, we don't know the relationship she had with her parents, I mean
- Did they know about her sexual life?
- Did her mother always dislike her? If she didn't always dislike her, why did she started to? And if her mother did indeed ''hate'' her since she was born (I think this is the idea the movie reflects) what did her father see in his wife? Maybe he was too good to see the mother's evil?
- Did she ever talk to her dad about anything other than trees?
- Did she keep in contact with her mother once her father died?
- In summary, did she have a good or bad childhood?
- Was she a happy kid?
I think knowing more about this would help us to judge her.

- What did she do to P so P would hate her so much as to urinate over her after she had been beaten up?

So what do you think? Was she a good or a bad person?

[–] patrick_bateman_90029 8 years ago

I think Joe was just a person. She only viewed herself as bad because it took her getting physically and emotionally humiliated by Jerôme and P, of all people, for her to dwell on her entire life.

People in general are complex and impossible to note as truly good or evil (except for Hitler. He speaks for himself) and, as the film showed, there were plenty of arguments in favor of either side. For me, Joe was just a person who was capable of good and bad. Her worst crime was just not finding a good middle ground for both.

[–] danavenell 8 years ago

No her worst crime was when she got into the extortion racket. Up until that point she just liked sex a lot, but was conditioned to think this made her a bad person. Her road to actual crime was probably enabled by how society had already convinced her she was a sinner.

Kylo Ren is one of the weakest force users we've seen. That's a fact.

[–] cookiela2001 8 years ago

She is a heroine of our times...and should be on a STAMP!

.

[–] Merrida 8 years ago

I don't believe anyone can or should be judged as being good or bad. We are way too complex, there are too many factors, and it depends on who is doing the judging and viewing. You did a fair job of pointing out both "good" and "bad" within the same person, demonstrating that we're all a blend.

I don't believe anyone is inherently all good or all evil either.

And just like you pointed out, I believe that our childhood has a lot of influence on who we become and why. Much of society still doesn't understand this and expects kids to "just get over it" if they have a rough childhood, were abused or hurt, or lived through difficulties. Society expects, accepts and rewards what is socially acceptable behaviour, even if it means that person is absent of consciousness and stunted of personality.

Think back to when women were "hysterical" because they simply were not "calm" (at all times). Expressions of anything other than calm were considered hysterics and it was not uncommon for organs to be removed and deemed successful because the women later were "calm" (ie: dead inside but behaved calm, ie: numb).

Some of today's society, parents, physicians, facilities and pharmaceuticals believe the same thing. If they can suppress or remove any behaviour that is aberrant or untowardly, anything "not normal," then they are "cured."

The same way the Sex Addict group demanded abstinence and not balance, it's about numbing out parts of people that don't smoothly fit in with society and raise eyebrows.

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Sic vis pacem para bellum.