oooh, a funny thing today
i was in bed stuck, sick, watching the dvr
and i watched a little english indie flick called "Cassandra's Dream."
It was basically about two brothers who murder someone and one of them feels guilty
and it dawned on me again how guilt is something we don't see a lot in crime dramas
punishment for a crime is often external.
The cops get the bad guy, the divorce court gives alimony, etc
but the culprit's guilt for a murder or for adultery is never shown.
And i really think there are more people who feel guilty, about the sins they commit, than we know. Perhaps most humans hide guilt nowadays really well. Or they don't know how to recognize their guilt. Maybe we live in a world where folks don't understand their discomfort is really their guilt...kinda like the way some folks don't understand the peace they feel in church or in a park (when they have no cell phone service.) So they think the peace is boredom or discomfort?
Cain had guilt (guilt and punishment being the same word in Hebrew)
Lamech had no guilt
because Lamech had been immunized by accepting grace (Cain family history and all.)
But when one sees the literature of the 19th century
Crime and punishment etc..or Madame Bovary. Or Anna Karenina. Or even some Freud stuff in the early 20th century.
We see so few movies and shows where we see the guilty adulterer or the guilty theif or the guilty murderer feels guilt from within. The culprit just shoots his glock or murders...or cheats on his wife and gets a new mistress and moves on. (Every once in a while a Michael Corleone pops up...but that doesn't happen much in gang movies or American drama.) It just makes me wonder. Because I'm thinking that people are perhaps more simple than Hollywood and other film folks pretend we are.
Or of course.....is this generation seared in its conscience by the whole "grace" thing? Even if one isn't Christian, there is that idea of God being all understanding and loving and willing to forgive?
But...is human nature so easily changed and changeable?
Okay, within a few generations from Cain to Lamech... there was this change of dealing with guilt. Lamech took God's act of grace and kinda ran with it, the way a lotta folks in the US or the Christian church take the idea. So God would be showing how we humans deal with grace. God's gracious kindness to Cain creates a Lamech. But only with Lamech, I think.
Funny how Adam and Eve then Cain then Lamech deal with grace and guilt
and blame
but the film got me thinking.....we as writers...
It makes me wonder if hollywood is polluting folks in such a way that folks actually feel they feel no guilt when they do a crime...only to be terribly surprised by suddenly feeling the guilt of their murder or adultery?
Just pondering....
