Not Taken Far Enough

In the movie Taken, a retired Secret Service agent played by Liam Neeson encounters and handily overcomes inordinate obstacles to rescue his seventeen-year-old daughter kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers while on vacation in Paris. The lurid portrayal of the prostitution ring run by the Albanians and the vengeful torture exacted by Neeson's character are graphically illustrative. Quite frankly, I hated it.

But the regard of disgust and indignation in which I hold the film does not stem solely from its vividness. Rather, it is its raw reality that has me riled up. It was so real. If someone is sufficiently psychotic to invent these types of story lines and situations as mere entertainment, one would think there have to be many more individuals visionary enough to flesh out such schemes in real life. Isn't that usually the debate about violent video games anytime an adolescent killer shocks society with a school shooting? Semi-digression.

I know this situation began as reality first rather than originating as a blockbuster plot. Human trafficking is a very prescient issue forefronting today's worldwide injustices along with global poverty and inequality, etc. etc. So what makes me really angry is that the people who are so aware of these harsh realities consciously choose to invest millions of dollars and hours of their time to make fictional, dramatized accounts for the exclusive purpose of entertaining the American public.

America has come to prioritize and justify, and even glorify, paying already wealthy actors to take part in Hollywood corporations' money-bilking exploits instead of heeding the devastating knowledge and investing those plentiful resources and efforts to find solutions to combat the injustice.

Some argue that in many ways, advocacy is significantly more advantageous than one solitary ring bust or the rescue of a few fortunate victims however high-profile it results to be. I do not necesarily disagree with this claim (but a life saved is a life saved), but do denounce the majority of what Hollywood produces as advocacy. Even documentaries these days are dubious. Taken definitely does not qualify as an effort of information rather I see it is a facade for pure exploitation--Hollywood using this particular issue as a form of "shock and awe" entertainment. It was an intense action flick not meant to charm or romance or humor audiences but rather jolt them just enough to satiate their appetites but suspiciously not so much as to shake them into taking action, because let's face it, that just isn't comfortable and discomfort doesn't sell.

The movie didn't sell anyway (well, relatively. Its box office revenue was still $144,924,285--for a crappy movie!). It received terrible reviews and many viewers (of the few who saw the film) were dissatisfied. But of course, the dissatisfaction stemmed largely because the acting was deemed sub par and the ending anticlimactic, not because its very premises are morally wrong. I'd like to hope that most viewers' instincts cried dirty but chances are, most audiences left with a manifold lasting impression of the lacking resolution and the daughter's appallingly selfish behavior.

Women being brutally kidnapped, drugged, sold, and shamefully displayed for prostitution. Sure, it screams against moral code and common sense and hopefully is disturbing, but I'm betting after the requisite two hours, most went back to their comfortable lives, untouched by those harsh realities. True advocacy is educating people and providing them with information that most importantly, stirs them into productive action. This movie does nothing of the sort. Granted, that likely was not ever the intent of the producers.

But why not?