Liam Neeson's dalliance with lynching
Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 5:00 pm
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47138980
Can't see a thread on it so thought it might be interesting to discuss. Link above, tl;dr whilst discussing revenge doing a film promo Liam Neeson confessed that when his friend got raped by a black man decades ago, he tooled up and went around a black area hoping for a kick off so he could take revenge on a random black person.
Obviously his actions back in the day were wrong and displayed racist beliefs and behaviour, which were in no way excused by the fact that his friend's rapist was black. However, whilst I understand the abhorrence towards his confession by people now understandable (writing it just then was surprisingly uncomfortable actually), it seems to me that Neeson realised his behaviour was wrong very soon after he began it and accepted the error of his ways (again, not wanting to mitigate his actions but he would have been coming to terms with pretty strong feelings of grief and anger, which take time to control). When you see people saying he'll never work again it makes you wonder where the space actually is nowadays for the reconstitution and rehabilitation of individuals and society, which is surely the whole point of the civil rights/feminist/social justice movements.
Can't see a thread on it so thought it might be interesting to discuss. Link above, tl;dr whilst discussing revenge doing a film promo Liam Neeson confessed that when his friend got raped by a black man decades ago, he tooled up and went around a black area hoping for a kick off so he could take revenge on a random black person.
Obviously his actions back in the day were wrong and displayed racist beliefs and behaviour, which were in no way excused by the fact that his friend's rapist was black. However, whilst I understand the abhorrence towards his confession by people now understandable (writing it just then was surprisingly uncomfortable actually), it seems to me that Neeson realised his behaviour was wrong very soon after he began it and accepted the error of his ways (again, not wanting to mitigate his actions but he would have been coming to terms with pretty strong feelings of grief and anger, which take time to control). When you see people saying he'll never work again it makes you wonder where the space actually is nowadays for the reconstitution and rehabilitation of individuals and society, which is surely the whole point of the civil rights/feminist/social justice movements.