I seem to be caught up in a distburing whirwind of South African stuff right now and it's all starting to weigh on me. I'm reading a book called Philida about a black (or coloured, I guess she would be called since she's of mixed race) South African slave woman and I just saw a Netflix movie called Beauty about a middle-aged white South African man who's obsessed with a friend's college-aged son and both the book and the movie are seriously giving me palpitations.
First, the book. I haven't finished reading it yet and I intend to give a full review on Goodreads when I'm done, but I'm about halfway through it and I keep feeling that the white South African man who wrote it has some kind of weird, romantic view of slavery and of the relationship between white male slave owners and their black female slaves. This is nothing new, but that doesn't make the situation any less disturbing.
Second, the movie. (Stop now and read no further if you intend to see this film.) Beauty is a slow-burn kind of movie. It moves at a snail's pace, showing how disengaged the main character Francois is with his life. He and his wife are in a loveless marriage, he's annoyed with his youngest daughter who is unfocused, and he's secretly having sex with other men. Oh, and he's also a racist (no surprise there since this is South Africa). Francois's obsession with his friend's college-aged son seems freaky, but harmless at first so I was quite surprised when he went crazy on the kid and assaulted and raped him. The scene just seemed to come out of nowhere and was so violent and awful that I can't stop thinking about it and maybe that's what the director intended.
The only word I can use to describe both Philida and Beauty is disturbing.
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