Promise Me You Will Never Let Go: Role Reversal?

Above are two scenes from art.

Art, of course, is where we are free to envision the impossible. Art encapsulates science fiction and alternative historical endings. It argues for the future. It sees the impossible as present.

Yet, it is amazing how utterly... conventional... is the message encapsulated in the above pieces of art.

Feminism tells us that men and women are equal. Women can do anything men can do - only better - and while having babies and being morally superior. Because, while women will never lie about being raped, men will certainly lie about raping.

Yet, in the first scene, Enrique Iglesias gives his life for the woman that he is fleeing with. Eventually, running into a group of gangsters, he makes a willing decision to take his licks and sacrifice himself for the woman that he loves. He singlehandedly stands down a group of armed gangsters in defense of... a woman. The words roll easily from his lips, and the concept is something that we all comprehend and find not to be foreign in the least: "Let me be your hero."

In the second scene, after the breakup and sinking of the Titanic, Jack tells Rose to take a deep breath and trust him while leaping away from the sinking ship and swimming, hopefully, to safety. While all hell is breaking loose, Jack is thinking. While everyone is panicking, Jack is in a lower zone of existence, thinking five steps ahead to what the woman that he loves will need - to escape the undertow of the sinking boat, to reserve a big supply of oxygen, to find an ice floe upon which to await rescue, and to possess the resolve, in the form of a promise, to survive. Promise me, he demands of her, that you will never let go. Because you will survive. You will go on and have a bunch of babies and die an old woman in your warm bed. You won't die like this.

You won't die like I will... tonight.

Now, think with me.

Is it even intellectually possible to perform a role reversal in these two scenes?

Is it even theoretically possible that the woman could be singing to Enrique Iglesias, "Let me be your hero while I sacrifice my life in the midst of these crazed gangsters. Let me fight and die to protect you."

OK, stop chuckling.

Could any sane person conceive of Rose protecting Jack as the Titanic breaks up and sinks? Could any sane person conceive of Rose thinking of the undertow, the oxygen, the ice floe, and the need for resolve? Could any sane person conceive of Rose floating in the water with Jack on the floe, and while sacrificing herself for him, telling him that he would not die this way, on this night?

These pieces of art do not "perpetrate a sexist stereotype." They present the only view of reality that rational people could ever possess.




Because as we know, in history as in art, it was the men who stayed behind when the Titanic ran out of lifeboats, allowing the women and children to escape. It was only a man who could utter the phrase, "That's the end boys. We've done our duty," and be satisfied - because only to men does duty matter more than life. And then, only men could finish their lives, waiting for drowning, by singing "Nearer My God to Thee." To postulate that women would stay behind and respond with such dignity and to imagine that women might show such preference for men is even beyond the bounds of legitimate art, which is built upon imagining the impossible.

The limitation, I suppose, is that the impossible has to be presented credibly to represent good art. And while the human mind can credibly conceive of a giant lizard persecuting Tokyo or a city without roads populated by hovercraft or even such odd ducks as a "Wookie," the human mind could never credibly imagine the above two scenes working out in any way other than the way in which they were presented.

The very idea, whether in either the case of armed thugs or a sinking ship, or in the case of history or of art, is more than the human mind can conceive. To even begin to postulate such a scene stretches the limits of sanity and believability. To try to reverse the roles in the above scenes would immediately turn a heroic music video into a gigglefest. It would turn a somber moment into a moment of comic relief. It is not that the role reversals won't happen - they couldn't happen.

Men and women are far too different. And in any moment of need in which a woman did not have a political axe to grind, like mere moments before perceived trouble or death, we all know that she would be turning to the nearest man for her salvation. To postulate any other denouement would far surpass even what we could conceive in science fiction.

Even in the realm of the imagination, we betray more unintentionally than we can ever muster by mouthing tired old feminist phrasings on purpose. The truth is, we all know that men and women are not the same, not equal, not whatever. And to try to pull off a scene that is heroic, dramatic, sad, or virtuous - even in the realm of art - it is necessary to cast the man as the hero, coming to the rescue of the fair maiden. That is, if one is to avoid having one's art degenerate into the boorish, the campy, the sophomoric, the psychotic, or simply the cartoonish. To try to imagine these two scenes ending consistently with the purported feminist world view would immediately elicit the challenge of, "You're kidding, right?" or a quick call to the nearest mental institution.

Even in the realm of art, where our task is the design of new possibilities and alternate realities, we recognize that every single affirmation of feminism is not just wrong, but inconceivably silly.