War against Women – the Fall of Civilization!

In any society, a woman’s dignity should always be higher than a man’s. Women’s freedom and protection is gender-based, and this tenet should take supremacy in any civilization. But nowadays, despite the cacophony of aphorisms singing the praises of love for women, in reality we are constantly confronted with violence against them. When a man hits a woman, he is not only compromising of his own dignity, he is also showing his ugliness. Men who physically abuse the weaker sex are admitting they have no intelligence, which means they should be put in cages or sent to live in caves. Gender values are the sacred nucleus of civilization. Nature itself has given women the exclusive right to every possible domestic advantage. And Nature and the social environment should exist in harmony.

Unfortunately, in many countries of the world, culture is undermining its moral principles, thus returning the national and cultural characteristics of these countries and world civilization to the primordial times of humanity’s emergence. What gives me the right to say this? While watching television, I noticed that beating up women is a recurring theme in the advertisements for the current serials. I was shocked to realize that the authors picked these particular fragments with the intention of best attracting potential viewers. So I decided to carry out an in-depth analysis of gender trends on contemporary TV in different countries of the world.

I was brought up in the cinematographic traditions of the 1960s-1970s, on Italian, Soviet, German, French, American and Indian films. Italian cinema is a hymn to women. Brilliant Fellini described his personal attitude toward women as follows: “The intention of the film (La Strada, but there are also others – A.P.) in this respect is to return women their true independence, their indisputable and inherent dignity. A free man cannot deny a free woman these inherent values. A woman should never be a madonna, or a plaything, not to mention a servant.” The idea of liberating women from male despotism also predominates in the film Juliet of the Spirits (1965). Not one of my favorite great Italians (Rossellini, Visconti, Antonioni, or Fellini) has ever depicted violence against women in their films. I think this is because no one even considered this a possibility at the time. Their focus was on social motives, perturbed feelings and separation between people.

Outstanding 20th century German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder also focused on women in his films: of course, his women are not angels, but most of his films address the topic of women. Women are complicated beings, but this is what makes them attractive. In Chinese Roulette, Lola, and Veronika Voss, the love theme always has a psychological twist, some enigma relating to a woman (while the director was never interested in violence as such).

Ingmar Bergman revealed Sweden to the world. Bergman was in fact much more interested in women than men. He focused on woman’s confessions and women’s stories early on in his filming career: in Waiting Women/The Secrets of Women (1952), critics noted his “retrograde view” of women, since all of the stories ended in forgiveness and reconciliation between men and women.

Spain gave the world Luis Buñuel, but even this provocateur and experimenter defends the heroine against her obsessively overprotective bourgeois husband in one of his early films Him; re-issued in the U.S. as This Strange Passion (1953). This was a radical statement in defense of women’s rights and dignity.

Women are blossoms in Indian films, which have also found their niche in world cinematography. In Japanese cinema, the female characters need to know that their men have confidence in them, even if their husbands have caused them to suffer and make sacrifices.

Soviet cinema portrayed strong, willful, but also tender women. The well-known films Carnival, The Girls, Office Romance and Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears still attract a huge audience, even though they are shown frequently on television. However, people most likely watch them out of nostalgia: in those days, women knew how to love and be loved, a woman could be business-like without compromising her femininity, which came to the fore when she had a self-confident man at her side.

The heroines knew all about moral suffering. But there could be no talk of violence against women (they were never beaten or subjected to abusive male behavior). Soviet culture prohibited beating a woman, and also prohibited showing it.

Today mass world televised cinema is showing an entirely different mentality and other topics. Today women achieve success in a different way, not based their own merits. They meet a rich man and immediately become successful (topics such as marrying a millionaire and becoming a slave girl for money are extremely popular). Anything goes for women to live a luxurious life. But often these women are beaten by their own husbands, knocked out, or even killed in one way or another.

I am very concerned that physical domination over women is being so openly demonstrated in mass cinema and serials today, whereby not only in Russia, but also in America and Europe—it is becoming a global trend. This is essentially returning us to the slave-owning system. Why are scriptwriters always forcing men, who are much stronger physically by nature, to show their strength and sordidness by beating up women? And paradoxically enough, there are also women among the scriptwriters who portray physical abuse against women.

This creates the impression that when scriptwriters are at a loss for words, subjects and ideas showing a high-minded worldview and spirituality they resort to kissing, eroticism, fist fights and other primitive acts. The viewer is essentially being offered aggressive petty-mindedness deprived of intellectual and spiritual motives.

Of course, different genres require different approaches. And many detective films are based on maniacs killing women. But I am talking about something else—about the daily and habitual violence that is increasingly becoming the “cultural norm.” Scenes, in which a woman is beaten, slapped or pushed so that she falls, hits her head and dies, feature in almost every serial shown in many countries all over the world. For example, in a recent new Russian serial called Look over Your Shoulder before Entering a Home, the main protagonist hits a woman with an oar and leaves her to drown.

If you search for the key words “man beats a woman,” it will bring up 230 film titles showing such scenes; whereby the search engine claims that it is only selecting the “best films.” And American films predominate.

Meanwhile, the number of these mass serials is also growing in Russia. Here are a few announcements:

* Lifeline – “domestic fights, male aggression towards a woman.”

* Wife Beating. Russian melodrama, 2019. The advertisement says that the serial “brought the house down.”

* Run and Don’t Look Back – “melodrama, criminal film about violence in the family.”

* A New Lease on Life (serial) – “After getting engaged to Sasha, a promising boxer, 19-year-old Masha goes to Moscow to study at a university. Her sister Alya tries to seduce Sasha. In the capital, misfortune befalls Masha. Taking advantage of the girl’s gullibility, playboy Ruslan and two of his friends rape and beat her up. The same evening at his father’s birthday party, Ruslan raises a ruckus.”

* Bad Blood: “A provincial girl, Maria, moves to the capital in search of happiness. In Moscow, misfortune befalls her: she is brutally raped by the son of a rich and extremely influential man. Masha is on the verge of life and death, but the doctors save her.”

* Cold Shores: “For several months the residents of Ozersk have been living in constant fear—a maniac, who mutilates and strangles young women, has appeared in the town.”

* Tomorrow is Another Day: “Sveta grew up in a very modest family, but thanks to her perseverance and hard work she was able to enroll in one of the most prestigious universities in the country – MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations). There she meets Kirill, the most popular boy in her class, and instantly wins over his heart. Unfortunately, rich girl Alina has her eye on the same boy. When all her attempts to attract Kirill’s attention fail, she decides to commit a crime to dishonor Sveta” (the girl is beaten and raped).

We are told that “domestic violence” means that a woman’s life becomes a vicious circle of abuse accompanied by physical violence. And again American films currently take the lead here (for example, Treasure Quest (2009), The Color Purple, Sleeping with the Enemy, Big Little Lies, American Crime, Safe Haven, The Burning Bed, Before I Go to Asleep, For Colored Girls, and others). But since the format of many entertainment and reality shows on Russian television is franchised (acquired from Americans and Europeans), I am afraid that the topics “domestic violence” and “women beating” will also slowly but surely become a constant feature in the serials shown on Russia’s main TV channels.

I don’t like it when a woman is portrayed as a bitch and bitch behavior becomes a way for winning over a man by means of intrigues and lies. I don’t like it when women are shown as capricious and aggressive, scandalous and crude, when they openly demonstrate their masculine behavior and use high-ranking men—the main protagonist of almost every serial today—to achieve their goals. Is this not the result of the aggressive behavior of men? Will this not lead to an increase in unisex marriages? Furthermore, is this not why modern pharmacology is putting thousands of tons of stimulators on the market to enhance the sex life of men and women?

But it is even worse when men, due to their own weakness, dumb worthlessness, and inferiority complexes, begin to exercise their domination in serials and films by abusing women and demonstrating their physical strength. It doesn’t matter if this is a box on the ear for reason or none, or harsher and crueler forms of abuse.

This war between men and women being publicized in films and serials is not only filling the cultural space (which also includes theaters, glamour and fashion magazines, and online media) with scum, worse is that these behavior patterns are becoming a role model, even the norm.

Violence against women should not be supported either by television, contemporary culture, or society. It is not the victim, who suffers anyway, who should be accused, but the aggressor. Punishment for beating up women should be 3-5 times more severe than for beating up men.

The repetitive tactless subjects on the screens of world cinema form patterns of consciousness—and this is where civilization takes its roots. But what will humanity come to if beating up women becomes a form satisfaction and gender-based ecstasy?

In France, every third woman dies from abuse from her partner. This statistic puts the country in first place, along with Germany and Switzerland, in the grievous rating of violence against women in Western Europe. Every year, 220,000 French women report cases of domestic violence, but the experts claim that the number is much higher, because many instances go unreported. The world is truly going mad. For Frenchmen to beat women? Can they really be Frenchmen?

More than a million women are the victims of domestic violence in Europe and Russia and thousands die at the hands of men. And this is every year! Do these figures not indicate the beginning of the end of contemporary civilization?

Most people today are bent on enhancing their lives by spending more and achieving fame. Is this kind of behavior not taking the soul out of society? People have forgotten that it is life itself that enriches their mind and spirit and brings joy. Evidently this is why the sale of Christian churches has become a daily phenomenon in Europe in recent years. They are being turned into restaurants, beer bars, and clothing stores.

The worldview of Homo consumers is bringing the planet to its knees, destroying civilization and treating women as a commodity. Women are becoming its property, are we indeed returning to the slave-owning system?! Contemporary society needs new development principles. It must place the priority on developing an environmental culture. The time has come to create a post-human civilization.

At this alarmingly immoral time, only a high level of spirituality and knowledge can define the goals of social prosperity and save the world.