Wild : Why are some mistakes worse than others?

My book club read this book last year, and I really liked it. Also enjoyed the film adaptation, which was as faithful to the book as it could be, I think.

Likewise, we read Into the Wild and I saw the movie for that one. Standard "man vs. wilderness', blah blah.

I love love LOVE seeing a story like this from a woman's point of view. When do we have rich female protagonists? When does the female protagonist not just meet a man to fix everything?

Anyway - I was surprised to read that, despite the book's popularity, lots of people hate hate HATE Strayed, mostly because she was promiscuous and did heroin.

Why are some mistakes worse than others? What's so bad about her having lots of detached sex and dabbling in drugs? Why is that any better or worse than being mean to your kids, or lying, or screwing coworkers over to get to the top?

It's my sense that in American culture we judge women really harshly for these sorts of things.

She went off the deep end after her mother's death. From the story, she was lucky enough to have understanding friends and an understanding ex to support her in finding a way to pull herself out. She lived to tell the tale. Good for her.

Good film, good story, IMHO.

ooh, that's interesting and also depressing. Maybe people enjoy the "evil woman" trope.?

Like if you're not a manic pixie dream girl, or sexy psychopath, you have to be the nice girl next door? Dunno.

"feminism" isn't an extreme. Like any movement that is widely ignored in a society, extreme factions are created from a lack of progress. If there is a perceived injustice in the world that is being ignored is the best course of action to lay down or scream at the top of your lungs?

You can only hate yourself by this logic.

Either you believe in equal rights and is a feminist, or you don't and then is a chauvinist.

Since you edited your post I will have to explain mine to make some sense, you wrote: I hate feminists and chauvinists and then I answered you can't hate both without hating yourself.

Feminism is a belief in equality, sexism is a belief in inequality. The world is moving fast and any direction you go will have its consequences. Usually the better you wish for others will happen to you as well. Choose one, work for it and good luck.

You can only hate yourself by this logic.

Either you believe in equal rights and is a feminist, or you don't and then is a chauvinist.

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"ah, the rager type who lashes out at women is the bain of the existence in the USA."

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Not at all, ye of comprehension impairment. I said "feminist," which in no way encompasses all women. I'm not a chauvinist or a misogynist! Quite the opposite, I'm an unassuming guy and love to serve and treat my wife with the utmost respect. She appreciates and respects me(my perception), she doesn't try to dominate me or act like I'm inferior. My first wife put off the feminist vibe though, with a superior air.

Sorry that you can't take my previous comment and categorize me in the worst way possible, like you'd love to as a slave to PCness. To your delight though, I do volunteer to be the poster child, as the enemy of political correctness. You can use my image with the no symbol over it at your various functions

Thank You

Yea, Tho I Walk Thru The Valley Of The Shadow Of Political Correctness

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Equally as much as I hate chauvinists.

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The word should be "sexist".

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

I guess I don't need to see Gone Girl now, thanks for that :-)




Never defend crap with 'It's just a movie'
http://www.youtube.com/user/BigGreenProds

Why do you say you don't need to see Gone Girl now? I don't get it. It's a very entertaing movie-well acted and directed.

Because the person above - whose post I reported and was subsequently deleted - managed to blab every major twist in the film in less than 4 lines.

No idea why, but his entire post was just dedicated to a plot summary of Gone Girl.



Never defend crap with 'It's just a movie'
http://www.youtube.com/user/BigGreenProds

Speaking of "mistakes" can anyone tell me what was up with the pregnancy in the film?

She says she's pregnant in one flashback, and in another she looks 6-7 months along - too late for an abortion. Did she put a heroin baby up for adoption?



" Jack, you have debauched my sloth! "

It's been a year since I read it, but I'm pretty sure the book says she got an abortion. Again, something you can't apparently talk about in movies anymore - it's legal, it was legal in 1992 or whenever that was, but it's "taboo" to admit it.

Really? I don't remember her ever looking pregnant.

In the $10 counseling scene where she blows off the therapist, she has a bump. The kind of bump you don't see until it's too late for an abortion.

I guess the costume department didn't pay enough attention to the timelines.



" Jack, you have debauched my sloth! "

That wasn't a bump. It was a shirt with an Empire waist, and she was slouching.

Good posture does make a difference.


Happy birthday to the ground!

well, I kind of see the other side of this issue. Reading some of the thoughts of this movie and Gone Girl, it seems that some people think that women can't ever do anything bad or wrong. You ask why are some mistakes worse than others,
but my question could also be why are mistakes made by guys worse than the same mistakes done by girls?
when a person does bad things, that's just what they are, bad things. regardless of who does them, I just do not understand how is doing drugs or sleeping around or framing a person suppose to be empowering. Obviously I am not saying that the character in this movie should be demonized or bashed, she was free to do what she wanted, it was her decision.
But what I don't undrestand is when people take empowerment from bad actions. from harmful actions. or when people think that doing bad things is okay and encouraged even according to gender

Yeah, good points.

I thought Gone Girl was tongue-in-cheek pointing out assumptions about the perfect romance, the most evil of villains (when everyone assumed her husband was guilty), etc.

I think you're absolutely right that when we assume women are good and can't do wrong that is bad.

What I've been most shocked by on this board is how many people are calling her a slut and a whore - it's all over! I didn't know people still leaped to those words - I just saw it as self-destructive, and also that her marriage was clearly very co-dependent. Obviously I feel sorry for her husband, and for her, too - she was hurting herself more than anyone else.

I'm just most upset by the fact that all these movies about being self-reliant (127 hrs as well) seems to turn marraige/kids as the solution to everything. Couldn't the movie have done without the epilogue as the closing line?
sophomorecritic.blogspot.com
Twitter @okonh0wp

true

Well, I don't think it is presented as a "solution," but it is rather something very basic that gives many (not all of course) people a sense of purpose and meaning. I believe in the case of 127 Hours that the writer said that he had a vision of a little boy when he was at his most delirious from dehydration and exposure and he believed that this was a vision of his as-yet not-conceived son. So it gave him a bit of hope and strength when he was at his lowest point.

With Cheryl, I felt the bit about her happy second marriage and children, as she stood on the bridge, was perhaps a bit cliched but my wife and I liked that aspect of the end, as it was a hard-earned happiness for her as a person. I honestly didn't "blame" Strayed (nor did my wife) for her promiscuity or drug use I saw them both as honest symptoms of a devastating depression following the loss of her mother. I don't of course excuse her behavior towards her first husband either. I have a few friends who lost parents at a young age like Cheryl lost her mother, and the suffering can't be overestimated. I saw her turn to motherhood at the end as a great healing and process of maturation for her (not for every woman of course) in the long aftermath of the loss of her mother.

"I love those redheads!" (Wooderson, Dazed and Confused, 1993)

Nice reply

Simple answer munroe-9. Because we live in a world full of hypocrites, you know the ones who NEVER did anything wrong in their lifetime. After all, Politicians, School Teachers, Priest's and Corporate CEO's have NEVER done any wrong! Well Jesus said 'Let those without sin, cast the first stone'. People like to hide behind that badge of Perfection and I guess don't believe in 2nd chances. The good thing is, she moved on and is at peace within herself now. What anyone else thinks, doesn't matter anymore.

:) You are so right.

Feminist garbage and propaganda

You're propaganda for idiocy

Mistakes are mistakes, regardless of who makes them. Anyone accusing or condemning someone harder just because of gender has simply low or wrong human values. I wish there were more female protagonist in movies, and not copied successful stories from male stories and how we men do it but stories that show how women can do it and make it THEIR way.

Why not stories about women that started with 2 empty hands and created something big or a better life for themselves and others? There are countless such stories about men but none or very few that the female audience and population can relate to. And it's a shame. Just as we men need our heroes so does women and young girls. But I guess Hollywood thinks otherwise.

Some mistakes are worse than others. Taking heroin and engaging in destructive sex acts while you are married and otherwise loved by friends and family for four years is not a mistake. It's a choice and based on the film not one she regrets. She never shows remorse for any of the things she did (saying in a flashback that she enjoyed the sex and later that she doesn't regret it because..) and while on the trail she continues to drink and sleep around.

The issue is that she has no excuse for behaving like this - having a relatively bad childhood and your mother dying in your 20s is not justification in the slightest. It's a failing of the film that all we have to go in is that because it doesn't explain anything. Instead all we get is the feeling we should feel sorry for this women because she made the decision to go on a very long hike while being grossly unprepared. Just like everything else we were shown she made bad decision for no reason. She was an intensely unsympathetic character and she didn't change, she just had a bunch of men try and help her out along the way (with money and advice instead of a penis this time) and she spent half a year doing this which left her penniless so it was another self destructive act.

The idea that it is because she is a woman is fair in a sense. It is worse because she is a woman. Having sex with any guy that will let you is not impressive if you are a relatively attractive young woman, she wouldn't have hugely enjoyed having sex with two men in alley - it was for them and then she had to have an abortion and she didn't even know the father. If you're a man getting two women to have sex with you in an alley isn't even conceivable and he'd get off twice to it with the only risk being an STD (and that risk is lower because he is a man). For a man the equivalent would have been having sex with a lot of hookers.

Points well taken.

I think the difference for me is this: excuse vs explanation. She offered her explanations for what she did, not excuses. I don't know - having an abusive stepparent when you're really small and a constant struggle in poverty.I think that's pretty traumatizing stuff.

I like stories like that: people who are complex human beings - and challenging myself to understand them without judgment. I don't see the value in judgment.

I think this woman was a total bad ass - by sheer will and strength of character she made this journey. She was a strong person, and she had to figure that out. Also, just to get out of her self-destructive spiral, she needed to get in a totally different head space, and that's what she did.

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while on the trail she continues to drink and sleep around.

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"sleep around"? She had sex with one man toward the end of her journey. It was consensual sex with a nice man and they didn't just jump in the sack. It was a contrast with the tawdry sex she had with other addicts while high, that they showed in flashback.

The double standard still exists. Horrors, she slept with a man that she clearly did not intend to establish a relationship with (because she was leaving town the next day.) Would anybody have thought twice if a man did that?



You must be the change you seek in the world. Gandhi

The problem is not that a woman had a casual one-night stand on the road. The problem is that the whole point of her trip is precisely that she had problems with heroin & sleeping with everyone and that she went on that trip as a spiritual thing to break away from these things. So when in the course of that trip we randomly have a one-night stand scene with no comment on how this fits within her character development, it simply doesn't make sense.

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It was consensual sex with a nice man

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Consensual? All the sex she had in her life (as far as we know) was consensual! It's not like she was handcuffing and blindfolding men.

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and they didn't just jump in the sack.

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How exactly did they not jump in the sack? They introduced themselves in the street, he got her a drink at a concert (no dialogue) and the next thing is she's going with him to his place and getting undressed.

As for "Would anybody have thought twice if a man did that?" I won't bother to comment because you're clearly drawing a strawman.


Last watched: The Salt of the Earth (6.5/10), Far From the Madding Crowd [2015] (8/10),

As you said, she had problems with heroin and sleeping with everyone. By the end of her trip, she has broken both patterns.

As for "consensual", the implication I got from the earlier scenes is that tawdry sex she had, she consented to in order to get drugs. Yes, she consented, but did she really want to sleep with those men? She was not depicted as enjoying it. The sex she had with the nice guy she made a connection with at the end of the trip, though quick, was completely different. I understood how this showed her character development.

And sorry, I don't see how "Would anybody have thought twice if a man did that?" is a straw man. It gets to the heart, I believe, of why people have issues with her behavior.


You must be the change you seek in the world. Gandhi

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As you said, she had problems with heroin and sleeping with everyone. By the end of her trip, she has broken both patterns.

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And yet it seems she still sleeps with anyone who makes contact with her (who's not a creep). The fact that she had less sex on the road as far as we see compared to her bad years seems to be more due to the fact that less men are available than anything else. As soon as she gets to a city where something - anything - is happening, she sleeps around again without getting to know the person first.

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As for "consensual", the implication I got from the earlier scenes is that tawdry sex she had, she consented to in order to get drugs.

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I didn't get that impression. I read her dark years as an addiction to both heroin and sex and I believe most people read it the same way.

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The sex she had with the nice guy she made a connection with at the end of the trip, though quick, was completely different. I understood how this showed her character development.

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Well it's good that you did (really), but I personally didn't think much of a connection was shown. Yes he seemed nice but so do loads of people on the street. I think it was crucial to show more of a connection, any conversation at all, between them, to make the scene stand in contrast to her earlier years.

Re: the strawman It's a strawman because it's a different argument: do people judge men and women differently? Some people certainly do but others don't and it's a strawman to say to anyone who raises an objection to the scene that they're doing so on sexist grounds.

I just happened to catch the end of this movie on HBO or whatever channel. And rewatching it I agree, her sleeping with this last guy was awfully quick.

BUT, right after that scene, there is a scene that is significant. It is the next morning, Cheryl is on the beach, and the guy she had slept with the night before is watching her from his window. She is writing something in the sand then wiping it away. Her voiceover tells her ex-husband Paul that she had written his name in the sand of every beach she has been to, then wiped it away, but this was the last time she was going to do that. So it does seem that this sexual encounter was different for her and she was turning a corner.

You must be the change you seek in the world. Gandhi

That's a well spotted indication that the film does see this sexual encounter as different. That maybe she doesn't feel guilty anymore.
Should have actually played out differently though.

I think she's a brave woman for sharing this story. There is a lot she laid out that people can choose to judge her for, but honestly what do people think their harsh words are going to do to her that she hasn't already said or done to herself?

I've lived through many things that are very close to her story. I felt like I had slipped into a very familiar place when I watched this. Not that it made it easy to see all over again. But I got what she wanted me to by writing this. It's a brilliant story told well.

Personally, I feel this is a banner year for female characters. We aren't shaming women or trying to wedge them into one slot. We're showing their human side. Sometimes it's ugly, or scary, or magnificent, and occasionally all these things at once. It's a nice change of pace from the prom queens, or the misfits who never got picked because they didn't know they were beautiful (until someone comes along and magically transformed them ), or any other stereotype I see year after year that I simply don't connect with.

This film is great because it shows how women don't always hold everything together, and anyone can break in the right circumstances. The fact that she is shown as still worthy of being given love, with all of her imperfections, touches me deeply. It's not supposed to be easy to love someone all the time, but the times it seems the hardest to, is when they really need it the most.

"You are literally worse than slavery".

You hit the nail on the head there. It's just pure misogyny. To quote an earlier post I wrote regarding this subject -

If you wrote the same post about Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Carribean, or all the James Bonds, or Hugh Grant in 'About a Boy' etc etc etc THEN you SLIGHTLY have the right to criticise women for having sex in a period of grief. BUT. ONLY. THEN.

Whether it's a man like Phillip Seymour Hoffman; or a woman like Cheryl Strayed - it is hard for me to accept heroin addiction as a "mistake". Everyone knows this is one of the most powerfully addictive drugs ever, so once you decide to smoke, snort or shoot up your first heroin - you know you are making a huge self-destructive choice from which there may be no recovery. And plenty of us have used alcohol, marijuana hell even cocaine - and never been tempted to use heroin.

Likewise - promiscuous sex is not a "mistake". It is another self-destructive choice.

Not having read the book however, what I did admire in the movie was that Cheryl did seem to grow and learn and change and improve herself in many ways throughout her journey on the Pacific Crest Trail.





the best that you can do is fall in love

When I was really young there was a forbidden book circulating about an heroine addicted 13 years old girl, I was even younger than it when I managed to read it.

I wish it becomes a recommended book at schools some day even with all blood, sex and deaths

Even today many people don't know you can actually die trying to take the drug our of your system by yourself, cold turkey. There are many advocating all drugs must be allowed and we need to be responsible to know how to use it.


I still believe there are more misinformation about drugs than common sense.

Kids are the target as well as the sellers, nobody has the luxury of getting old using this trash, the professional drug dealers prefer functioning customers like cocaine or ecstasy users, even not being the most commercial success it still works fine for forced prostitution, many professionals who were supposed to help just take advantage of the situation.

Sex is not important to an addict. His next fix worths more than his love, family, possessions, life. It is a broken brain and takes a long time to fix it back, if ever.

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Sex is not important to an addict. His next fix worths more than his love, family, possessions, life. It is a broken brain and takes a long time to fix it back, if ever.

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That's so true yet so sad at the same time!

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nec spe,nec metu ` Paul Newman: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com:443/data.filmboards/images/upload/soV3Jhb.gif

Well, not so sad after all, since she found her way back using the most unconventional alternative. She changed totally the expected outcome for drug addiction.

You don't know what they went through that made them make a bad decision and look for a pain relief in drugs

Sorry for my english.

I agree with everything you wrote. Refreshing to see your point of view so well laid out. I wasn't a major fan of the movie and the abrupt ending was disappointing but to see such a story from a woman's point of view was great.

My 100 favorite movies http://www.imdb.com/list/Uvw_F2_GMx8/
What are your favorites?

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When does the female protagonist not just meet a man to fix everything?

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She didn't met man to fix everything? You apparently fell asleep during movie, when at running into first problem she ran into guy who took her home and gave her food. Same as she got stuff in rain from ranger (?) when he already closed the shop. The trio of guys camping next to her had good quote, something about them never receiving any free help/stuff from anyone, unlike her donut and coffee in morning, so much for being equal independent woman. Yeah, she is equal independ when it plays in her favor, if she needs help somehow is less important to be equal and independent.

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What's so bad about her having lots of detached sex and dabbling in drugs?

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Well, for starters what about cheating on your loving husband who cares about you? Or you think loss of parent/anyone is excuse for cheating on your beloved? Excuse for taking drugs like vast minority of people? Good for you living in delusion.

Whole movie was just boring chick flick where I found amusing thrilling scenes expecting rape fllowing whore who slept with everyone, it was really full of suspense, will they rape this whore or not?! Much suspense, many Oscars At least Oscar jury did one good thing and gave well deserved Oscar to Moore instead of going for cheap Witherspoon who thinks showing some flesh and taking drugs on screen will give her Oscar

Peter Markoff
The best - Fight Club, American Beauty & Falling Down.

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The trio of guys camping next to her had good quote, something about them never receiving any free help/stuff from anyone, unlike her donut and coffee in morning, so much for being equal independent woman. Yeah, she is equal independ when it plays in her favor, if she needs help somehow is less important to be equal and independent.

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1. Since this is a movie based on her memoir then the fact that she included this quote means she is aware that often women get certain benefits just because of their gender. Often other people will find women less threatening and will be more willing to help. Or as is the case with the ranger, they are trying to get in your pants.

2. What is interesting to me is that whenever any woman tries to reject extra help/chivalry then she is demonized as a bitch. If not, then she is a failure at being independent. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Of course, given the same exact situation, if a man got the exact same help that she got no one would even think to questions his independence.



Happy birthday to the ground!

I can't understand why someone would hate someone they don't know. She is a human being, we are all flawed in some way or other. I applaud her for facing her addictions and issues in her own way. I can't imagine walking that far, let along by myself. I've driven in those deserts and mountains and feared my car breaking down (this was before cell phones). I think she's an amazing woman, and took a lot of courage to reveal her true former self as a premise for her ordeal. It's too bad more people aren't like her. BTW: Reese Witherspoon did an amazing job in her portrayal IMO.