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« on: October 09, 2006, 08:14:52 PM »
Pansity------ all that was great, and thanks. I can't summon up any reponnse yet, but I can correct one impression I might have left... I wasn't saying the event didn't show us anything about BCs character. I was trying to say that it's difficult for a viewer to interpret it as an attempt to say something about Barnabas's character, even though it's very possible that this is just what the writers were trying to do. We hear no friend of BC's denouncing him for it, and almost always when the protagonist of a story does something, we're supposed to support it, at least unless there's some explanation via another character that the protagonist has done wrong. Our point of view is supposed to be that of the main character, or so we assume instinctively, unless told explicitly otherwise. It could be considered a daring sort of move to just have the "protagonist" unexpectedly slaughter someone just to protect his own pathetic little secret, and leave the audience to work out the morality for themselves, without it being laid out clearly for them.
In that situation, Quentin could very easily have been shocked, but more terrified for his own safety... in which case, we certainly wouldn't have heard any handy soliloquies (I've never used that word and don't know if i'm using it correctly) from him about how wrong the murder was. I'm very glad that they didn't have him wander off someplace where he couldn't be overheard, and start saying aloud to himself that, oh no, Barnabas is a murderer, I'd better keep my mouth shut.
As for taking the law into his own hands, that's a great point about the arrogance of his class, and I didn't know the history you presented. I also think, though, that our current outlook, that the police and courts should handle everything, may be a prejudice of our own era. In the 60s, there were many series which had main characters in special circumstances, outside of mainstream society, which juries and judges would never understand. There was an appreciation by writers sometimes of the fact that the majority often to have little imagination and tolerance.