There’s No Such Thing as Cancel Culture
Social norms are a never-ending contest
In one of the most gripping, visceral portrayals of human experience in all of cinema, Glenn Close makes the viewer feel what no one ever wants to feel: unalloyed shame.
The scene unfolds at the end of the film Dangerous Liaisons, set in the hedonistic courtly society of pre-Revolutionary Paris. Glenn Close’s character, the Marquise de Merteuil, to soothe a long-nursed grudge against a lover who had abandoned her, plots the ruination of her ex-lover’s virgin bride-to-be and enlists the playboy courtier Vicomte de Valmont (played by John Malkovich) to help enact her plot. Though he originally has designs on seducing someone else, his own wounded pride at being rejected brings him around to Merteuil’s plan. Servants seduce servants, nobles seduce nobles, a wealthy noblewoman falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat, innocence is ruined, lust is assuaged, lives are destroyed, all in an entangled web of ruinous liaisons, all orchestrated and monitored by the vindictive, glamourous, socially-connected Marquise.
But the truth, as always, comes out in the end. As Valmont lies bleeding to death from a duel, he hands over to his wronged opponent all the letters the Marquise had written to Valmont detailing their seduction plots as they unfolded. Valmont’s opponent…
