In an episode of Remingon Steele, Mr Steele explains that the reason Miss Holt won’t accept police protection, although they clearly need it, is that she has a point to prove: “That a woman with intelligence, determination, and a certain amount of training can be as stupidly macho as any man.”
It’s lines like that that keep me referring back to many older television shows long after they’ve gone off the air. It just expresses perfectly what far too many women ARE trying to prove.
My immediate reaction, and one I’ve stuck to, was “I was prepared to stipulate that…I didn’t think it needed to be proven.”
The ‘point’ Miss Holt is trying to prove is not only a critique of female behavior, of course. Miss Holt didn’t set the standard, after all. She’s only trying to live up to standards of foolhardiness already established by too many men. In another episode, Mr Steele asks “…Why is it that when I do something dangerous it’s reckless, but when you do something suicidal, it’s a good idea?”
The obvious answer to the latter question is that it depends on who’s defining the parameters. If it’s her (and it is), then she decides what’s reckless, and what’s a good idea.
Yet in another sense, she is not defining the parameters. She’s almost blindly succumbing to OTHER PEOPLE’S definitions. She can see clearly enough when other people are behaving recklessly: but when it comes to her own behavior, she can’t turn the binoculars around and get a true reading.
Part of the problem, of course, is that she’s an adrenaline junkie, as is stated in the opening of the show (“I(‘ve) always loved excitement.” she explains.) We all know some adrenaline junkies, and though there’s a tendency to assume they’re mostly males, probably few of us have not known at least one female adrenaline junkie,
These people are dangerous, of course. It’s not just that they are reckless of their own lives, healths, and potential futures. It is that, of course…but it’s more. Innocent bystanders also get hurt. People who shun excitement are as much at risk as those who are along for the ride–or those who may even be adrenaline junkies themselves.
Thrillseeking, if it were a hazard for only the participants, might seem only a harmless eccentricity. And it can, of course, be carried off harmlessly. But not in a populous city, through which the thrillseeker is engaging in high-speed chases, often following heavily armed and equally reckless objects of pursuit.
In such cases, probably it’s a good thing if such ‘investigators’ come equipped with an inertial partner, who will apply the brakes now and again. And this applies equally when the detective is a male…if not more so.
For today’s more obscure subject, hearing a disastrously costly win called a ‘Pyrrhic victory’ raises the question: who was Pyrrhus, and why did he once comment ‘If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be ruined.’?
The ‘Pyrrhus’ in question was one Pyrrhus of Epitus. In a series of internecine battles (meaning that they caused mischief to the entire neighborhood), Pyrrhus and other Hellenistic leaders inflicted serious damage on the Romans, southern Italians…and their own people. In the end, Pyrrhus died having lost substantially more ground than he’d gained. and leaving the Romans almost unchallenged in their genocide against the Carthaginians.
And left us with an important warning: ‘victory at all costs’ is an EXTREMELY dangerous principle. Pity more people haven’t picked up on that…
treraia 