The Lengths of Good and Evil

In the 1991 Martin Scorsese film Cape Fear, He uses the story from the original 1962 movie to set up a more up to date and refined plot of the film introducing fear as a way to defeat a conflict. As in Noel Carroll’s writing he talks of how we go to the movies out of fascination and because these problems are known to not exist we can then deal with them with curiosity. With that we might be able to face a fear or even come up with a way of taking our fear and creating a way to resolve it as is a theme mentioned in this film.  We are introduced to Sam Bowden who is an attorney and a family man. Max Cady is a man who has spent 14 years in prison for battery and rape.  He is after Bowden for withholding evidence that would have shortened his sentence. Cady has grown vengeful and studied in multiple ideologies that let him become the old testament psychopathic stalker he is to the Bowden Family.

The stalking is small but noticeable to Sam and is within legal limits. But the stalking soon becomes noticeable and threatening to the point it plays with Sam’s mind. This is the biggest fear to Sam. The way he fights is within legal situations and him being the educated man he is, there is no way to combat the “White Trash” man he is facing, yet this man knows enough to use the system to his advantage. This idea is used throughout the film where this uneducated man is defeating an educated man at his own business and is slowly bringing him down to his level. Multiple times in the film we are reminded of the moral consequences of actually dealing with Cady and eventually drives Bowden to the same unethical level; as in the final scene, Sam and Max are fighting in the mud with rocks. 

I think the fear was more on the suspenseful side but certainly poses the question and scenario what we would do if someone who could manipulate us to that degree to where we change our whole sense of moral. Noel writes,” the audience knows that the object of art-horror does not exist before them. The audience is only reacting to the thought that such and such an impure being might exist”.
This is interesting to me because throughout the film it is referenced to harness your own fear to overcome your problems, and both Bowden and Cady live that, one is forced to do it to survive, while the other revels in the idea. Sam is driven to the lengths that he feared where his morals for the justice system and the good of his family are questioned. But it all forces his will to where the law cannot protect him. This also corresponds with what Carroll is saying in his ideas that we use these movies to question our own reactions, would we be willing to kill a man illegally to protect our family? But according to Carroll we are curious about why such a man would go to such lengths to right his wrong when it was his wrong doing in the first place. The movie isn’t a horror film but sets up a story that is any family man’s worst nightmare that has to deal with convicts. But overall it makes us question what we would do to defeat this character and it gives us some laughs at the ridiculous odds by the end.
This is not related to my blog other than it is a philosophical theme within Cape Fear. It might be worth the read for others who watch the movie but it is a view on how this movie relates to Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Cape_Fear