By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

What's the difference between real life and the movies?
Here's one example:

In the movie version of the magazine world, a lady editor might be sitting at her art deco desk, wearing a smart suit and a hat while barking into a phone (I'm thinking of a good movie made about publishing, the last of which might have appeared about 1939). Our editor might pause to exchange wisecracks with her ace feature writer who bears an uncanny resemblance to William Powell. Later, a parade of impossibly beautiful models might sashay in so that the editor could wisecrack about this year's fashions (secretly smug that she would look best of all in them!) with the art director, played by the impeccable Eric Blore.

Most people have no problem believing that this is probably not the way it goes. Just as they can readily imagine that any number of other professions, occupations and lifestyles are not as depicted on the big-and little-screen. Even if you've never visited New York City, for example, you are pretty confident that life is not exactly as it appears on "Friends," in "Annie Hall," or even on Katie and Matt's fake living room set.

But when it comes to self-defense, many more people seem to prefer a cozy myth, no matter how much their experience tells them otherwise.

I hope you've carefully read Lyn Bates' harrowing account of Susan and Mike Gonzalez' ordeal at the hands of a vicious gang of home invaders in Florida (Page 10 of our May-June print issue now on newsstands. The feature will be online June 15). It has, as Lyn points out, many lessons to teach us.

But while Lyn's piece reads like a taut short story, it wouldn't make a very good movie. The businessmen in Hollywood would never go for this real story, because to them, it wouldn't be "salable" enough. And the artists of Hollywood would probably also insist on making everything much more "real" than it already was.

Take for example the aftermath of the gun battle that engulfed the Gonzalez household. Take Susan's words about fighting to retain reality every day following the events of that night, well beyond the swift wrap-up of any fiction. Take, too, the stark picture of what it looks like to have survived a gunfight (and pause to reflect on the continuing bravery of a woman who would share that image with thousands of strangers).

Contrast that with two recent movies in which Hollywood (and its global subsidiaries) treats the subject of female "empowerment," female "courage" and female "bravery."

I enjoyed watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, just as I enjoyed (to my own surprise) Charlie's Angels. Both have inspired reams of copy in the last few months, blah-blah-blahing on about how these "new" images of women are so "positive" and "strong" and "wonderful role models."

Well, sure, it's wonderful, and, if you stretch enough, powerful and empowering, to see women be the good guys and the physical winners. But unless you're planning to turn yourself over to a Martial Arts Master, a 24/7 Personal Trainer and a Winnebago full of hair and makeup people, there aren't a whole lot of lessons to be had in either film.

The actresses of Crouching Tiger, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Zizi, are, from what I've read, accomplished martial artists. And, in a worst-case scenario, either would be well-served by the discipline as much as the skill that such accomplishment brings. But far away from the fantasy setting of the movie, sitting on a couch, half asleep, while waiting for a teenager to return home, for example, either might be grateful for having thought not about what they would do in a dream, but in real life.

Racing down the hall to slam a bedroom door against two or more assailants, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz or Lucy Liu of Charlie's Angels, might hope to find a partner as committed to survival as she, as well as the means to fight back and live.
Of course it's always a bad idea to take too much away from a movie-even a really good movie. But more and more we see a culture which turns not to reality and not to genuine experts, but to the fantasy solutions.

For the last dozen years, as I've been on television or radio, or spoken to groups of non-gunowners, I've been amazed to hear people say things like "Why didn't she just run away?" or "I could never fight back and win" or "Why not just call 911" in response to other people's genuine, real response to crime and danger.

It would certainly make life easier if X-men (or ­women) or even flying monkeys appeared whenever danger did. Somewhere, deep down, most people know that in your darkest hour a policeman who looks just like Brad Pitt doesn't show up and take over the chore of survival. People know that, but they question it, because the evidence they are bombarded with by the entertainment media shows them otherwise.

It's too bad that Susan Gonzalez isn't a household name-not a legend-but a real, live, survivor.

Peggy Tartaro

Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.