Are we certain it's just a cat and mouse game?
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Duel
AlarmedGibbon — 10 years ago(April 24, 2015 02:16 PM)
There's several folks on this forum saying that Spielberg indicated that there's no deeper meaning about what's going on, it's just a cat and mouse game that was good for TV.
But, Spielberg didn't write this story. Are we certain that the writer of the story felt the same way?
Is it possible that the writer had more complicated notions in mind than Spielberg did?
Or, is it possible that Spielberg didn't care about any deeper psychological allegories and ignored them, while at the same time still ultimately incorporating them into the film due to the nature/structure of the source material?
For me, there's a clear element of emasculation going on, of showing who's in control here (and it's not David). The production team obviously figured this out at some point, because other folks on this forum are saying they added the wife scene after the original release. His wife is complaining that someone "practically raped" her, and David was there and basically stood by and pretended like it wasn't a big deal (because he's afraid of conflict, or is generally a chicken-s*** kind of guy).
The truck blows smoke in David's face. It taunts him into making a fool of himself in the diner. It goads him into making a fool of himself in front of the school bus. It deliberately slows down in front of him, while David's trying to hurry to get to his sales client in time. The truck doesn't allow David to call the police. It also stops David from proceeding on the highway at one point, pulling forward to block David when he tries to drive through. Notice in that scene how he isn't trying to kill David at all, he's just demonstrating where the power lies in this relationship. This is classic emasculation.
It's like the truck is telling him "You're nothing, you're not a real man, you can't do anything without my permission, and you're powerless to stop me. A wimp like you is better off dead, and I'm going to make that happen." I guess I really got some messages from that truck
There's also an element that emerges for me where the truck is like a man of the people, and David is a stranger in this land whom everyone regards suspiciously. No one is suspicious of the truck, they're only suspicious of David. In the school bus scene, the truck steps in and helps them out. Then later as the truck drives on and sees a train, it toots its horn twice to the train, and the train toots twice back. The truck is in solidarity with this land and its people.
Regardless of my "man of the people" paragraph there, doesn't it stretch the imagination to think that this emasculation stuff was totally lost on the film-makers, and therefore what the truck represents to David?
Anyone here agree with me? Vehemently disagree?
Thanks for reading. -
telegonus — 8 years ago(October 08, 2017 07:59 AM)
I'm with you on the emasculation part, and this makes sense especially for
Duel
's year of release, 1971. The middle class was still "in recovery" from the Sixties and its discontents.
David Mann was an average guy in business, working for someone else who, a mere five or ten years earlier would be seen as a fine, upstanding real man of a citizen.
Now he's feeling wimpy and acting it. He's trying to stay hip with his very Seventies hair and glasses, complete with sideburns (no bell bottoms, thankfully), and he's barely hanging on.
As to the crazy trucker, he knows it. How and why doesn't matter. He just does, and he makes it his business on this particular day to either torture David Mann and drive him to madness or kill him, and he damn near succeeds.
As a product of its time, and to put a contemporary spin on it, I don't think a
Duel
remake would work so well today, in the new millennium, not the way it did back in '71.
Leaving cell phones and texting aside, David's millennial equivalent might be armed, maybe take a pistol or a rifle he has somewhere in his car and go after mad trucker and take him down; either by killing him outright, wounding him, or shooting his tires to he couldn't drive anymore.